Florence and the Machine’s Spectrum was the most-streamed song in the UK this week. But, what does this mean?

“It means streaming music is the fastest-growing sector of the industry, overtaking downloads, which are due to see an increase of 8.5% this year.” Strategy Analytics forecast that spending on digital music – including downloads, streaming music and mobile sales – would overtake that of physical products like CDs in 2015, both in the UK and worldwide. (BBC)

Singer/songwriter Elle Varner who Kings profiled a year ago will land on next week’s Billboard 200 albums chart. “Her debut album “Perfectly Imperfect” should start in the top 10 of the tally as industry sources are projecting it may sell 25,000 to 30,000. That number is about twice as much as some forecasters had initially thought the 23-year old’s set was going to sell.” (Bilboard)

The music business is welcoming Google’s new initiative that updates search algorithms.

Posted on Google:

“Sites with high numbers of removal notices may appear lower in our results. This ranking change should help users find legitimate, quality sources of content more easily—whether it’s a song previewed on NPR’s music website, a TV show on Hulu or new music streamed from Spotify.

Since we re-booted our copyright removals over two years ago, we’ve been given much more data by copyright owners about infringing content online. In fact, we’re now receiving and processing more copyright removal notices every day than we did in all of 2009—more than 4.3 million URLs in the last 30 days alone. We will now be using this data as a signal in our search rankings.”

Talking about different, Beck’s new album is sheet music. “Singer/songwriter Beck is coming out with a new album in December, but it isn’t being released in MP3, CD or vinyl form. Instead, it will be a book of sheet music in which the buyer can play his or her own version of the 20 new songs. Called Beck Hansen’s Song Reader, an announcement on his website describes it as “an experiment in what an album can be at the end of 2012,” and says that, “Bringing them to life depends on you.”

On August 3, 1987, Def Leppard put out an album that took three years, three producers and an estimated $5 million to complete. Oh, and their drummer lost his arm. Behold, the miraculous story of “Hysteria.” (Billboard)

Billboard gives a breakdown of each track as Def Leppard, ‘Hysteria’ turns 25, when rock ruled the world. Even though pop is on the top of charts today, still, very few records deliver single after single. But Hysteria did, and the band grew in popularity after each single released. Read more here.