Ray Dorset says band lost £23m in royalties but suggests fingerprinting software could help musicians

Mungo Jerry’s No 1 hit In the Summertime is one of the biggest-selling singles in history but it is also one of the most pirated songs of all time.

Now the band’s composer, lead singer and frontman Ray Dorset is using newly developed technology to protect his songs in the digital age.

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Cobb family, who set up syndicate in 1994, celebrate ‘incredible moment’ that they say has come at the right time

The year was 1994, East 17’s Stay Another Day was riding high in the Christmas Charts and the Power Rangers toys were so popular there was a national shortage.

While some might look back at the era of boybands in baggy hats with a slight wince, one lucky lottery syndicate will forever cherish the year they set up their weekly tilt at the jackpot, to finally see it pay off 30 years later.

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Conductor, artistic director and founder steps down from MCO over ‘deeply regrettable incident’ last year

The conductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner has announced he will step down as leader and artistic director of the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestras after an allegation he hit a singer.

The conductor withdrew from engagements including a BBC Prom after the incident last August and said he was seeking specialist help.

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Cher: The Memoir, Part One will be released in November, with a second installment due in spring 2025

Cher’s two-part memoir finally has a release date. Cher: The Memoir, Part One will be released on 19 November by Dey Street Books, an imprint of the William Morrow Group at HarperCollins Publishers.

Part Two will follow in spring of 2025, the publisher announced on Wednesday.

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He may not have had the star quality of those he inspired, from Eric Clapton to the Rolling Stones, but the late musician’s skill and passion were transformational
• News: John Mayall, pioneering figure of British blues, dies aged 90

Eric Clapton fled the Yardbirds in the spring of 1965, dismayed by the prospect of their latest single, For Your Love, bringing commercial success and thereby compromising his musical integrity. The 20-year-old guitarist found comfort in the arms of John Mayall, who welcomed him into his band, the Bluesbreakers. Within weeks their relatively purist approach to the blues, while not producing hit singles, had put them among the hottest attractions on the UK’s club circuit.

In Mayall, the young blues-hungry audiences knew they were in the presence of a slightly older figure whose knowledge and understanding of the idiom gave him an immense authority. In Clapton they had an idol who was one of their own.

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A new Netflix docuseries spotlights Lou Pearlman, the man behind the Backstreet Boys and ‘NSync – and a criminal mastermind

With hundreds of millions of records sold, careers that are still thriving in their fourth decade, and admiration from the likes of Taylor Swift, the boy bands the Backstreet Boys and ‘NSync are absolute pop royalty. They were also the creations of one of America’s biggest criminals. It’s this bizarre duality that Netflix’s new docuseries Dirty Pop: The Boy Band Scam explores with energy and style.

This is the strange, extremely American story of Lou Pearlman, who got the start-up money for his boy band empire by crashing his own blimps, and who eventually built a fortune by masterminding what is widely believed to be the longest-running Ponzi scheme in US history. Dirty Pop masterfully captures the many facets of a man who seemed genuinely delighted to be a part of the bands he lovingly put together, even while acting as the casting director of his own reality, putting the con on everyone from his secretary to powerful politicians and bankers.

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Bandleader, composer, instrumentalist and singer who nurtured players such as Eric Clapton and put British blues on the map

The years of the mid-1960s, John Mayall said, “were a special period in British music history” – the foundation of all today’s rock.

“Our source was all the American black music that Americans weren’t listening to,” he said. “People mention Eric Clapton , Cream, Fleetwood Mac , the Animals, the Rolling Stones : all these people came out of a small time period – four years. We were all so dedicated to where this music came from and the injustice of the fact that the blues was not appreciated in America. We were damned if we were going to let it go on being unnoticed.”

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A Complete Unknown, from Walk the Line director James Mangold, will show the musician’s rise to worldwide fame in early 60s New York City

The first trailer for A Complete Unknown shows Oscar nominee Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan in the much-anticipated biopic.

The Dune and Call Me by Your Name star has transformed into the legendary musician for an awards-aiming drama to be released in the US in December. It comes from film-maker James Mangold, who previously directed the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line.

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The Top 40 used to bring the UK together. But since the streaming revolution, what we listen to has become increasingly hard to tally

A rosy, nostalgic haze may hang over your memories of the Top 40 chart: having an emotional investment when your favourite act broke into the Top 10, or was caught up in a battle with their nemesis (like Blur v Oasis in 1995); listening to the countdown with eager fingers hovering over the “record” button on your cassette player; moaning to friends that Wet Wet Wet were still No 1; sitting on the sofa, like millions of others in the UK, glued to the sturm und drang of Top of the Pops every Thursday evening.

But the chances are you no longer know, or care, who is No 1. If you guessed “probably Ed Sheeran”, you’d be right a fair amount of the time – cumulatively his songs have spent over a year at No 1. Perhaps your ears only prick up when music from your past gets to the top spot, like Kate Bush in 2022 with Running Up That Hill or Wham! with Last Christmas, umm, last Christmas. Meanwhile, the album chart is constantly clogged by hits collections by the likes of Abba, Queen, Eminem and Elton John (Abba Gold has spent 1,159 weeks on the chart and counting). For younger music fans, too, it is harder for the charts to mean anything to them when Spotify, YouTube and TikTok are more powerful than radio, TV and the music press ever were.

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