If you've ever wondered why you can't find most of AALIYAH's music on SPOTIFY, ITUNES or anywhere else (except, thank the user-generated internet gods, YOUTUBE) here's the depressing, lawsuit-riddled story of the reclusive 70-year-old who appears to be responsible. BARRY HANKERSON was Aaliyah's uncle, manager and founder of BLACKGROUND RECORDS, which he appears to have left in ruins. Most of the rest of the Blackground catalog is missing from the digital domain, too—TIMBALAND & MAGOO, anybody?—but writer STEPHEN WITT makes the case that the absence of Aaliyah is especially criminal, putting "her entire musical legacy at risk of fading from memory." While that's almost certainly overstating the case—she was one of the most beloved artists of the '90s, and her influence remains quite visible—her absence makes your streaming subscription a little less valuable than it should be. It also serves as a harsh reminder that the universal library of streaming music, the celestial jukebox if you will, continues to have glaring holes. And the more streaming becomes the norm, the more in danger we are of marginalizing the music, both old and new, that isn't there for myriad reasons that are often beyond the artists' control. Which is to say, Witt may not be overstating the case quite as much as I wish he were... But also worth keeping in mind: This was true before streaming, too. Songs, albums and even artists have gone missing with alarming regularity since the beginning of recorded time... APHEX TWIN played his first US show in eight years Saturday night at the DAY FOR NIGHT festival in HOUSTON... CEELO GREEN fooled countless entertainment news sites over the weekend into believing he had seriously hurt himself with an exploding SAMSUNG GALAXY NOTE 7, because what could possibly be funnier than taking advantage of a recent corporate disaster to spread some fake news about your own near death in the waning days of 2016? It turned out to have been a viral stunt for some project of his that I have no particular interest in naming or ever mentioning again. Dear everybody else: Your fake news enables everybody else's fake news. So please don't... If it feels like year-end best-of lists are showing up earlier and earlier every year, that's because they are. JOHN NORRIS investigates the continuing "backwards creep" of the online music besticle... What was the greatest five-year creative run in pop history? SLATE's JACK HAMILTON makes the case for one particular run of genius that began circa 1971 (in one of seven essays Slate published Sunday about the man behind that run, with more planned throughout the week) ... A TEXAS man was arrested FRIDAY for allegedly shooting his girlfriend's TV with a .COLT 45 during a heated argument over a country music video. The real crime here is that police claim they don't know what video it was... RIP BOB COBURN.