Good news bad news for music biz accountants: Recorded music revenues keep trending up and, if MUSIC BUSINESS WORLDWIDE has it right, the three major labels will bring in $14 billion between them in 2019. Streaming will account for well over half of that, and UNIVERSAL, SONY and WARNER are heading quickly toward a point where they'll together be earning $1 million an hour from subscription services. Printing virtual money, as it were. The bad news: It's Christmas shopping season and there are fewer and fewer places to buy recorded music as a Christmas gift. MUSIC WEEK's MARK SUTHERLAND reports that the closure of HMV's flagship store in London leaves Christmas shoppers on Oxford Street with no options for buying music as a stocking stuffer, "bar a few vinyl albums on sale in URBAN OUTFITTERS." And JONATHAN LAMY, former EVP and spokesperson for the RIAA, chimes in to suggest that the very concept of buying music as a gift is "a dying art." Whither the fourth quarter? Will another quarter take its place? Or will another format—or another art—step in instead?... If you've got any pop critics on your Christmas list, may I suggest a LANA DEL REY, ANGEL OLSEN or FKA TWIGS album? The year-end lists are pouring in from all corners this week, and those names are showing up everywhere. Our ever-expanding MusicSET: "Best Music of 2019: The Year in Lists"... ROXETTE spent the late '80s and early '90s throwing the catchiest tropes from rock, new wave, dance-pop and power balladry into a Swedish blender lined with gated snare drums and whipping it all into immaculate, airtight pop songs with no visible seams and no parts that didn't sound like radio hooks. A bubblegum band for all time, in other words, except for the matter of the voice of MARIE FREDRIKSSON, which in its best moments broke through the hermetic seal of those productions to turn bandmate PER GESSLE's songs into raw human expressions of joy and heartache. The duo left behind four US #1 singles, reams of scathing reviews and one of the blueprints that successors in Sweden, the US and elsewhere used in building the next 30 years of pop. SPOTIFY would've loved them if Spotify were here back then. Fredriksson died Monday after a 17-year battle with cancer, during which there were solo albums, tours, a reunion with Gessle and a growing understanding that the two of them (along with producer CLARENCE ÖFWERMAN) had been on to something all along, and they were extremely good at it. RIP... Kudos to ASCAP for the launch of TUNEUP, a physical and mental wellness program that will provide recovery services, support groups and wellness discounts for its members. Creators need this, and every little bit helps... Love her, love the song, but I'm not sure her team knows what the word "prolific" means.