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Silent discos may seem like a fad, or a short lived phenomenon, but lately they’ve been growing in popularity. In short, a silent disco is essentially a dance party that you can only hear if you have the right headphones on. They’ve become popular events at music festivals, clubs, and even weddings.

TO JUDGE by the crowds making their way to Glastonbury Festival on June 24th, it is a good time to be in the music industry. This week nearly 200,000 revellers set up camp across several fields in Somerset, where the festival has been held nearly every year since it first started as a small, hippyish event in 1970. Now hundreds of live bands and DJs will perform on 90 stages over five days. Each punter pays £225 ($353) for the experience, which, thanks to the damp British weather, tends to be a muddy one. Glastonbury is perhaps the most striking...

One lesson of this year's Lollapalooza, held this past weekend at Grant Park here, is a confirmation rather than something new: ­Recorded music drives fans to live shows. Thus, it can seem like the recording industry exists to support the concert business. "The music business is upside down," said alt-country singer-songwriter Robert Earl Keen. "You don't tour to support your record. You put out a record to support a tour." "Do you see people going ­record shopping? No," said Perry Farrell of Jane's ­Addiction. "Downloading free music. Yes. Going out for live music. Yes. I love recorded music, but the...

The Creative Loafing team survived the brutal drive to and from Austin for this year’s South By Southwest festival, kept alive only by gallons of gas station coffee and truck stop tacos. While we chased down every free meal and drink ticket we could find, we also managed to see a tiny fraction of the 1,900 bands that played this year. Sure, everyone is talking about it today, but we didn’t see Kanye or Metallica. We’re OK with that. Check out a rundown of our favorite moments from the festival after the jump.Best Atlanta Band: We struggled with this one...

'The music industry isn't completely broken," ... Busdriver told me, "but it's on its way. I see some freedom in that." "I've had some experience with major labels," said Emily Wells, who plays viola to hip-hop rhythms and orchestral sounds. "They want to know what you're doing all the time. They're nosy. Now I'm entirely self-motivated. I have creative control." ...artists are discovering is that, by managing their own affairs, they can control costs and make the music they want. ..."The reality of pop in our culture has changed," said Mark Mothersbaugh, a 35-year veteran of the music business best...

As much as reporters sought to apply a theme to this year's South by Southwest, the musicians and industry reps in Austin, Texas, for the four-day music extravaganza just weren't making it easy... "During hard times, I didn't have much education or stuff like that to rely on," said the New York Dolls' Sylvain Sylvain, reminding attendees at one of SXSW's numerous panels that artists are comfortable with recession-time living even in flush decades. "I wanted to take a job where I could still do my performances, or if I got drunk the night before, I wouldn't get fired." There's...

Shirtless and sweaty on Friday night, singing garage-rock in Portuguese and English on the back patio of an East Austin bar, Guilherme Saldanha from the São Paulo band Garotas Suecas paused before the last song of a half-hour set and announced, “We’re playing, like, in, one hour so we’d better be going.” It was one of about a dozen sets that Garotas Suecas... would perform during four days of the 23rd annual South by Southwest music festival here. From Wednesday through Saturday, more than 1,900 acts played official showcases while plenty of others sang from parking lots, rooftops, street corners...

Thunderstorms and torrential rain were today threatening to turn this year’s Glastonbury Festival into a wash-out. Thousands of music fans arriving at the Worthy Farm site in Somerset last night were greeted with heavy downpours and even lightning as the glorious sunshine came to an abrupt end. Weather forecasters have warned an expected crowd of around 150,000 to prepare for a mud bath – as rain threatens to waterlog the site and turn camp sites into bogs. Festival organiser Michael Eavis said he was keeping his fingers crossed that there would be no repeat of the infamous mudfest of 1997....