Afroplug Kompa Plug LiteIntroducing the Revolutionary Kompa Plug: The Ultimate All-in-1 Plugin for Authentic Haitian Kompa Music Production. Whether you're influenced by Carimi, T-Vice, Klass, Nu-Look, Djakout... Read More

What is gospel music? Exploring the genre’s rich sound and history
The producers behind Sound Doctrine and leading musicians discuss the elements that define gospel music, its history, and powerful sound.

UMG just assigned 100K ISNI IDs: You need to get one tooUniversal Music Group (UMG) has announced its official adoption of ISNI IDs as a global identifier assigned to anyone involved in the creation of intellectual property.
The post UMG just assigned 100K ISNI IDs: You need to get one too appeared first on Hypebot.

GigAtlas wins Measure of Music HackathonAlmost 2000 attended this year's edition of the online Measure on Music Hackathon and Conference.
The post GigAtlas wins Measure of Music Hackathon appeared first on Hypebot.

These high-end headphones cost $2,000 but are “a carefully crafted audio masterpiece”Meze Audio has again crafted another pair of very high-end planar-magnetic headphones, POET.
POET, priced at $2,000 no less, are described by the luxury Romanian manufacturer as “a carefully crafted audio masterpiece inviting listeners to experience a journey through inner worlds – where sound, emotion, and purpose intertwine”. They offer a more compact design compared to the brand’s flagship planar magnetic ELITE headphones (rated 9/10 by MusicTech).

READ MORE: Save $19,000 on this completely restored Yamaha CS-60 – but you’ll still need deep pockets

Planar magnetic headphones utilise a thin, flat diaphragm with a magnet suspended next to it and an electromagnetic signal running through wires to vibrate the diaphragm to generate sound. They are usually lighter but larger than dynamic headphones.
For POET, this tech comes courtesy of Rinaro Isodynamics, and is combined with luxury materials, and a compact, open-back design. Meze Audio says they deliver “lush, airy vocals and precise bass impact, balancing low-end depth with delicate high-frequency clarity”.
To set the headphones apart from other high-end offerings on the market, they host a unique Hybrid Magnet Array designed to create a uniform, powerful magnetic field across the diaphragm. The Parus diaphragm has a low weight (0.06g) and an “expansive” active area for “pristine” audio reproduction. The POET headphones are also designed with longevity in mind, which makes sense with their hefty price. They are coupled with a premium hand-braided copper cable and are fully serviceable, as every component can be easily disassembled and replaced. They also have a flexible titanium alloy headband to evenly distribute weight, and magnetic ear pads to make swapping easier.

“From the very beginning of our POET journey, we knew we wanted to create something unique – a more compact planar-magnetic open-back headphone that is every bit as capable as our flagship models,” says Alex Grigoras, Acoustic Engineer at Meze Audio.
“What better place to look than at the very apex? In collaboration with our friends at Rinaro Isodynamics, we synthesised the essence of ELITE’s driver technology and gave it new life. I believe POET turned out to be more than just a headphone; it’s a nod to a huge stepping stone in our development as a team and a testament to how far we’ve come.”
The POET headphones are available now for £1,850/$2,000/€2,000. Find out more over at Meze Audio.
The post These high-end headphones cost $2,000 but are “a carefully crafted audio masterpiece” appeared first on MusicTech.

Cali76 Stacked Compressor from Origin Effects The new Cali76 Stacked Compressor will replace the existing Cali76 Stacked Edition, and is said to share a lot in common with the discontinued SlideRIG range. 

“I’m sure many people think I’m crazy for doing this again”: Fyre Festival 2’s “real” date announcedFyre Festival is officially making a comeback.
Billy McFarland, convicted fraudster and the man behind 2017’s most infamous music festival meltdown, has announced that Fyre Festival 2 is happening. He also insists that it’s all “real” this time.

READ MORE: “Without small venues, you wouldn’t have Depeche Mode, which is a world like not really worth living in!”: Kellie Lee Owens on state of electronic music

After years of teasing a comeback, McFarland took to social media Monday to confirm the sequel’s grand return. Scheduled for 30 May to 2 June, Fyre Festival 2 will take place in Isla Mujeres, Mexico. And if you have an extra $1.1 million lying around, you and seven lucky friends can splurge on an exclusive VIP package — though given the festival’s history, you might want to set aside some emergency funds for a last-minute flight home.
Described as a “three-day escape to the Mexican Caribbean,” the festival promises daytime adventures and “intimate beach-side performances at night”. Who’s performing, you ask? Great question — because there’s no actual lineup besides the rather vague promise of “international and emerging talent”.
For those who somehow missed the first Fyre Festival debacle (or just need a refresher), the original event was billed as a luxurious, once-in-a-lifetime music experience in the Bahamas, complete with lavish accommodations and gourmet food. Instead, attendees were met with disaster relief tents, cheese slices on white bread, and their luggages tossed around an unlit carpark.
The entire mess was later immortalised in Netflix’s FYRE documentary, while McFarland spent nearly four years in prison for fraud.
Addressing the skepticism head-on in his announcement, McFarland states, “I’m sure many people think I’m crazy for doing this again. But I feel I’d be crazy not to do it again. After years of reflection and now thoughtful planning, the new team and I have amazing plans for Fyre 2. The adventure seekers who trust the vision and take the leap will help make history. Thank you to my partners for the second chance.”
Andy King, a former investor of the original festival, previously voiced his concerns over “red flags” for the reboot event, saying: “I’m just seeing a lot of red flags, and a lot of red lights, and I feel bad. It saddens me… We were going to rent one of the biggest estates in the Hamptons and have a big, swanky party. We ended up having 30 people at a pizza place along the Montauk highway.”

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For the bravehearted, tickets to Fyre Festival 2 are currently on sale now.
The post “I’m sure many people think I’m crazy for doing this again”: Fyre Festival 2’s “real” date announced appeared first on MusicTech.

“This is an Omnichord that’s been left out in the rain”: St. Vincent offers a tour of her studioSt. Vincent has offered a tour of her studio, pulling back the curtain on her creative space and her fondness for so-called “terrible” gear.
In a recent studio tour with Reverb, the Grammy-winning artist and producer takes viewers inside her world of songwriting, recording, and the sometimes-questionable instruments she has collected over the years.

READ MORE: FINNEAS on why you should “bail on bad ideas instead of pumping them through $20,000 of outboard gear”

During the tour, the musician — real name Annie Clark — describes how she went through a phase of “thrifting” gear and the occasional gems she discovered while messing around with some of those underappreciated instruments
“I had a period of time where I was [doing] the Reverb equivalent of thrifting,” she says. “I was like, ‘I know people think that these are terrible machines but I’m going to prove that they’re great!’”
One such machine was the Roland MC-303, a groovebox that has often been dismissed by musicians and producers for its limited sound capabilities. St. Vincent admits that while she initially hoped to find hidden potential in the device, reality didn’t quite match her expectations.
“And then you get them, and you’re like, ‘Oh no, this is kind of terrible,’” Still, she found a way to make it work. After “hours of scrolling through presets” on the MC-303, she managed to incorporate a sound from it into Big Time Nothing, a track from her latest album All Born Screaming.
“I can’t show you because it’s totally broken,” she laughs, “but it’s also not worth repairing.”
Elsewhere, St. Vincent also shows off an Omnichord — the cult favourite Suzuki instrument from the ’80s – that’s been “left out in the rain”, though she insists it “doesn’t matter” because like the MC-303, “it’s totally broken”.
“I used this a lot – I overused this – on [my second album] Actor.”
That said, much as she enjoys messing around in the studio, St. Vincent admits that her true passion lies in songwriting.
“Sometimes doing this stuff is a distraction from sitting down and writing the song I know I need to write,” she says. “My main passion, no matter how I get there, is actually writing songs. That is immensely harder than dicking around in the studio all day.”

Last year, St. Vincent told producers to be cautious when relying too heavily on plugins, warning: “They have flashy interfaces that make you think they’re doing more than they’re actually doing”.
The post “This is an Omnichord that’s been left out in the rain”: St. Vincent offers a tour of her studio appeared first on MusicTech.

“Streaming has levelled the playing field for music markets around the world”: No UK artists ranked in Top 10 global bestseller charts for first time in 20 yearsFor the first time in over two decades, zero UK artists have made it into the annual top 10 bestselling singles or albums charts worldwide.
Data from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) reveal that no British artists ranked higher than 15th in 2024’s bestselling singles, marking the first instance of this since 2005.
UK artists have consistently appeared in one, or both of the top 10 bestselling albums or singles categories every year since at least 2003.

READ MORE: So…How did Apple Music become a hero of streaming services, and Spotify a supervillain?

In 2022, UK artists accounted for seven of the 20 total spots across both categories. However, last year’s rankings were dominated by American and South Korean acts, including Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, and Seventeen.
This comes after a particularly strong year for British artists like Charli XCX, Central Cee, and Ezra Collective, though none of them made it onto last year’s bestselling charts.
Jo Twist, chief executive of British record industry body the BPI, says: “British artists may have enjoyed stronger years on the international stage, which perhaps isn’t surprising given some of our biggest names were not in cycle in 2024.”
“There was still plenty to be excited about, as a new generation announced itself — not least Charli XCX, who enjoyed a breakthrough year globally, alongside international chart success for emerging artists such as Jordan Adetunji, Artemas and Good Neighbours, while the likes of Lola Young and Myles are now rapidly building an international following.”
Twist adds that “streaming has created many benefits, enabling more artists to succeed, but has also levelled the playing field for music markets around the world, opening up more challenges to the UK.”
It is “undoubtedly becoming much harder to break talent in a hyper-competitive global music economy,” she says.
Global bestselling singles of 2024

Benson Boone – Beautiful Things
Sabrina Carpenter – Espresso
Teddy Swims – Lose Control
Billie Eilish – Birds of a Feather
Shaboozey – A Bar Song (Tipsy)
Hozier – Too Sweet
Post Malone – I Had Some Help (feat Morgan Wallen)
Kendrick Lamar – Not Like Us
Taylor Swift – Cruel Summer
Noah Kahan – Stick Season

Global bestselling albums of 2024

Taylor Swift – The Tortured Poets Department
Billie Eilish – Hit Me Hard And Soft
Sabrina Carpenter – Short n’ Sweet
Enhypen – Romance: Untold
SZA – SOS
Seventeen – Spill The Feels
Morgan Wallen – One Thing At A Time
Seventeen – 17 Is Right Here
Noah Kahan – Stick Season
Stray Kids – ATE

Calling out the “rigged” music industry this week, British artist Sam Fender said that “The music industry is 80 percent, 90 percent kids who are privately educated…“A kid from where I’m from can’t afford to tour, so there are probably thousands writing songs that are ten times better than mine, poignant lyrics about the country, but they will not be seen because it’s rigged.”
Read more music technology and industry news. 
The post “Streaming has levelled the playing field for music markets around the world”: No UK artists ranked in Top 10 global bestseller charts for first time in 20 years appeared first on MusicTech.

Noise Engineering introduce Batverb pedal The Batverb is a stereo reverb effect that Noise Engineering say can be considered an instrument in its own right.

Chegg sues Google over AI search summariesEdtech company Chegg has sued Google claiming that the tech giant’s AI summaries of search results have hurt Chegg’s traffic and revenue. In the suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Chegg accuses Google of unfair competition — specifically reciprocal dealing, monopoly maintenance, and unjust enrichment. Google, Chegg claims, forces […]
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OKX pleads guilty, pays $505M in penalties to settle DOJ chargesOKX’s Aux Cayes FinTech Co. Ltd agreed to pay over $500 million worth of fines for operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business.

Atmospheric Water Harvesting With High VoltageOne of the two stakes that make up the electrostatic precipitator system for atmospheric water harvesting. (Credit: Plasma Channel, YouTube)
Atmospheric water harvesting is a way to obtain fresh water in arid regions, as there is always some moisture in the air, especially in the form of morning fog. The trick lies in capturing this moisture as efficiently as possible, with a range of methods available that start at ancient low-tech methods involving passive fog droplet capture all the way to variants of what are effectively large dehumidifiers. A less common way involves high-voltage and found itself the subject of a recent Plasma Channel video on YouTube. The inspiration for the build was a 2018 paper by [Maher Damak] et al. (PDF) titled Electrostatically driven fog collection using space charge injection.
Rather than passively waiting for dew to collect on the collector, as with many of the methods detailed in this review article by [Xiaoyi Liu] et al., this electrostatic approach pretty much does what it says on the tin. It follows the principle of electrostatic precipitators with a high-voltage emitter electrode to ionize the air and grounded collector wires. In the video a small-scale version (see top image) was first constructed, demonstrating the effectiveness. Whereas the passive grid collected virtually none of the fog from an ultrasonic fog maker, with 35 kV applied the difference was night and day. No water was collected with the first test, but with power applied a significant 40 mL was collected in 5 minutes on the small mesh.
With this scale test complete, a larger version could be designed and tested. This simplifies the emitter to a single wire connected between two stakes, one of which contains the 20 kV HV generator and battery. The mesh is placed right below it and grounded (see image). With an extreme fog test inside a terrarium, it showed a very strong effect, resulting in a harvest of 14 mL/Wh for this prototype. With a larger scale version in a real-life environment (i.e. desert) planned, it’ll be interesting to see whether this method holds up in a more realistic scenario.

Tip Jar: Promotion or Emotion?By Darryl Evan JonesAs an artist—especially an indie artist—it’s very easy to find yourself chasing the rabbit of promotion. Don’t get me wrong, promotion is essential to every artist’s career. However, a very common mistake I’ve seen artists make (including myself) is losing scope with their promotion efforts. Too often artists make decisions about promotion based on emotion, rather than on a scientific approach. For example, every recording artist would love to see their name on and moving up the charts. This becomes a problem when it’s only based on the emotion, the high of that accomplishment, rather than having a plan and purpose for seeking that out. If there’s no plan beyond “look mom, I’ve charted,” it’s all emotion and counterproductive. Before long, you’ll find yourself spending thousands of dollars feeding the promo machine and your ego—a good recipe for disaster. If at least part of the plan is to convert charting into something tangible and lucrative like high profile and high paying performances, then have at it!Let’s face it, while an artist is struggling to build name recognition and gain a better foothold in the music game, everyone has their hand out. And sadly, the very last one with any hope of making money in the music business is the artist. While attempting to navigate the promotion gauntlet, most often artists inevitably become trapped on the hamster wheel of promotion versus emotion. What do I mean by that? Very simply, artists become completely distracted from their personal mission and goals and instead find themselves lost in the quagmire of competing in someone else’s vision. That’s very often displayed by spending tons of money in a certain area of promotion that may not quite fit that artist’s goals and vision. Everyone wants to be respected and appreciated for their craft. That doesn’t mean that your respect and appreciation must mirror anyone else’s—neither should it.Before you find yourself in the never-ending cycle of riding the carousel of promotion, I recommend the following:Ask yourself these questions:1. What do I want out of my music career?2. Do I want to be a major act locally, nationally, internationally?3. How do I plan to get people to know about me and my music?Then:1. Refocus. Put some blinders on, if necessary. Don’t completely block out the outside world, but definitely focus on YOUR goals and accomplishments.2. Plan. If you haven’t already done so, write down how you want your music career to look. Remain open and flexible but at least map out your career path and goals.3. Budget. Although the cost of making music has come way down due to constant advancements in technology, promotion costs have not. Your promo budget won’t look exactly like anyone else’s, but should be reflective of the goals and plan you’ve laid out. Your promo will be the highest cost of your venture—if you plan to follow the more traditional music business role.Let’s visit three main arms of music promotion:Radio PromotionIf radio promotion is in your plans, ask yourself why? I’m not at all suggesting you don’t pursue radio promotion. I’m only advising you to understand why it is or isn’t a viable avenue for you. If radio promotion is part of your strategy, you’ll want to vet a reputable independent radio promoter. Things to consider include but are not limited to how long will the campaign (for each song) last; how much does the term of promotion cost; what’s the cost to extend a promotion; what’s the promoter’s track record? (Which charts and chart positions have their artists attained and what’s their reputation in the business?); how many artists and/or songs does the radio promoter represent/pitch at one time; is the radio promoter completely independent or is he/she beholden to a record label? There are ways to get your music to radio program managers without a promoter. The question becomes, are you willing and able to do the tremendous amount of legwork required to accomplish this? Also, be sure to ask yourself why you would consider the expense of radio promotion. The average independent radio promotion campaign can range from $300 per week to $1,000 per week or more, depending on the genre. Is radio a justifiable consideration? Are you trying to earn a place on “the charts”? If so, why? Keep in mind that in an age where “everybody’s got a chart,” not all charts are the same or carry the same weight. Social Media PromotionExtremely vital in today’s world is an effective social media marketing campaign. Again, you could do all the legwork yourself. The question is, should you? There are those out there who specialize in this arena and are very familiar with nuance strategies most artists are not. Plus, how can you be sure you’re posting the right content on the right platform(s) at the right time(s)? Yes, there’s a science to it. Just throwing something against the wall and hoping it sticks is Not a good strategy. In my opinion, a professional, experienced social media marketing manager is a must for any music career. Do your homework and vet any social media people you’re considering working with.PublicityNot to be confused with social media marketing (although the two can sometimes intersect), publicity is also a must for your music career. A good publicist will have access to opportunities and industry gatekeepers the artist couldn’t even imagine. In addition, they have the experience and ability to create effective press releases, networking and interview opportunities, as well as chances to interface with key publications vital to your career. When deciding on a publicist, check their credentials and client roster. Don’t get sucked in by the sparkling social media pics they post, which are easily misconstrued as client representations—which are usually just casual event pics. Publicists and social media marketing managers should become friends to the artist, getting to know them intimately. This builds trust and helps the artist navigate the industry landscape better. A good publicist can easily run you thousands of dollars per month, but if you can afford it—they’re easily worth their weight in gold. In closing, make sure your decisions on promotion are scientific and not guided by emotion. And don’t be afraid to try things that rattle your comfort zone.About Darryl Evan Jones: Bronx-born, classically trained flutist and Ambassador of Instrumental Soul grew up playing in church, has released four studio albums, and has opened for major names like Boney James, Howard Hewett, Jeff Lorber, and Kem. Darryl Evan Jones wrote or co-wrote most of the songs he’s recorded. He has a most unique style and is beloved my his ever growing fanbase. Keep up with Darryl Evan Jones at dejmusic.com.The post Tip Jar: Promotion or Emotion? first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

Klamper Audio Simple MixDownThe Simple MixDown is a versatile and intuitive Cabbage-based plugin designed to provide precise control over your audio mixing process. It integrates a variety of professional-grade audio effects... Read More