There's a great anecdote in this WAX POETICS oral history of A TRIBE CALLED QUEST's 1990 debut, PEOPLE'S INSTINCTIVE TRAVELS AND THE PATHS OF RHYTHM, in which ALI SHAHEED MUHAMMAD describes crate-digging in New York's Greenwich Village with his bandmate Q-TIP and AFRIKA BABY BAM of the JUNGLE BROTHERS. "We’d go back and listen to the good finds and several bad ones and try to remember the players on the good ones and different producers who might have been linked to one artist or another," Muhammad recalls. "One record we’d find and say, 'Wow. That’s dope!' A player played a certain style on a record and then we’d go find another artist they worked with." A scene from the golden age of liner notes. Instinctive travels through real-world hyperlinks, in which you couldn't click on the name of a producer or bassist but you could look through some books and magazines, or ask around, or go back to the record store and find your way to other records with the same names on them. And then follow your personal paths of rhythm to other work by other people on those records. And so on, until you had the beginnings of a really good sample library, or maybe just a really good record collection. And earfuls of knowledge. I happened across that anecdote the same day SPOTIFY announced it's new songwriter pages—a space on the SPOTIFY FOR ARTISTS website, clickable to and from the Spotify app, in which the service is inviting songwriters like JUSTIN TRANTER and TEDDY GEIGER to showcase their complete works. In an ecosystem in which songwriters are paid poorly compared to their performing artist peers and in which credits and other liner-note information are still a long way from being usefully integrated, it's a welcome idea, with potential benefits to songwriters and users alike. For now, the feature, still in beta, comprises only a handful of pages for a handful of writers, and the presentation is awkward at best. The pages aren't actually in the Spotify app, and they aren't searchable. To find them, via either the desktop or mobile app, you have to navigate to individual song credits, which Spotify does a pretty good job of hiding, and click on a songwriter's name, which will take you out of the app and onto the Spotify for Artists site, where you can click on a songwriter's self-curated playlist or individual songs, which will immediately take you back to the app. If you were building a service from scratch, I'm pretty sure this isn't how you'd do it. And yet. On the other hand, this is, as far as I know, the first time a major streaming service has made its credits linkable, and the first genuinely new, non-algorithmic route for navigating the streaming world's endless forest of tracks that any such service has introduced in quite some time. There's still a chance to get it right for the benefit of the next Q-Tip... A couple days ago, LAURA SNAPES, the GUARDIAN's deputy music editor, got into a friendly TWITTER back-and-forth with the 1975's MATTY HEALY about gender representation at music festivals. The discussion was triggered by the READING & LEEDS FESTIVAL's lineup announcement (headliners: RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE, STORMZY, LIAM GALLAGHER; also featuring: lots of other men). Snapes took Rage, in particular, to task for presumably not demanding gender equality on the bill, and then challenged Healy to "add a condition to your rider that says you’ll only play festivals that commit to X% (ideally 50%!) acts that include women and non binary performers." With little hesitation, Healy said yes. "Take this as me signing a contract," he tweeted. And shortly after that: "I’m sure my agents are having kittens right now but times up man." Amazing. That's exactly how you do it. Men of rock, men of hip-hop, men of country, men of everything else: It's time to make sure your agents are having kittens, too. Tell them Matty sent you. Not me. That other Matty. I'm pretty sure his name will carry more weight... There's a GOFUNDME to help Malian musician BALLAKÉ SISSOKO replace the kora that he says TSA agents destroyed (the agency denies it messed with the valuable instrument)... And here's a story of a classical player's rare grand piano destroyed under very different circumstances. No foul play, but no less tragic... That time a Washington state trooper pulled over a recording studio for speeding... Rage Against the Machine may not care about gender equality at festivals, but the reunited band does care about ticket scalpers and counterfeiters... RIP VICTOR OLAIYA, PAUL ENGLISH and JAMES CARMICHAEL.