BMI Responds to U.S. Copyright Office Notice of Inquiry on PROsOn Friday, BMI released a statement to report that it had filed its, "response to the U.S. Copyright Office’s (USCO) February Notice of Inquiry (NOI) regarding performing rights organizations (PROs) and how they work. The inquiry was sparked when a coalition of music licensees and their lobbyists raised concerns with Congress about the number of PROs and how royalties are distributed. BMI believes raising these issues is nothing more than the latest attempt by music users to create unnecessary confusion in the marketplace in order to reduce the licensing fees they pay to our songwriters and composers. BMI’s formal response to the USCO outlines our position, the many reasons why the PRO system is effective, and how the music creators’ perspective is completely absent from this conversation.""BMI engaged its creative community to make their voices heard at the Copyright Office- and nearly seven thousand BMI affiliates signed a letter in support of the PROs, amplifying the need to safeguard the rights and royalties of songwriters, composers and publishers," they contnued.Mike O’Neill, BMI’s President & CEO, said, “It’s no surprise that, once again, music users are attempting to underpay songwriters and composers for their creative work. As always, BMI will continue to fight to ensure that does not happen. As our filing today makes clear, we work tirelessly to protect the livelihoods and professions of music creators and copyright owners through the public performance royalties we collect and distribute. Creating confusion in the marketplace in order to further regulate this industry only serves the purposes of the businesses that ultimately want to pay music creators less. We look forward to continuing our discussions with the Copyright Office about the work we do and the ways in which we do it.”Access BMI’s filing and BMI’s filing on behalf of our affiliates.  The post BMI Responds to U.S. Copyright Office Notice of Inquiry on PROs first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

US Senate bill threatens crypto, AI data centers with fees — ReportDraft legislation in the US Senate threatens to hit data centers serving blockchain networks and artificial intelligence models with fees if they exceed federal emissions targets, according to an April 11 Bloomberg report. Led by Senate Democrats Sheldon Whitehouse and John Fetterman, the draft bill purportedly aims to address environmental impacts from rising energy demand and protect households from higher energy bills, Bloomberg said.Dubbed the Clean Cloud Act, the legislation mandates that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) set an emissions performance standard for data centers and crypto mining facilities with over 100 KW of installed IT nameplate power. The standard would be based on regional grid emissions intensities, with an 11% annual reduction target. The legislation also includes penalties for emissions exceeding the set standard, starting at $20 per ton of CO2e, with the penalty increasing annually by inflation plus an additional $10.“Surging power demand from cryptominers and data centers is outpacing the growth of carbon-free electricity,” notes a minority blog post on the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works website, adding that data centers’ electricity usage is projected to account for up to 12% of the US total power demand by 2028. According to research from Morgan Stanley, the rapid growth of data centers is projected to generate approximately 2.5 billion metric tons of CO2 emissions globally by the end of the decade. For Matthew Sigel, VanEck’s head of research, the proposed legislation effectively seeks to single out Bitcoin (BTC) miners and similar operations for energy consumption in a “Losing ‘Blame the Server Racks’ Strategy,” he said in an April 11 X post. In addition, the law could clash with the US’s policy under President Donald Trump, who repealed a 2023 executive order by former President Joe Biden setting AI safety standards. Trump has previously declared his intention to make the US the “world capital” of AI and cryptocurrency.New US draft bill would penalize AI, crypto data centers for power consumption. Source: Matthew SigelRelated: Trade tensions to speed institutional crypto adoption — ExecsBitcoin and AI convergeThe draft law, which has yet to pass in the Senate, comes as Bitcoin miners — including Galaxy, CoreScientific, and Terawulf — increasingly pivot toward supplying high-performance computing (HPC) power for AI models, VanEck said.Bitcoin miners have struggled in 2025 as declining cryptocurrency prices weigh on business models already impacted by the Bitcoin network’s most recent halving.Miners are “diversifying into AI data-center hosting as a way to expand revenue and repurpose existing infrastructure for high-performance computing,” Coin Metrics said.Comparison of miners’ AI-related contracts. Source: VanEckAccording to Coin Metrics, miners’ incomes began to stabilize in the first quarter of 2025. However, the recovery could be cut short if ongoing trade wars disrupt miners’ business models, several cryptocurrency executives told Cointelegraph. “Aggressive tariffs and retaliatory trade policies could create obstacles for node operators, validators, and other core participants in blockchain networks,” Nicholas Roberts-Huntley, CEO of Concrete & Glow Finance, said. “In moments of global uncertainty, the infrastructure supporting crypto, not just the assets themselves, can become collateral damage.”Magazine: Financial nihilism in crypto is over — It’s time to dream big again

The most interesting startups showcased at Google Cloud Next Google Cloud announced a long list of impressive AI startups as customers during its Cloud Next conference this week

Tae-Ho Kim, HYBE COO and BELIFT LAB President, talks ENHYPEN, ILLIT, Coachella, and superfansMBW’s World Leaders series meets Tae-Ho Kim, Chief Operating Officer of HYBE and President of BELIFT LAB
Source

A Mouse, No Hands!There are some ideas which someone somewhere has to try. Take [Uri Tuchman]’s foot mouse. It’s a computer mouse for foot operation, but it’s not just a functional block. Instead it’s an ornate inlaid-wood-and-brass affair in the style of a very fancy piece of antique footwear.
The innards of an ordinary USB mouse are placed in something best described as a wooden platform heel, upon which is placed a brass sole with a couple of sections at the front to activate the buttons with the user’s toes. The standout feature is the decoration. With engraving on the brass and inlaid marquetry on the wood, it definitely doesn’t look like any computer peripheral we’ve seen.
The build video is below the break, and we’re treated to all the processes sped up. At the end he uses it in a basic art package and in a piloting game, with varying degrees of succes. We’re guessing it would take a lot of practice to gain a level of dexterity with this thing, but we salute him for being the one who tries it.
This has to be the fanciest peripheral we’ve ever seen, but surprisingly it’s not the first foot mouse we’ve brought you.

Claim FREE copy of MOK Miniraze synth with an eligible purchase at Plugin Boutique
Plugin Boutique has rolled out its April gift and, this month, you’ll get MOK Miniraze for free with any eligible purchase. It’s not exactly free in that regard, so let’s call it a 2-for-1. Long-time customers of Plugin Boutique already know the deal. You buy a plugin and get that month’s gift for free. The [...]
View post: Claim FREE copy of MOK Miniraze synth with an eligible purchase at Plugin Boutique

Sound Radix receive Academy Plaque for Auto-Align Post 2 Sound Radix have announced that they are to be honoured with a Scientific and Engineering Award (Academy Plaque) for their popular Auto-Align Post 2 plug-in.

Monster DAW Monster KeyzMonster Keyz is a multi voices keyboard sound which you can mix n match to obtain unique sound that match your mood and music needs. You can tweak individual Volume, Pan, and it has Master Reverb, Master Delay, Master Volume. Here are some features of Monster Keyz version 2.2022.12: Lightweight and doesn't consume much RAM like any other virtual instruments. There are 6 Voice categories: Keys, Choir, Pad, Brass, Pluck, and SFX and each has 5 Voice for total 30 Voice. No preset but you can mix n match 30 Voices to produce 1,073,741,823 different sound (Yes, that's possible). Each Voice has its own Volume, Pan, and Voice On/off. Master Reverb and Master Delay with its own parameters and Master Volume. Read More

Brian Eno to release two new collaborative albums with composer and artist Beatie WolfeBrian Eno has partnered with previous collaborator and composer Beatie Wolfe on a pair of collaborative albums, Luminal and Lateral, which will both arrive 6 June on Verve Records.
And kicking things off, Eno and Wolfe are previewing the album with two new singles, Suddenly and Big Empty Country – from Luminal and Lateral, respectively.

Brian Eno and Beatie Wolfe first met through their environmental work when they an SXSW-featured talk on Art and Climate, which was recently selected as one of the festival’s best in 25 years.
The pair later met when they were each showing visual and conceptual art pieces at separate galleries in London, and this latest musical collaboration grew out of these meetings.
“Music is about making feelings happen,” Eno and Wolfe say. “Some of those feelings are familiar, while others may not be – or may be complex mixtures of several different feelings. There are many beautiful words for such feelings in other languages and cultures – words that don’t exist in English.
“By giving a feeling a name, we make that feeling more likely to be felt, more tangible. Art is able to trigger feelings, or feeling mixtures, that we’ve never quite felt before. In this way, a piece of art can become the ‘mother’ for a type of feeling, and a place you can go to find and re-experience that feeling. Some of the feelings we found ourselves working with were these…”
You can check out the tracklists of both Luminal and Lateral below:
Luminal

Milky Sleep
Hopelessly At Ease
My Lovely Days
Play On
Shhh
Suddenly
A Ceiling and a Lifeboat
And Live Again
Breath March
Never Was It Now
What We Are

Lateral

Big Empty Country Pt. I
Big Empty Country Pt. II
Big Empty Country Pt. III
Big Empty Country Pt. IV
Big Empty Country Pt. V
Big Empty Country Pt. VI
Big Empty Country Pt. VII
Big Empty Country Pt. VIII

In other news, Brian Eno recently made his thoughts on artificial intelligence known, noting: “The biggest problem about AI is not intrinsic to AI. It’s to do with the fact that it’s owned by the same few people.”
Learn more about Luminal and Lateral at Verve Records.
The post Brian Eno to release two new collaborative albums with composer and artist Beatie Wolfe appeared first on MusicTech.

He tours the world but can’t make a living as a musicianThe vocalist for international touring metal band Thy Art Is Murder is leaving the band because he can't making a living as a musician.
The post He tours the world but can’t make a living as a musician appeared first on Hypebot.

“It’s disappointing that Spotify’s payments are not making it through to Kate herself”: Spotify responds after Kate Nash calls out its “very, very poor and unethical” payoutsWith her bid to save grassroots venues, and openly funding tours via OnlyFans, Kate Nash has become a mouthpiece for working-class musicians in the UK. Now, she’s calling out Spotify, accusing it of low streaming payouts.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Women’s Hour, Nash discusses what she deems her low Spotify royalties. “Foundations has over 100 million plays on Spotify,” she says. “I am shocked I’m not a millionaire when I hear that! I am shocked at the state of the music industry and how the industry has allowed this to happen.”

READ MORE: Depeche Mode’s Memento Mori tour will live on forever through Depeche Mode: M

“We’re paid very, very, very poorly and unethically for our recorded music,” Nash claims. “It’s like 0.003 of a penny per stream. I think we should not only be paid fairly but we should be paid very well – people love music and it’s a growing economy. There are plenty of millionaires in the industry because of us, and our music.”
A string of artists have been accusing Spotify of low payouts as of late. James Blake and Snoop Dogg have even taken things a step further, with both artists migrating to different streaming platforms in an attempt to earn more from their music.

 
In Kate Nash’s opinion, the royalty system hinders working-class musicians before they can get the ball rolling. “[Spotify are saying] ‘You’re not welcome here, you can’t do this, we don’t want to hear from you,’” she says. “It’s not possible to even imagine having a career if you don’t have a privileged background or a privileged situation right now!”
A response from Spotify to Kate’s comments, read by host Nuala McGovern during Women’s Hour, reads: “We’re huge fans of Kate Nash. For streams of her track Foundations alone – which was released before Spotify existed – Spotify has paid out around half a million pounds in revenue to Kate Nash’s rights holders.”
The company seems to imply that the issue at hand is with Nash’s record label, rather than its royalty system. “Her most streamed songs were released via Universal Music Group,” it notes. “Spotify has no visibility over the deals that Kate signed with her rights’ holders. Therefore, we have no knowledge of the payment terms that were agreed upon between her and her partners.
“We do know that British artists generated revenues of over £750 million on Spotify alone in 2023, a number that is on the rise year on year. So it’s disappointing to hear that Spotify’s payments are not making it through to Kate herself.”
After the radio show, Nash reflected on Spotify’s response in an Instagram story. “This is great,” she wrote. “I knew I was getting to them! I’m so happy. It’s such a good feeling.”

The post “It’s disappointing that Spotify’s payments are not making it through to Kate herself”: Spotify responds after Kate Nash calls out its “very, very poor and unethical” payouts appeared first on MusicTech.

Musician’s Guide to Threads: Conversation and CommunityWith this Musician's Guide to Threads learn how build real fan connections, boost engagement, and share your creative journey more authentically.
The post Musician’s Guide to Threads: Conversation and Community appeared first on Hypebot.

ART celebrate Tube MP’s 30th anniversary ART are celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Tube MP, a compact and affordable valve preamp that was introduced in 1995 and remains part of their current product range. 

Depeche Mode’s Memento Mori tour will live on forever through Depeche Mode: MIf you couldn’t make it to Depeche Mode’s Memento Mori world tour, you’re in luck. The synth pop royals have announced Depeche Mode: M, a feature-length tour film that will allow fans to indulge in the magic of their 2023-24 tour – and it’s set to hit theatres later this year.
Depeche Mode: M compiles footage from the band’s sold-out three-night stint in Mexico City’s Foro Sol Stadium. Bolstered by the howls of 200,000 eager Mexican fans, the film captures the electronic icons at their finest as they soar through a career-spanning set.

READ MORE: Fyre Fest 2 permit only allows for 12-hour listening party with 250 people – as a psychologist deems Billy McFarland “mentally ill”

The tour saw the band performing 112 shows around the globe, and served as a multi-layered celebration of live. The tour contrasted vibrant joy with sombre reflections, from the electrifying Can’t Get Enough to the brooding darkwave of My Cosmos Is Mine.
The existential undertone of the tour makes sense; 2023’s Memento Mori was written in the aftermath of keyboardist Andrew Fletcher’s death in 2022. The record and tour reflected on mortality, even including a poignant nod to the band’s late keyboardist.
Depeche Mode: M will allow fans to relive the existentialism, as well as featuring the band’s loving tribute to Fletcher. As a result, the film is a testament to the power of music in the face of tragedy.

“For me, when Andy died it cemented the idea that we had to carry on with these songs and the title,” frontman Dave Gahan reflected in an interview with The Guardian.
“The idea that we should all be making the most of our time on Earth and it’s very limited – it’s kind of an important message. And it’s even more important now Andy’s gone.”
The tour film is directed by Fernando Frias, and promises to be a true “cinematic experience” above all else. The Mexican filmmaker is best known for his award-winning dramas, including 2019’s I’m No Longer Here. The film won 10 Ariel Academy Awards, from Best Picture to Best Direction. His latest film, crime thriller I Don’t Expect Anyone to Believe Me, was released in 2023.
Depeche Mode: M will premiere in threatres later this year.

The post Depeche Mode’s Memento Mori tour will live on forever through Depeche Mode: M appeared first on MusicTech.

SEC drops suit against Helium for alleged securities violationsThe US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has dismissed a lawsuit against Nova Labs, developer of decentralized wireless network Helium, for allegedly issuing unregistered securities, Helium stated in an April 10 blog post. Filed in January 2025, the lawsuit was among the SEC’s final enforcement actions against a cryptocurrency developer under former Chair Gary Gensler, who stepped down from his post on Jan. 20 after US President Donald Trump took office. The dismissal with prejudice means the blockchain developer cannot be charged with similar violations again for issuing in 2019 its native token Helium (HNT), the company said. “[W]e can now definitively say that all compatible Helium Hotspots and the distribution of HNT, IOT, and MOBILE tokens through the Helium Network are not securities,” Helium said. “[T]he outcome establishes that selling hardware and distributing tokens for network growth does not automatically make them securities in the eyes of the SEC [and] that the SEC cannot bring these charges against Helium again,” it added.Source: HeliumThe SEC’s Helium reversal came the same day Trump-nominee Paul Atkins formally replaced Gensler as SEC Chair after a lengthy confirmation process in the Senate. Helium is a blockchain network designed to let “anyone build and own massive wireless networks,” according to its website. The protocol reports having roughly 375,000 active hotspots. According to CoinGecko, HNT has a market capitalization of approximately $480 million as of April 10 — down from highs of more than $5 billion in November 2021. HNT’s price since 2019. Source: CoinGeckoRelated: SEC will drop its appeal against Ripple, CEO Garlinghouse saysChanging policy stanceUnder Gensler, the SEC brought upward of 100 charges against Web3 developers for various alleged securities violations. Since Trump took office, the SEC has sharply reversed course, dropping numerous charges against crypto firms, including Coinbase, Kraken, Ripple and Uniswap. Trump has positioned himself as a pro-crypto President, promising to make America the “world’s crypto capital,” appointing industry-friendly leaders to key regulatory posts, and ordering the federal government to create a national Bitcoin (BTC) reserve.For some crypto executives, Trump's policies — such as announcing sweeping tariffs on US imports in April — threaten to stymie crypto’s progress.Magazine: 3 reasons Ethereum could turn a corner: Kain Warwick, X Hall of Flame