Mystery solved thanks to to Tom, the Vacuous Tweeter: the cavatina of Malcolm Arnold's Little Suite No. 2 for brass band.

Nice to see proper questions put to Mohammed Bin Salman's employee.

According to L'Equipe, BlueCo-owned RC Strasbourg is about to purchase BlueCo-owned Chelsea's Deivid Washington for...21m euros? Washington, 19, made three brief appearances, two in the PL, one in the FA Cup, as a second-half subsitute for Chelsea in 2023-24. Still, 21m euros.

The steamroller rolls on.

Today's pod out shortly tomorrow - got time for plenty of questions on new Champions League draw, England squad, and anything else. with Barry Glendenning Philippe Auclair Nooruddean Any questions?

Your PERFECT commute company. You wouldn't think it, but this is a deeply calm and reassuring conversation about a profoundly unsettling subject. Entirely down to the splendid Annette Dittert  - the perfect no-nonsense guide through the maze of German politics.

If Ticketmaster and LiveNation are now quasi-monopolies in their fields, it is not because they are better at delivering a good service for their customers, be they concert-goers or performers. The opposite is true.

What they have is power, and privileged relationships with record companies, large venues, booking agencies and 'publishers', built on a common desire to extract as much money as possible from their customer base.

It is an impossible conundrum for performers. As soon as you hit a certain level of popularity and move to bigger venues, there's no way round it. You *have to* work with these companies, however much you may detest them or their methods.

These guys are no Bill Grahams. To them, music and musicians are exploitable assets. Concert-goers are milch cows. But how to get rid of those parasites? Anti-trust laws? Boycotts? I wish I knew.

It also shows how out of touch most of our legislation, everywhere, is with technological change and how corporations such as these are using it to wring the last drop of cash out of their targets. We're still applying 1930s frameworks to try and control digital age monsters.

It always was more expensive to go and listen to *big* acts in big venues; but the differential between going to Kilburn & The High Roads at your local (lucky you) and catching up with the top pop band of the time was actually minimal. x2, maybe 3, max? It's now times 10 or 20.

(Except for classical music, that 'elitist' genre, so we';re told, where you can listen to the world's greatest orchestras and soloists in comfort for a third of what it costs to listen to Adele in Hyde Park, a mile away from the stage).

Why is it considered 'normal' that a band which is basically a tribute act to their past should charge the equivalent of a day's pay for people on the minimum wage to listen to their sonic soup a mile away from the stage? Jesus wept.

Just two months ago, a couple of thousand of us had the privilege to listen to the immense Arthur Verocai performing his music with a 30-piece orchestra at the Barbican. Sold out as soon as tickets were put on sale. £40 for a seat in the stalls. Heaven. It needn't be that way.

ROCK'N'ROLL

Geniuses are obviously at work in the Chelsea FC's sales department. Nearly £20m for attacker Angelo Gabriel (minutes played for CFC: 0; goals scored on loan at RC Strasbourg: 0), that's really, really neat. bbc.com/sport/football…

Today's Guardian sport Football Weekly. Covering the new Champions League format, Angel Gomes, dodgy dealings and 'dynamic pricing' theguardian.com/football/audio…

Words like "community", "non-discrimination", "creativity", "personal choice" would normally point at enlightened (if a bit cringy for some) attitudes towards the pursuit of the greater good. They're now indicators of the nastiest, most exploitative capitalism imaginable.

Here’s the latest Guardian sport football weekly! With Barry Glendenning Philippe Auclair and Nooruddean theguardian.com/football/audio…