The tritone: Why it’s called the devil’s interval and how to use it
Let's walk through what a tritone is, its impact across music history, and its surprising sensitive side that isn't so diabolical.

VEMIA hold 61st gear auction VEMIA will be holding their 61st gear auction between 1 and 8 November 2025, with any remaining gear being offered again at a 10% discount (or more) as part of their Second Chance Sunday event on 9 November.

Music Distribution Deadlines for 2025Artists, if you're planning to release music between now and the end of the year, make sure you plan in advance using this calendar, courtesy of CD Baby.
The post Music Distribution Deadlines for 2025 appeared first on Hypebot.

You can now sell merch through DistroKid’s new direct-to-fan platform – and keep 100% of your earnings tooDistroKid has launched a new direct-to-fan platform that lets independent artists create an online store to sell their merch. The best part? You get to keep 100 percent of your earnings.
The new platform, aptly named Direct, is integrated within DistroKid, so if you already use the service to distribute your music to streaming services and social media, there’s no set up needed. The feature is currently rolling out in beta to select artists, with a wider release due to arrive in the coming weeks.

READ MORE: DistroKid now lets you upload unlimited full-length music videos to Spotify

At launch, Direct lets you turn album or single artwork into custom T-shirts, tote bags, and mugs, produced on demand and shipped automatically to your fans around the world. Not only do you keep all your sales, but you can set your own prices too.
Direct is available to DistroKid artists for under $6 per month, and it’s built on technology infrastructure developed by Bandzoogle, a direct-to-fan platform that DistroKid acquired in 2023. As Direct continues to expand, more merch will become available, plus new ways for artists to interact directly with their audience.
Though it shouldn’t have to be this way, most independent artists keep their music careers afloat through merchandise sales. Some experts claim merchandise can make up around 70 percent of an artist’s revenue, and it was a key lifeline for those who couldn’t perform live during the COVID-19 pandemic.
With that said, some venues are increasing their cut of artist’s merch sales, meaning a direct-to-fan platform like this one can further aid musicians who need merch to boost their income. SoundCloud launched a similar store model last year.
“Direct is one more way DistroKid helps artists at every step — before, during, and after they release music,” says Matthew Ogle, Chief Product Officer. “We’re building simple tools that let artists share what they create, from music to merch and beyond, and connect directly with the people who care about them most.”
Find out more about Direct over at DistroKid. 
The post You can now sell merch through DistroKid’s new direct-to-fan platform – and keep 100% of your earnings too appeared first on MusicTech.

Where Did All the Halloween Music Go? 🎃What is the relationship of music to Halloween, and why don't we have an established oeuvre of Halloween music like at Christmas?
The post Where Did All the Halloween Music Go? 🎃 appeared first on Hypebot.

The Very Loud Indeed Co. SHIFT II: Hybrid Scoring TransitionsIMPORTANT: This product requires the full version of Kontakt 6.8 or higher. It will not work with Kontakt Player.. SHIFT II is the sequel to our acclaimed transitions library for Kontakt, SHIFT. Like its predecessor, it allows you to bridge different sections of a music piece seamlessly and it covers multiple genres, from tense drama to frenetic action to bone-chilling horror. It contains 320 tempo-synced transitions, all of which have been designed to be stackable and played in any key. All the transitions in SHIFT II are automatically synced to the tempo of your DAW, and every one of them can be played across a range of one and a half octaves. Features • 320 sound files at 24-bit / 48 kHz resolution in a compact ~2 GB footprint • Highly dynamic tempo-synced and pitched transitions • All sounds can be accessed with a 61-key (or larger) MIDI controller without touching the GUI or shifting octaves • Clean and intuitive GUI • All WAV files are included, so you can use them in your DAW or other samplers. REQUIREMENTS • Full version of Native Instruments' Kontakt 6.8 or higher (SHIFT II won't work with Kontakt Player) • MacOS 10.13 or higher, i5 CPU • Windows 7 or higher, i5 or equivalent CPU • Graphics hardware support for OpenGL 2.1 or higher • 6 GB RAM • 2 GB of free hard drive space. Read More

Is Daft Punk’s Guy-Man working on an album? This music executive has seemingly dropped a massive hintAll remains quiet in the Daft Punk camp, except for a virtual reunion in Fortnite of course, but it seems that Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo could potentially be working on a new project.
Daft Punk called it quits back in 2021, but a fan appears to have spotted a hint that Guy-Man is making a solo album. Posting in the Daft Punk Subreddit, they’ve shared a radio interview clip from France Inter with Emmanuel de Buretel, a music executive. Though the conversation is in the French language, Guy-Man appears to be name dropped.

READ MORE: Robot Rocket might be the closest you can get to a Daft Punk-style vocoder sound without a DigiTech Talker

De Buretel is the founder of Because Music, but spent nearly two decades working at Virgin Records and EMI prior to the launch. In 1998, de Buretel was named head of Virgin Continental Europe, which broke a number of artists, namely Daft Punk.
The Redditor says that at the 26:35 time stamp in the interview, de Buretel says “Guy-Man fait son album”, roughly translating to “Guy-man is making his album” in English. Check out the clip below:
Guy-man ? Album ? byu/BestChibi inDaftPunk

Meanwhile, Guy-Man’s Daft Punk Counterpart, Thomas Bangalter, recently made an appearance for a DJ set alongside Fred Again.. at a show in Paris. Bangalter’s last live appearance prior to this was at the 2017 Grammy Awards alongside Guy-Man, and the last evidence of him on the decks without his robotic headgear was way back in 2009. Interestingly, Bangalter’s set also doubled as a celebration of the 20th anniversary of Because Music.
In other recent Daft Punk news, fans also felt touched by their virtual revival within Fortnite, with some saying it gave them some closure on the split. The Daft Punk Experience, which landed on 27 September, was billed as a “first-of-its-kind” in-game event, offering players an immersive trip through a Daft Punk-inspired world.
The post Is Daft Punk’s Guy-Man working on an album? This music executive has seemingly dropped a massive hint appeared first on MusicTech.

The Commodore revival hype train barrels forward, with an Amiga 1200 remake on the wayThe classic 1982 Commodore 64 8-bit home computer had an SID chip whose sound was so sought-after, numerous plugins have tried to recreate it since.
Back in August, YouTuber Christian Simpson (AKA Retro Recipes) purchased the Commodore licence to create yet another emulation of the C64 from 1982, but instead entirely revived the computer, complete with its era-defining MOS Technology 6581 Sound Interface Device.
And it seems the Commodore hype is still very much alive, as UK-based vintage tech company Retro Games has revived another classic machine, the Amiga 1200, bringing it into the present day with a number of modern appointments.

READ MORE: Antelope Audio is giving away MG4+, its faithful digital recreation of a classic Series 500 six-band EQ

This seems to be a launch geared more towards the gamers than the sound nerds, but hey, you guys loved the Commodore 64 revival when we reported on it a couple of months ago, so we figured you’d still be interested…
The original A1200 was launched in 1992, and this full-sized replica offers HDMI and Bluetooth connectivity to bring it into the now. It’s available to pre-order from 10 November, and will officially launch in June 2026.
Retro Games says that its A1200 replica has “everything you remember and more”, including an integrated workbench, a working keyboard, classic mouse, and retro-style gamepad. It also comes with 25 classic games and four save-slots per game, and you can play the games you already own via USB-stick.

“Step into a time when floppy disks ruled, pixels popped, and imagination had no limits. TheA1200 brings back the spirit of the early ’90s as an astonishingly accurate, full-sized recreation of one of the most loved home computers of its era,” says Retro Games.
“Just plug it in and power it on to be transported back to a golden age of gaming. Relive the thrill of classics like Beneath a Steel Sky, Lure of the Temptress, Ruff ’n’ Tumble, Defender of the Crown I & II, the Turrican trilogy and The Settlers II, all pre-loaded and ready to play… Whether you’re replaying old favourites or sharing them with a new generation, TheA1200 makes every session feel like 1992 again.”
Find out more about The A1200 remake via Retro Games. Pre-orders will commence on 10 November.
The post The Commodore revival hype train barrels forward, with an Amiga 1200 remake on the way appeared first on MusicTech.

LAST CALL: SoundMorph Halloween Sale Ends Tonight (Up to 90% OFF + Extra 70% BPB Discount)
SoundMorph’s massive Halloween Sale wraps up tonight at midnight, and this one’s too good to ignore if you combine it with BPB’s exclusive discount. Every sound library, plugin, and bundle is up to 90% off, and Bedroom Producers Blog readers get an extra 70% off with the code BedroomProducers70off. And yes, that’s not a typo. [...]
View post: LAST CALL: SoundMorph Halloween Sale Ends Tonight (Up to 90% OFF + Extra 70% BPB Discount)

Witness Music History: GRAMMY NominationsThe Recording Academy said on Thursday: "Join the Recording Academy as we reveal the nominees for the 2026 Annual GRAMMY Awards on Friday, Nov. 7 at 8am PT/11am ET!"

"The GRAMMY nominees will be announced live on the GRAMMYS YouTube, kicking off with Songwriter and Producer of the year."

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"The nominations livestream will feature some of the biggest names in music as they unveil the nominees across all 95 GRAMMY Categories, including Chappell Roan, Doechii, KAROL G, Mumford & Sons, Sabrina Carpenter and many more."

READ MORE

The post Witness Music History: GRAMMY Nominations first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

SSL release SSL 360 V2.0 SSL 360 V2.0 provides UC1 users with enhanced integration with Avid’s Pro Tools, delivers some significant functionality updates for UF8 and UF1, and introduces monitoring enhancements for the company’s SSL 12 and SSL 18 interfaces.

Navan IPO tumbles 20% after historic debut under SEC shutdown workaroundNavan finished its first day trading at an approximate valuation of $4.7 billion, which is about half of its last private valuation of $9.2 billion.

UMG has struck a new YouTube deal that includes ‘guardrails’ around AI… and 3 other things Sir Lucian Grainge said on UMG’s Q3 earnings callDeal covers both recorded music and music publishing
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Iconic Xbox Prototype Brought to LifeWhen Microsoft decided they wanted to get into the game console market, they were faced with a problem. Everyone knew them as a company that developed computer software, and there was a concern that consumers wouldn’t understand that their new Xbox console was a separate product from their software division. To make sure they got the message though, Microsoft decided to show off a prototype that nobody could mistake for a desktop computer.
The giant gleaming X that shared the stage with Bill Gates and Seamus Blackley at the 2000 Game Developers Conference became the stuff of legend. We now know the machine wasn’t actually a working Xbox, but at the time, it generated enormous buzz. But could it have been a functional console? That’s what [Tito] of Macho Nacho Productions wanted to find out — and the results are nothing short of spectacular.

The key to this project is the enclosure itself, but this is no simple project box we’re talking about here. Milled from a solid block of aluminum, the original prototype’s shell reportedly cost Microsoft $18,000 to have produced, which would be around $36,000 when adjusted for inflation. Luckily, the state of the art has moved forward a bit in the intervening two decades. So after working with [Wesk] to create a 3D model from reference images (including some that [Tito] took himself of one of the surviving prototypes on display in New York), the design was sent away to PCBWay for production. It still cost the better part of $6 K to be produced, but that’s a hell of a savings compared to the original. Though [Tito] still had to polish the aluminum himself to recreate the original’s mirror-like shine.
To say the rest of the project was “easy” would be something of an understatement, but it was at least more familiar territory. Unlike the original prototype, this machine would actually play Xbox games, to [Tito] focused on cramming the original era-appropriate hardware (plus a few modern homebrew tweaks, such as HDMI-out) into the hollow X using a clever system of integrated rails and 3D printed mounts.
Some of the original parts, like the power supply, were simply too large to use. That’s where [Redherring32] came in. He designed a custom USB-C power supply that could satisfy the original console’s energy needs in a much smaller footprint. There’s also a modern SSD in place of the 8 GB of spinning rust that the console shipped with back in 2001. But overall, it’s still real Xbox hardware — no emulation or other funny tricks here.
At this point, the team had already exceeded what Microsoft pulled off in 2000, but they weren’t done yet. Wanting to really set this project apart, [Tito] decided to replace the center jewel with something a bit more modern. The original was little more than a backlit piece of plastic, but on this build it’s a circular LCD driven by a Raspberry Pi Pico, capable of showing a number of custom full-motion animations thanks to the efforts of [StuckPixel].
The end result of this team effort is a machine that’s not only better looking than Microsoft’s original, but also more functional. It’s a project that’s destined for a more than just sitting on a shelf collecting dust, so we’re happy to hear that [Tito] plans on taking it on a tour of different gaming events to give the public a chance to see it in person. He’s even had a custom crate made so he can transport it around in style and safety.

99Sounds releases Halloween Sounds, a FREE horror plugin for macOS & Windows
99Sounds has released Halloween Sounds, a free sample-based virtual instrument designed as a fun little Halloween gift for producers and sound designers. I created this plugin as a small Halloween gift (and to celebrate my 40th birthday, which is on October 31st) for BPB and 99Sounds, providing everyone with an easy way to explore some [...]
View post: 99Sounds releases Halloween Sounds, a FREE horror plugin for macOS & Windows