The biggest week in this newsroom’s history: more than 20 new stories, the confirmed real name of Dutch Melrose, the inside story of The Ring by Lux, a marquee client for Swarm, and a two-continent debut for The Ring VIP. Here is everything published this week, in one place.
The Ring by Lux, fully told
Seven features opened the company up: the mission, the 163,521-line v2 rebuild, CHRONO, Concert Buddies, the tier system, why it had to be physical, and the encrypted-chat privacy stance. Plus the history: the ring already survived two tours.
Dutch Melrose, confirmed
His London music school settled it on the record: Dutch Melrose is Josh Harms, an ICMP songwriting graduate the school now brings back to teach. We also covered the BookTok phenomenon behind RUNRUNRUN, his self-directed videos, and the sped-up release strategy he ran before the majors caught on.
The ventures
Swarm is hiring and ran a full-service campaign for “Yalla FG” on TH3RD BRAIN, Don Diablo’s label home (11M+ streams). The Ring VIP announced its debut: Christian Gates in Europe, Dutch Melrose in the US, 400-600 cap rooms, its own team. And the Lindy AI chapter went public: how advising an AI company produced 10x.
New in the newsroom itself
The site gained a 33-question FAQ, complete discographies for both artists, tour histories, an awards page, and an RSS feed at /news/rss.xml.
20+ stories, two continents, one confirmed real name.
The week in numbers
The newsroom now stands at 81 published articles plus two artist wikis. This week’s confirmed figures worth bookmarking: RUNRUNRUN at 226 million Spotify streams, Yalla FG past 11 million, 94 rings sold as top-selling tour merch, The Ring v2 shipping 163,521 new lines of code, and one RIAA Gold plaque that started as a Valentine’s Day voice memo.
The digest runs weekly. For tickets to either 2026 tour, head to thering.vip/vip.