John Lennon Songwriting Contest Presents: SUMMER SONGSIf you’re like us, you’re dripping sweat and bargaining, if not fighting, over who gets to sit closest to the air conditioning. Temperatures are HIGH. And that means it’s time for a SUMMER SONGS contest.

Summer songs connect us to some of the most memorable times of our lives.Hot, steamy, lazy, funny, or revolutionary.Pool parties, ocean breezes, BBQs, sweltering streets and ice cream treats. Summer is a vibe.

SUMMER SONGS is a weekly contest. 1 winner is selected each week. Entry deadlines are each SUNDAY at 11:59pm PDT. Winners will be announced on Monday.

Follow @lennonbus on Instagram and @theJLSC on Facebook for the hottest news.

You could win from the following Summer Songs prizes:

Epiphone Casino guitar

Apogee BOOM audio interface

SSL Native Essentials plugins

Audio-Technica wireless headphones

Reason+

Sonicbids Gig-Seeker Pro

Neutrik *Special Edition* John Lennon Educational Tour Bus instrument cable

All Summer Songs entries will also compete in Session II of the 2023 contest. 1 Song = 2 ways to win.

Linux Studio Plugins Project LSP Multiband Limiter This plugin introduces a multiband limiter with flexible configuration. In most cases it acts as a brick-wall limiter but there are several settings for which is acts as an compressor with... Read More

Linux Studio Plugins Project LSP GOTT Compressor This plugins introduces Grand Over-The-Top (GOTT) Compressor which combines both upward and downward compression and allows to smear the dynamics of the music - all what is often required... Read More

What’s new in Arturia’s FX Collection 4?
From cutting-edge distortion tools to a lush reverb unit, here are the four newest plugins added to Arturia's FX Collection 4.

Bad Bunny and Shakira collaborators Albert Hype and Jota Rosas sign to Neon16 Publishing; Gaby Morales extends dealNEON16 was founded by music exec Lex Borrero in 2019 alongside hit producer Tainy
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Nearly 120 historic hip-hop artefacts – including a ring designed by Tupac – go on sale in Sotheby’s auctionAre you a die-hard hip-hop head? A keen collector of musical memorabilia? You may be interested in an auction currently underway containing artefacts associated with the early days of hip-hop.

READ MORE: New documentary MIXTAPE explores impact of mixtapes on hip-hop culture

The collection comprises 119 items, from art to letters to flyers for events to hardware used to create some of the biggest hip-hop anthems to jewellery and more, all available in Sotheby’s auction
Notable lots include a ring designed by Tupac, one of the first-ever KAWS figurines, a pair of rare Nike Dunks, the SP-1200 sampler RZA used on Enter The Wu-Tang, and RZA’S original three-page handwritten liner notes for the Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) album sleeve.
The most expensive item on the list, however, is Lot 75 – a gold, ruby, and diamond ring designed as a crown, set with round diamonds and cabochon rubies. It was designed by none other than Tupac Shakur, one of the biggest names – if not, the biggest name – in hip-hop. The starting bid is set at $180,000, with the estimated final bid to be within the region of $200-300k. No one has kicked off the bidding process yet.

Talking of Tupac, there are loads of other fascinating items associated with the iconic New York rapper up for grabs. There are several handwritten and signed letters written during Shakur’s high school years to a love interest in 1988.
In terms of music tech, the headliner is, of course, the incredible SP-1200 sampler actually used by RZA, which is predicted to rake in a whopping $35,000. It’s a thing of beauty.
One lucky buyer will be able to get their hands on nine cassettes worth of early Wu Tang Clan demos, and there’s even a plaster and crushed glass sculpture of an original eroded cassette of Nas’ Lost Tapes 2 album. There’s also a curated collection of 394 sealed cassette tapes reflecting two decades of hip-hop.
If you’re interested in purchasing one of these 119 special items, or even if you’re just intrigued – it’s well worth a look – head to sothebys.com.
The post Nearly 120 historic hip-hop artefacts – including a ring designed by Tupac – go on sale in Sotheby’s auction appeared first on MusicTech.

Bandsintown passes 80M registered live music fans, 589K artistsTop global live music discovery platform Bandsintown announced today that it has passed 80 million registered users, an increase of 10 million in the last year. The rise reflects the. Continue reading
The post Bandsintown passes 80M registered live music fans, 589K artists appeared first on Hypebot.

Netflix just added 6m subscribers. Should Spotify copy its password crackdown?Netflix subs growth beat analysts’ expectations
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TouchOSC is expanding to AndroidTouchOSC has just received a complete next-generation update, making it compatible with more devices, including Android.
The touch controller had previously only been compatible with iOS, having acted as the first serious solution for making control surfaces when Apple brought apps to its original iPhone.
Now, its new update enables it to function with more operating systems, including Windows touch devices, Linux and even Raspberry Pi and Wacom tablets.
On top of OSC over UDP & TCP, TouchOSC now supports every type of wired and wireless MIDI connection a device can offer, including MIDI over USB on iOS and Android.
It uses a GPU-powered integrated editor on all platforms, according to the website, to help users “create the most complex of control layouts with ease and precision.”
Meanwhile, other key updates include a new Time & Battery example layout, scripting improvements, including how to handle timeouts on long-running scripts and various other minor bug fixes and improvements.
In addition, several other issues have been fixed, including with new documents not respecting “assign new name on copy/paste” preference option, the local message log not respecting “control name as path” preference option, and the fixed script ‘init’ not always being called for example layouts.
The native implementations of Zeroconf – the often archaic underpinnings of how network connections work – have also reportedly been massively refactored.
The post TouchOSC is expanding to Android appeared first on MusicTech.

Sonible’s smart:gate is a content-aware gate plugin that uses AI to detect specific instrumentsPlugin developer Sonible has launched smart:gate, an intelligent content-aware gate effect powered by AI technology.

READ MORE: Roland launches AI-powered royalty-free sound library for Bridge Cast livestreamers

It gates audio triggered by specific target sources rather than purely by input level using intelligent target source detection. This means you can pick out a kick drum or a snare from a drum loop – identified by AI – for example, and process elements separately without having to spend time chopping up your sample.

The gate works effectively even if a target source varies in level, or if a competing instrument is louder than the signal you want to keep. So, if you’re wanting to pluck out the snare drums from a sample but some are quiet while others are loud, smart:gate still picks these out.
Unlike most level-dependent gates, smart:gate helps with parameterization in music production. Simply select the source from a drop-down menu, say “kick”, “vocals” or “hi-hat”, and the plugin actively singles out that sound source.
You can then adjust the parameters of the gate, with pretty standard controls available, as you’d expect, such as Threshold, Attack/Release, Hold and Tolerance. You can also control the Level Bias, which allows for accurate adjusting of the gating behaviour. Here, you can tell the gate to follow the detected signal closely or loosely, which helps refine transients or keep vocals natural or not.
Sonible smart:gate
There’s Impact Control, so you can adjust the gain reduction when the gate is closed, a Ducking mode, and you can fine-tune the gating even further with a three-band suppression control, so you can set the levels of the lows, mids and highs.
Sonible’s smart:gate also lets you sidechain audio in reaction to external sound sources with an external sidechain input function, which will detect audio in mono/mid or side signals.
On the plugin, Peter Sciri, Sonible’s co-founder and CTO, has said: “Conventional gates have been eyed sceptically in the past – I sure did so. We figured, that the solution to eliminating the uncertainty that comes with gates was to shift the processing’s focus onto the target signal instead of the overall signal. It’s a new approach that might need a little time to wrap one’s head around, but the results speak for themselves.”
smart:gate is available for an introductory price of €89. You can also download a free trial of the plugin, if you want to test it out. Find out more information at sonible.com.
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How to market your music like Taylor SwiftWith her worldwide success, Taylor’s team must be doing something right. Here are seven different T-Swift brand strategies to use to market your music. by Janelle Borg from Amplify You Taylor. Continue reading
The post How to market your music like Taylor Swift appeared first on Hypebot.

How to grow your YouTube channel with YouTube Shorts and ClipsShort-form video content is the key to social media success these days. So here’s how to use Youtube’s features to grow your music career. by Randi Zimmerman of Symphonic Blog. Continue reading
The post How to grow your YouTube channel with YouTube Shorts and Clips appeared first on Hypebot.

Making sense of global music forecastsMIDiA has been building global music forecasts for nearly a decade now, and I personally have been building them for nearly two decades. Throughout those years there have been many calls for the numbers to be bigger and bolder. Experience, though, has shown that realism most often trumps optimism. 

The simple truth is that there are no facts about the future. Instead, forecasts are, at least in MIDiA’s worldview, a structured, numerical representation of analyst thinking. We do not aspire to be cheerleaders for any market, however much we may believe in it. Instead, we strive to be trusted partners, aspiring to provide a view of where things are most likely heading. 

With those health warnings out of the way, I am proud to announce the ninth edition of MIDiA’s global recorded music forecasts (If you are a MIDiA client, you can find the report and the 38 sheet Excel data set here).

How we did

To start, I think it is worth a quick look back at how we have done over the years. In our first edition (2015), we forecasted global music revenues (in label trade terms) to reach $20.1 billion by 2020. The actual figure proved to $22.5 billion. So that translates into a 10% variance for a five-year forecast, which isn’t too shabby. Over the course of the previous five years, our forecasts for 2022 had an average variance of -2.5%. Again, a decent track record. 

That’s the good news. 2022, though, was an anomalous year, and 2023 is shaping up to be similarly volatile. Shaped as it is, by a cost-of-living crisis, soaring interest rates, economic slowdown, a softening ad market, global food and energy shortages, and a war in Europe. When we built the 2022 edition, we knew these factors might disrupt the music industry’s trajectory, so we built both a base case and bear case forecast. Our base case proved to be too optimistic ($30.7 billion) while our bear case ($28.3 billion) proved to be depressingly precise (just 0.8% above the actual figure of $28.1 billion).

Why currency matters

That $28.1 billion represented just 3.2% growth on 2021 – the slowest growth since the global market return to growth in 2015. On the surface, this might look like serious cause for concern, evidence of the long anticipated streaming slowdown. But, while a streaming slowdown is indeed happening, it is only a minor contributor to the bigger picture. Not only is 3.2% respectable growth in the midst of economic and geo-political chaos, currency volatility has, to put it bluntly, played havoc with the global picture.

MIDiA always builds its market models with US dollar values and, crucially, in current currency terms. Simply put, that means the values we present for any historical year represent what the market was actually worth in that year. In a year of global currency volatility, this means that some markets that reported strong growth in local currency terms saw much weaker, sometimes even negative, growth in US dollar terms. It is an analytical inconvenience but, in our view, a necessary one to present a meaningful and accurate view of global value.

Other entities try to mask the inconvenience by restating their entire historical dataset based on the currency conversion rates for the most recent year, i.e., constant currency conversion. Hence, the IFPI reported 9.0% growth in 2022, yet if you compare their 2022 figure to their previously reported 2021 figure, you end up with just 0.9% growth (i.e., a growth rate that is ten times slower). MIDiA’s base case forecast would have looked a lot more optimistic if we had used constant currency conversion rates!

All of these complexities make the job of forecasting particularly challenging. Which is why we focused on more stable metrics, such as local currency values and subscribers, to help us estimate future growth. Subscription revenue grew by just 4% in 2022, but subscribers grew by 16%, illustrating strong, underlying market demand and momentum. However, as is so often the case with market sizing, the picture is more nuanced and complex. Emerging markets grew subscribers far faster in 2022 than North American and European markets, but because they have lower ARPU, the contribution to revenue growth was far smaller. 

A decoupling of global growth

What we are seeing is a regional decoupling of global growth, to the extent that the global picture can be misleading. For example, by 2030, there will be 1.1 billion subscribers, up from 663 million in 2022, but Asia Pacific, Latin America and Rest of World will account for four fifths of that growth. Crucially, most Western rightsholders have relatively low repertoire share in much of these regions, so they will not benefit from this next wave of subscriber growth in the same way they did in the first, largely Western, wave. 

Yet Europe and North America will account for more than half of the global subscriptions revenue growth, due to higher ARPU and average subscriber months (a result of slower growth). Which means that Western rightsholders will accrue most revenue upside, despite losing out on audience growth.

Growth that is both impressive and eminently achievable 

Despite all of today’s market headwinds, MIDiA’s underlying assumptions about long-term growth remain largely unchanged. While we are forecasting slower growth over the next two years, we expect the global market to return to full momentum between mid-2024 and early 2025. This will result in global revenues growing by 51.0% to reach $32.4 billion in trade terms by 2030, and a slightly faster growth in retail terms (due to growing DSP share) to reach $87.1 billion.

As much as we would have liked to report that the market will double in value by 2030, we consider 51.0% growth to be both an impressive performance and eminently achievable. We would have liked to have forecasted a doubling of growth back in 2015 as well, but if we had, we would not have ended up being within 10% of the actual market, half a decade down the line. 

The thing about forecasts is they are always updated, so it can be easy to forget anything other than how the latest edition racks up compared to the previous one. Which makes it depressingly easy to build overly-bullish forecasts that have the benefit of aiding ulterior business objectives. MIDiA, of course, has many of the exact same companies as paying clients as the other entities do, but our clients pay to subscribe because they rely on us to provide an objective and useful view of the market. To tell them what they need to hear, even if that is not always what they want to hear.

TikTok expands music streaming service beta test to Australia, Mexico and SingaporeTikTok has expanded the beta testing of its new streaming service, TikTok Music, to Australia, Mexico and Singapore.

READ MORE: Warner Music Group sign licensing deal with TikTok to boost social media revenue

The expansion comes just weeks after the initial launch of the streaming service in Brazil and Indonesia.
The streaming service allows users to listen to full versions of viral TikTok songs, and create collaborative playlists. There is also a Shazam-like feature where you can find songs just by playing a short snippet of audio.
In addition, the app offers social features such as TikTok notes, offering the ability to write comments on songs.
According to TikTok, the app is hoped to compete with fellow streaming services, such as Apple Music and Spotify, and also offer exclusive features.
“TikTok Music is a new kind of music service that combines the power of music discovery on TikTok with a music streaming service offering millions of tracks from thousands of artists,” explains a spokesperson for TikTok in an email to TechCrunch.
“We are now beta testing TikTok Music in Australia, Mexico and Singapore, and will have more news to share on the launch of TikTok Music in the coming months.”
There is no news about whether TikTok will expand to the US and UK, but it might depend on the success of this beta launch.
In more TikTok news, the company has just signed a licensing deal with Warner Music Group.
The new deal licenses a collection of Warner Recorded Music and Warner Chappell Music to TikTok, as well as TikTok Music, video editor CapCut, and TikTok’s Commercial Music Library.
Under the new agreement, Warner Music’s artists and songwriters will also have access to TikTok’s brand partners such as Canva, Samsung, ASOS and hundreds more.
There will also be access to monetisation features like merchandise, ticketing, and digital goods.
The post TikTok expands music streaming service beta test to Australia, Mexico and Singapore appeared first on MusicTech.

EPROM on using Max4Live to control onstage robotics and creating melodies with granular synthesisEPROM thrives off the uncertainty of new technology. In his decade as an electronic music producer and touring artist, he’s taken each new innovation as an opportunity for experimentation.
READ MORE: Amon Tobin: “sampling captures the energy of a recording like a photograph”
“I’m always looking for new techniques because there’s a moment where you’re uncovering how [the technology] works. Figuring out how everything works is the moment when you’re being the most experimental; I love producing music in that state because you’re not necessarily thinking about the finished product. You’re thinking about the process more, and that’s what’s interesting for me,” says EPROM, real name Sander Dennis, speaking to MusicTech from his home studio.
Much of this experimentation happens in the realm of music (his artist name, EPROM, is the name for a chip Oberheim used in its early synthesizers, after all), crafting intricate and formidable productions on respected labels such as Dirtybird, Deadbeats, and 1985 Music as well as collaborations with fellow bass titans like G Jones and Alix Perez, with the latter of which he has a joint project: Shades.
Eprom. Image: Daniel Zetterstrom
But his compulsion to experiment extends to technological pursuits both within and outside of music.
Graphics, 3D software, HTML, and more are all in his purview, and now he’s demonstrated prowess in robotics, which he applies in his new live show concept, Syntheism Robotics.
The name of the show is an allusion to his latest album, Syntheism.
Syntheism by EPROM
“[Syntheism] is a movement that [asks], ‘What if we deify that which we create rather than something external? What if the products of everything that we do is the higher power?’” Dennis says. “It’s a reverence for the products of human civilisation. It ties into my personal beliefs on creativity.”
The Syntheism Robotics live concept is a manifestation of his beliefs, with the first show taking place this past April in Portland, Oregon.
This kind of show has never been done before, and Dennis is already reconfiguring the process for the second performance at Denver’s Mission Ballroom on July 29.
Eprom. Image: Daniel Zetterstrom
Dennis worked with Motorized Precision, a robotics and cinematography company, to integrate two of the brand’s robotic camera arms (known as Kuka Robots) into his live set. Instead of cameras though, each arm is holding an LED screen, and the robots move in time with Dennis’s music while he’s performing.
The robots add another dimension of movement to the live show, while the images on the screens sync with the stage lighting and the imagery on the larger screen at the back of the stage.
“When [the robots] start moving, it’s a major moment. The motion is the most amazing part of it,” Dennis says. “It’s a spectacle. It’s fun to create this show where a lot more of the focus is on the visuals.”
Image: Tyler Hill
Visuals have always been crucial to the EPROM project, and also an essential part of Dennis’ upbringing and his relationship with technology.
Alongside his musical pursuits, which began at age 13 when he started producing with Propellerhead’s Rebirth and Sony Acid Music, Dennis was also learning visuals. He went on to study film and digital media at UC Santa Cruz, and worked in design for a number of years after graduating.
And now, as EPROM, Dennis is directly involved in designing all of the visuals with his art director Jackson Greene – whether it’s the cover art found on his releases or images on LED screens during the live show.
“I’m a very visual-oriented person,” Dennis says. “Anything I can do where I’m using my computer is fun for me.”
The robots from Motorized Precision were just another fun thing for Dennis to do on his computer. They allowed him to further explore his relationship with visual technology.
After discovering Motorized Precision – which, like Dennis, is based in Portland, Oregon – his manager made the connection between them. And Dennis had one idea in mind in their first conversation:
“‘I want to put visuals on robots and have them move.’ That’s kind of what [Dennis] said,” says Sean Brown, CEO of Motorized Precision, speaking to MusicTech.
Image: Tyler Hill
Collaboratively, Dennis, Brown, and the MP team designed the screens that the robot arms were holding and added circular LED panels to the base of the robots. When it came time to ideate the robots’ movements, Dennis tapped into his decades of experience in creating with computers and dove into the experimentation of it all.
Each move the robots perform during the show is preprogrammed, and Dennis designed all of them using Motorized Precision’s custom software, MP Studio.
“Right away, with very little instruction at all, [Dennis] was able to create all these moves like a pro. That’s a huge testament to his knowledge as an artist and our software as a simple intuitive interface that anybody can use,” says Brown.
Dennis created 90 minutes worth of moves in a month and a half. And, with MP Studio, he was able to perfectly align each move with his music, thanks to the timeline-based software.
Image: Tyler Hill
“The software is amazing. I’m pretty familiar with 3D software already so that helped, but it’s great. You can load up your song and drop keyframes on the kicks and snares.” Dennis says. “Each song has its own move and a move is essentially a timeline of keyframes of positions for the robot arm to be in, in terms of its XYZ coordinates as well as the rotation of the last joint in the arm.”
According to Brown, in making these moves happen on a technical level, the robots have sub-millimetre accuracy, so the robots always move in the exact same way. Everyone seeing a Syntheism Robotics show will see the same moves (if Dennis decides to keep the same keyframes that is).
The robots can also move over six meters per second, so there is massive capacity when it comes to speed. Plus, they have unlimited axis-4 and unlimited axis-6, which means they can move in any direction and create any sort of path possible.
With these impressive capabilities at its disposal, Motorized Precision has used its robots in TV and film productions attached to some of the biggest names in the industry. It’s worked with Marvel, Disney, Apple, and CNN, using Kuka Robots on red carpet events and in major motion pictures like Free Guy with Ryan Reynolds.
But using the robots for music was different from all of those prior applications.
“The approach for a film would be, ‘Here’s the shot we’re trying to achieve,’ whether you do it ahead of time and show up ready to go or do it on set live. This one was a lot more on [Dennis] to design,” says Brown. “There have been screens on robots before, but it is definitely the first time it’s been done in this market, and I haven’t seen it quite like this before.”
Image: Tyler Hill
Normally, MP wouldn’t license out its software to a client. And while Dennis didn’t have complete access to the actual robots, he had autonomy over designing the moves in MP Studio’s virtual space, which Brown and the team would then tweak and advise for safety and other technical concerns.
With everything dialled in, it’s on Dennis to launch each of the robot’s movements on stage in real time as he’s handling all the music as well. To integrate these two processes, he uses MIDI to control the robots via a custom Max4Live patch.
One MIDI note from the patch queues the next move, and another note launches the move.
“The Max4Live patch is just listening for MIDI notes on a specific channel, and when it receives a note it formats a message with the MIDI note encoded as an integer at the end, which corresponds to a move ID,” Dennis says. “This happens at the beginning of each song that requires robot moves, ensuring that everything runs on time.”
As a result of his experimentation with this technology, Dennis is already conceiving new musical techniques. One example is recording the actual noises the robots make when they move, then processing them into his productions.
Image: Tyler Hill
Whether it’s recording new samples from Kuka Robots, calling upon tools such as Arturia’s V Collection synths, or using new production tools like an M8 tracker that’s based on a GameBoy tracker software called LSDJ, they all contribute to Dennis’s reverence for the products of human civilisation.
One particular tool that Dennis leaned on in Syntheism and throughout his catalogue is Ableton’s Granulator.
During production sessions, Dennis will often spend the morning making a version of a track, take a break for lunch, then bounce the original version and run the entire thing through Granulator – chopping it up into bits and pieces that he says he could have never imagined on his own.
“You end up with these internal fragments of melody that when you loop them…you would never think to write a melody that way,” Dennis says. “Any process that can have a little bit of human agency and a little bit of generative chaos is gold for me.”
Dennis has produced a unique live show rife with innovation and experimentation. As a devout technophile, the producer may well be inspiring a new precedent for electronic music performance. Just like Amon Tobin with his ISAM show, deadmau5 with his Cube stage, and Daft Punk with their pyramid, EPROM is showing fellow artists what can be achieved when embracing new technology and adding a sprinkling of chaos.
Learn more at eprombeats.com. 
The post EPROM on using Max4Live to control onstage robotics and creating melodies with granular synthesis appeared first on MusicTech.