Game changer: the Commodore 64 concert

Video game music played by an orchestra is not new, but 8-Bit Symphony, a celebration of music from pioneering C64 composers, took many years of work

Taylor Swift at the Amazon Prime Day concert was our terrible future, now

As smooth, immoveable faces of the oncoming social collapse-cum-takeover by a megacorp go, you could do worse than pick Swift

Mother Earth’s Plantasia: the cult album you should play to your plants

It was made by an easy-listening songwriter and given away free with mattresses. Now thanks to YouTube’s algorithm, Mort Garson’s Plantasia has become an underground hit

‘Don’t get fired’: Beyoncé choose-your-own-adventure game takes over Twitter

A viral thread has found a new use for the platform: playing out a day as the star’s assistant, from breakfast to FaceTiming her kids

Robot rhythms: the startups using AI to shake up the music business

When you think of great songwriting teams, music and artificial intelligence aren’t an obvious mix, but a number of startups are bringing smart tech into the studio

Laurie Anderson: ‘It’s a great time to be creating new realities’

The avant-garde pioneer’s virtual-reality installation To the Moon is coming to Manchester international festival

Radiohead release hours of hacked MiniDiscs to benefit Extinction Rebellion

Thom Yorke describes hours of recordings from OK Computer sessions as ‘not v interesting’, while climate activists thank the band for ‘unprecedented support’

Farewell then, iTunes, and thanks for saving the music industry from itself

Apple’s announcement that it is to close the software is a reminder of its role in reconciling music and the internet

Apple expected to close iTunes after 18 years

Tim Cook will announce separate apps for music, TV and podcasts, according to reports

Muse review – dizzying rock spectacle for the machine age

Neon robots, isolation-suit acrobats, 23rd-century cops … the glam sci-fi fantasists throw the lot at their extravagantly dystopian stadium romp

‘It’s ghost slavery’: the troubling world of pop holograms

Dead stars from Whitney Houston to Maria Callas are going on tour again. As Miley Cyrus explores the issue in a new Black Mirror, we uncover the greatest identity crisis in music today

Oversharing: how Napster nearly killed the music industry

Twenty years ago, the idea of free music was so compelling that up to 80m users downloaded Napster and broke the law. The aftershocks are still being felt today