For many years, it was easy to distinguish between classical and pop LPs with a quick glance at the cover -- the style of the cover design was a clear symbolic indicator of the genre of the music. In the early 1970s, though, an innovative artist at a minor record label started to undermine the distinction between classical and popular cover art, initiating a change that has forever broadened the visual vocabulary of classical album covers.

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Eminem's upcoming Relapse is expected to top the charts this week, with some outlets predicting sales of more than 650,000 copies. If achieved, the feat will give Eminem the biggest opening-week stats since AC/DC's Black Ice, which sold 784,000 copies in October 2008. [RollingStone.com]

One week after soliciting donations from subscribers, the financially strained Paste Magazine has raised $166,000, more than half of the publication's debt. Paste "is not out of the woods," according to editor-in-chief Josh Jackson, but may continue publishing if the donations keep rolling in. [USAToday.com]

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With nine years covered in our AllMusic Loves series, hitting the current decade was only a matter of time. We start here with the first year, naturally, and we'll knock out the rest and reach the end before the next decade begins. Prince rang in the year 2000 with "1999," vowing he would never play it again (cough); Smashing Pumpkins closed it out by bidding farewell (cough, hack, wheeze). In between, pivotal albums were released by established artists like Radiohead and OutKast. Britney Spears and Eminem proved not to be flashes in the pan by producing commercially and creatively successful second albums. The underground provided some exceptional one-shots from Life Without Buildings and the Avalanches. At the year's end, you were no doubt celebrating the triumph of having Your Hard Drive named Spin magazine's Album of the Year, even if you did not own one filled with a thousand awesome and incorrectly-tagged MP3s encoded at 128 kbps.

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