How musicians can use grow their fanbase with value-based contentLearn what kind of content musicians should be creating to help grow and maintain a significant fanbase… by Johnny Papan from the Bandzoogle blog Even though the rise of social. Continue reading
The post How musicians can use grow their fanbase with value-based content appeared first on Hypebot.

Exc!te Cymbal Is A FREE Ultra-Realistic Physically-Modeled Cymbal Plugin
Chair Audio releases Exc!te Cymbal, a free and ultra-realistic cymbal plugin for macOS, Windows, and Linux. Chair Audio, or The Center for Haptic Audio Interaction Research, is a forward-thinking developer offering a bunch of free and paid products. The latest freebie is Exc!te Cymbal for macOS, Windows, and Linux. I think it’s pretty safe to [...]
View post: Exc!te Cymbal Is A FREE Ultra-Realistic Physically-Modeled Cymbal Plugin

DiMA recruiting for new President and CEO, as Garrett Levin confirms exitThe Digital Media Association represents streaming services including Apple Music, Amazon, Pandora, Spotify and YouTube
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Superbooth 2023: Frap Audio Dynamics 2806 The Dynamics 2806 is the first device from Frap Audio, housing both a mono compressor and expander in a double-width 500-series module.

The DI box: What it is and how to use one
Let's talk about what a DI box is and explore the variety of applications that make it a useful addition to studios and concert venues alike.

Federal Reserve's FedNow will integrate with Metal BlockchainThe integration will allow users to instantly convert cash to stablecoin for use in DeFi protocols.

Jake Shimabukuro at the Canyon ClubBy Jonathan Widran and Jessica Taylor

Sometime during Jake Shimabukuro’s stylistically diverse, 90-minute-set, my insightful, musically attuned friend, caught up in the emotion of the moment, exclaimed, “Not only is he an amazing musician, he’s a magician.” The words perfectly captured the ukulele master’s essence and the gentle yet powerful impact he made on his audience as he embarked on a thrilling range of genre-hopping adventures and transformed his instrument into a flamenco guitar, electric guitar and even the koto, a traditional Japanese instrument.  

As he vibes intuitively off the subtle and upbeat grooves of bass guitarist Jackson Waldhoff – a Japanese born musician who attended the same high school in Hawaii– Jake is always a one-man ukulele orchestra, proverbially pulling fresh sonic textures and possibilities out of the hat while turning his instrument into a palette of unexpected, often surreal sounds, depending on the mood or theme of the tune.

With most artists, this kind of praise would mean simply appreciating the wondrous expression they bring to their instruments. With Jake, it’s also about the way he eases so effortlessly from showing graceful heartfelt affection for the music of his Japanese heritage to creating a lively, fast-paced spin through the timeless melody of The Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby.”

One minute he’s soothing the audience with the easy swaying native Aloha spirit, and the next minute he’s paying tribute to the recently departed Jeff Beck with his otherworldly version of “’Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers,” which Stevie Wonder penned for the legendary guitarist. For that song, Jake used a fascinating technique that’s become one of his trademarks. He uses floor pedals to create backing loops from what he already played to seamlessly modulate from a soft-spoken acoustic vibe to a distorted electric guitar sound, expanding the tune into improvisational rock fusion territory. Building on that energy, he later shared the infectious cross-cultural jam “Dragon,” his rockin’ response to a question he once asked himself: “What would happen if Bruce Lee and Eddie Van Halen got together and composed a song for the ukulele?”

Artfully balancing these high energy tunes, the emotional core of the evening was Jake’s delicate and intricate performance of one of his grandmother’s favorites, the traditional Japanese folk song ““Sakura, Sakura.” Translating to “cherry blossoms, cherry blossoms,” it pays loving homage to his cultural background. Jake introduced the beautiful song by telling the audience that it’s traditionally played on the koto, which has 13 strings – and that in his younger days, he would sit in his room for hours trying to figure out ways to play it on the uke.

Jake’s been working his one-of-a-kind magic since the early 2000s, when he became the first ukulele player from Hawaii to sign with Epic Record International. A few albums into his career, as he was gaining popularity in Hawaii and Japan, he achieved international fame. A video emerged of him playing a flawless version of the George Harrison Beatles classic “When My Guitar Gently Weeps” that showcased his sensitivity, precision and speed. Posted on YouTube without his knowledge, it became one of the first viral videos on the platform and to date has 17.6M+ views.

In the thousands of shows he’s done throughout the world since, “Gently Weeps” has been the crowd pleaser audiences wait for. The way Jake segues from breezy, laid-back strumming to his trademark athletic, high-octane jamming continues to fascinate no matter how many times we may have listened to it live, on CD/streaming or online. On this night, he and Waldhoff paved its way with a distorted guitar driven, rock concert worthy medley featuring segments of “We Will Rock You,” “Sunshine of Your Love,” “Smoke on the Water” and even ZZ Top’s “La Grange.”

Another rock classic Jake’s brought his own uniqueness creativity to is Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Subtly encouraging the crowd, he turned it into a whimsical singalong, with wild shouts from audience members. He also brought his own creativity to originals like the Carlos Montoya influenced, flamenco fired “Let’s Dance” and the uplifting “Sonny Days Ahead” - originally a duet with “King of Slydeco” Sonny Landreth on Jake’s 2021 all-star collaboration album Jake & Friends. He also strummed an original ballad titled “Ichigo Ichie,” whose title in Japanese means “once in a lifetime.” As Jake explained, it’s about being grateful and present as we experience something that will never quite happen the same way again.  

Jake’s high-spirited pop/jazz closer “Kawika” – a song written for a Hawaiian king known as “The Merrie Monarch” and originally recorded by The Sunday Manoa – was his way of honoring his home in Hawaii while sharing the Aloha spirit. I think we all left with a warm “ohana” feeling, which translates to “family” in Hawaiian.    

OCTO8R Dazzle 65 (+28) presets for Memorymore by Cherry Audio unveil the legendary Memorymoog's lush and power of analog that dazzled the ear of 80's. Presets include: Arp 15 (+5 Bonused).... Read More

Meta announces generative AI features for advertisersMeta today announced an AI Sandbox for advertisers to help them create alternative copies, background generation through text prompts and image cropping for Facebook or Instagram ads.
The first feature lets brands generate different variations of the same copy for different audiences while trying to keep the core message of the ad similar. The background generation feature makes it easier to create different assets for a campaign. Finally, the image cropping feature helps companies create visuals in different aspect ratios for various mediums, such as social posts, stories, or short videos like Reels.
The company said that these features are available to select advertisers at the moment and it will expand access to more advertisers in July.
“Currently, we’re working with a small group of advertisers in order to quickly gather feedback that we can use to make these products even better. In July, we will begin gradually expanding access to more advertisers with plans to add some of these features into our products later this year,” it said in a blog post.
Meta’s announcement comes after the company’s CTO Andrew Bosworth said last month that the company was looking to use generative AI tech for ads.
“[I] expect we’ll start seeing some of them [commercialization of the tech] this year. We just created a new team, the generative AI team, a couple of months ago; they are very busy. It’s probably the area that I’m spending the most time [in], as well as Mark Zuckerberg and [Chief Product Officer] Chris Cox,” Bosworth told Nikkei Asia in an interview at the time.
Meta had positive quarterly results for Q1 2023. The company beat analyst expectations and posted year-on-year revenue growth for the first time in three quarters. Mark Zuckerberg mentioned that, while the tech giant has started working on different AI tools, it remained committed to metaverse development.
While Meta is releasing some lightweight generative AI features for advertisers, some ad tech startups are heavily leaning into it. Omneky, which presented at TechCrunch Disrupt last year, used OpenAI’s DALLE-2 and GPT-3 to create ads. Movio, which counts IDG, Sequoia Capital China, and Baidu Ventures as its backers, is using generative AI to create marketing videos as well.
Meta announces generative AI features for advertisers by Ivan Mehta originally published on TechCrunch

King & Prince just sold 1.2m physical copies of their latest album ‘Mr.5’ in its first week in Japan, becoming the market’s fastest-selling album this yearUniversal Music Japan and King & Prince have set the record for 2023’s fastest selling album in Japan
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Haim Saban appointed Non-Executive Director at Universal Music GroupMedia mogul was elected to the role at UMG's AGM on Thursday, May 11
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Analog Obsession GrapHack Famous American Graphic Equalizer & Saturator in a box. You can simply equalize your sound with famous American Graphic Equalizer and also saturate any band. ... Read More

The global dance music industry grew by 34% in 2022Last week I was the International Music Summit in Ibiza, the annual music industry business event. This year MIDiA compiled the annual IMS Music Business Report and I presented the findings at the opening of the event. The full report is available here for download and you can view a video of the presentation here. Here are some of the key findings of the report.

The dance music industry has long been among the first music genres to be shaped by emerging technologies, not least because technology plays such an integral role in the production and performance of dance music. This has helped ensure that dance music has ridden the waves of music industry change. But it has also always been a genre built around performance, DJing especially. So when the pandemic came, dance music felt the impact particularly keenly, with festivals, clubs and bars all being hard hit. 2020 and 2021 were thus fallow years for dance music revenues, years in which DJs struggled to perform and the global industry looked much more towards its other revenue streams. With the global opening up of 2022, the dance music industry not only grew, but ended up bigger than pre-pandemic, pointing to the growing cultural reach and impact that dance music has in today’s global music business.

All of the key elements of the dance music business were up in 2022:

Recorded music up 11% to $1.5 billion

Publishing up 22% to $0.4 billion

Music hardware, software, sounds and services up 4% to $2.8 billion

Live up 78% to $4.5 billion

The result was that the total revenue of the global dance music industry rose 34% in 2022 to hit $10.2 billion. 

Hardware and software

Music hardware, software, sounds and services represents one of dance music’s super powers. Dance music producers have always relied on these tools, but now they are becoming the mainstay of the wider music creator economy. With music software used more across all genres, dance music sounds and techniques will influence all genres

Skills sharing and learning grew fastest, and it was worth $108 million in 2022. Plus, demand will increase still, due to fast evolving production techniques and new software

This will be a long-term growth area for dance music, with producers constantly seeking to upskill to the fast changing world of music production tech and techniques

Live

In live, Ibiza club ticketing revenue reached €124 million in 2022, up 55% from the €80 million registered in 2019. This was underpinned by increases in the number of events per venue, average ticket prices, and the total number of tickets sold going from 2 million in 2019 to 2.5 million in 2022

Globally, the top 100 DJs saw their 2022 bookings grow by around threefold on the pandemic hit 2021, though male DJs grew bookings more than half faster than their female counterparts. Female DJs represented 15% of all top 100 DJ bookings in 2022. Building popularity and getting bookings is a virtuous circle, but if female DJs are losing share of bookings to male counterparts, then the virtuous circle becomes a vicious circle.

A bright, diversified future

Finally, the dance music industry has shaken off the effects of the pandemic, coming out the other side, bigger, better, stronger and more relevant than ever. The pandemic shone a harsh light on the industry’s heavy-reliance on live. Now, that reliance is even higher because of live’s huge growth. There are two key differences from 2019: 1) a resurgent creator tools sector; and 2) a music publishing business that is finally beginning to find its share. The future is bright, with the rise of creator culture, bringing ever more people into dance music, both as fans and creators, with the creator-fan set to be at the centre of tomorrow’s dance music world.

Google launches AI text to music creation tool MusicLMGoogle has launched MusicLM, a new experimental AI tool that turns text descriptions into music. It’s still in beta, but starting today, you can sign up to try it in Google’s AI. Continue reading
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