Confirmation of the apparent death of TALK TALK frontman MARK HOLLIS was hard to come by on Monday, and one assumes that's exactly how Hollis would have wanted it. There were tweets from video director TIM POPE and a cousin-in-law, an INSTAGRAM from Talk Talk bassist PAUL WEBB, who noted he hadn't seen Hollis "in many years," a bunch of sites noting there had been "reports," and a bunch of sites saying nothing at all. This for the singer, multi-instrumentalist and chief instigator of an accomplished, well-liked and damn good synth-pop band that changed course midway through its brief career toward the experimental, impressionist sides of edges of...rock? post-rock? ambient? jazz? prefer not to say?...and signed off with a pair of nearly unclassifiable masterpieces that made the band a little less popular and a lot more beloved, if that's possible, which Talk Talk proved it is. After SPIRIT OF EDEN (1988) and LAUGHING STOCK (1991), which would influence generations of experimentally inclined rock bands, the band quietly dissolved and scattered. Over the ensuing quarter-century, Hollis released one solo album, more or less retired from public life (for the sake of his family, he said) and occasionally resurfaced to contribute to other people's projects, including U.N.K.L.E.'s 1998 album PSYENCE FICTION, for which he asked not to be credited, and the American TV series BOSS, which used an unreleased Hollis composition as score music during its second season in 2012. From rewriting pop grammar to underscoring KELSEY GRAMMER in only two decades, if you will. Hollis, who told Q MAGAZINE during the Talk Talk days that "you should never listen to music as background music. Ever," left behind acolytes everywhere, a family shielded from the public eye, and, it seems, no one for the media to contact to confirm his apparent death at age 64. RIP... SPOTIFY may or may not launch in the mega-market of India as early as today, pending—or possibly not pending—the result of a hostile negotiation with WARNER MUSIC GROUP, with which it does not yet have a deal. The agreement Spotify most wants and needs is with WMG's WARNER/CHAPPELL publishing arm, whose catalog, as MUSIC BUSINESS WORLDWIDE points out, is spread across all three major labels. Warner wants more money. Spotify, which has locked down all the other major deals it needs, wants to launch and launch soon, and has filed for a statutory license, something more commonly used by broadcasters, not streamers. The company says WMG is reneging on a "previously agreed upon publishing license... leaving us no choice but to file for a statutory license." Another legitimate choice, of course, would be to not launch. To that end, Warner/Chappell is seeking a legal injunction against the launch. MUSIC BUSINESS WORLDWIDE's TIM INGHAM tries to make sense of an intramural music quarrel between two companies which, he suggests, badly need each other and know it... ELTON JOHN performs with his own personal RAMI MALEK, TARON EGERTON, at Elton's OSCARS party... ARIANA GRANDE wants you to bring see-through bags to her shows... R. KELLY makes bail... RIP Ibiza hotelier TONY PIKE and ROSS LOWELL, who invented gaffer tape... RIP also the SIDEWALK CAFÉ, a long-running New York joint whose divey back room served as ground zero for the Anti-Folk movement, and, on a personal note, was a longtime home away from home for my own band, the TROUBLE DOLLS. Thank you Sidewalk and thank you LACH.