Waves Audio Will Release A New FREE Plugin On Black Friday
Waves Audio has announced they will offer a new plugin for FREE on Black Friday, November 24th. Only 10,000 free licenses will be available, and users can sign up now to reserve their licenses. Receiving a free plugin from Waves on Black Friday has become a tradition in the music production space, much like getting [...]
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HÖR Berlin allegedly shuts off set by DJ wearing a T-shirt that said ‘Palestine’ written in ArabicHÖR, an online music platform and event space in Berlin, reportedly cut off two DJs mid-set on 3 November. Allegedly, it was due to wearing items of clothing that showed support for Palestine amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
DJ Sam Clarke says his performance was cut short due to a shirt he was wearing at the time. He has since shared a post to Instagram stories displaying the shirt where he wrote, “So HÖR stopped my set because they didn’t know what my shirt says? It says Palestine.”
In another post shared by Clarke, he states that he played 20 minutes of his set before an attendant said that their bosses had instructed them to stop the set because they had noticed the shirt and wanted to ensure it did not say anything “inflammatory.”
“They told me that I could have a conversation with them about the shirt’s meaning and start my set over again, or cancel altogether. The shirt says Palestine. It’s interesting to me that they wouldn’t know that as they are Israeli,” says Clarke. “Seems basic. Ultimately I decided that I wasn’t interested in the conversation and didn’t want to start my set over again.”
Artist Téa, also shared she was stopped mid-set due to a scarf she was wearing: “Just to reference @cirkelineee’s post earlier, this was the scarf that I was wearing and have been wearing all day. They said the scarf was fine and the flag would be fine too but the map is too controversial, which I don’t really understand why? Isn’t that what this whole thing is about?”

Just wanted to share these screenshots so that u all know
Boycott Hör pic.twitter.com/OfqPQNl96k
— Mads/Silver Tank (@RivalAlt93) November 4, 2023

HÖR has since sent out a statement, as shared on X by nextdimensional, which reads: “We have been appalled by the events that have taken place in Palestine and Israel. Our hearts have been broken for all the innocent victims.
“We hope for an immediate end to the violence and relief for the Palestinian people from this humanitarian crisis, as well as for the safe return of all the Israeli hostages. We wholeheartedly support the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and freedom,” it states.
“We take our responsibility to create a safe space where artists can share their responses to the devastating events seriously. We have seen many artists using our platform to show their solidarity with the Palestinian people by wearing shirts, scarves and flags. We believe in freedom of expression, and we have not, and will not, censor flags or peaceful slogans. However, there are symbols that, for some audiences, are controversial, which we will not allow.”
It continues to explain, “On Friday, we had the first two incidents where individuals wanted to demonstrate solidarity with the Palestinian people, but our content moderation team felt that their items of clothing could be perceived as offensive and calling for the eradication of Israel.
“In one instance, an artist wore a scarf with the phrase ‘the land is ours’ written in Arabic, while in another instance, another artist wore a shirt featuring the Palestinian flag superimposed over the map of Israel. It is never our intention to upset any of our artists, but keeping our platform as a respectful space is very important to us.”
Further in the statement, HÖR states that it has “taken on board feedback” and is looking into training its content moderation team to ensure it has “clear guidelines for our team and artists to follow.”
You can read the full statement below:

HÖR just sent out a long email . pic.twitter.com/z3zAro1ff9
— nextdimensional (@nextdimensiona1) November 5, 2023

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Apple release Logic Pro 10.8 for Mac & Logic Pro 1.1 for iPad Headline attraction is Mastering Assistant on both Mac and iPad. Plus, Beat Breaker and Sample Alchemy plug-ins first seen in Apple's Logic Pro for iPad have been brought to the Mac in Logic Pro 10.8.

Kyiv clubs and promoters launch UNight, a campaign to encourage “sustainable development and protect nightlife” in the Ukrainian capitalClubs and promoters in Kyiv, Ukraine have banded together for UNight, a campaign to nurture sustainable development and protection of nightlife in the city.
Per Mixmag, the initiative brings together clubs, employees, promoters, artists and attendees to “defend the right to represent nightlife of the capital”.

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Participants include ∄ (K41), HVLV Bar, Keller, Sloi Bar, and Kyiv festivals Brudniy Pes (Dirty Dog) and Art is a Weapon.
“The UNight project is dedicated to the night culture of Kyiv,” a statement on the UNight website reads. “On the basis of sustainable development and cooperation between institutions and the city, we are building a safer and more positive nightlife in Kyiv.”
The website also lays out a series of values which UNight operates on. They include: Constancy – “Support for the continuous development of nightlife under the condition of cooperation between business and the state”; Honesty – “Full transparency of processes and support of dialogue between nightclubs and the city; and Inclusivity – “Support and active promotion of the idea of ​​inclusiveness and creation of proper conditions for all who participate in nightlife.”
Other values include Security – the development and implementation of projects aimed at creating safer nightlife conditions for Kyiv; development of culture, social responsibility and Openness.
The UNight campaign also seeks to protect clubs and nightlife institutions in Kyiv following an attack on HVLV in late 2021 by a far-right group. The attack was part of a “crusade” against nightclubs in the city which the group believed to be selling drugs in-house.
You can read more over at the official UNight website.
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New music marketplace Artcore lets artists and independent labels sell their music directly to fans and DJsMusic marketplace Artcore, a new alternative to Bandcamp, has officially been launched. The platform has been designed with DJs and electronic music artists in mind, and lets users sell music directly to fans and DJs.
Creators and labels can upload music directly to the platform and set their own prices, create special discount codes, and split royalties with artists or collaborators through the platform.

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Artcore’s creator, Tom Burnell, combined his background as a DJ and producer along with his 25 years of software development experience to build Artcore. His mission is “to better serve the needs of artists, fans and DJs where creators are empowered to showcase, sell and earn more fairly from their music than through other platforms and streaming services,” according to a press release.
The standard commission rate on digital sales via Artcore is 20 percent, but this can be reduced via site promotions and customer referrals. Due to this, artists can retain between 70-93 percent of their sales after Artcore’s commission and any PayPal fees.
It hosts a preview player which includes pitch control, key commands and the ability to queue multiple tracks. It also has a ‘Selected For You’ feature which compiles a list of tracks matching user-specified genre filters, and metadata including BPM and key musical information is displayed alongside tracks.
Purchased tracks can be streamed at 190kpbs or downloaded as 320kpbs MP3 and WAV files. Downloads can be batched as a zip file, and remain re-downloadable from a user’s online library. Artist and label pages are customisable with a bio, social media links and you can embed your latest music video.
There is a reduced commission rate of seven percent for those joining the platform and uploading at least one release before the 20 December 2023, which runs until the end of March 2024 as a celebration of its launch. Artcore says it can offer support for labels with large back catalogues to get their music online.
Find out more over at Artcore.
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UMG shifted Pandora royalties from SoundExchange ending Performer payoutsUniversal Music is under fire for changes it made last year in how it pays Pandora royalties to artists, shifting to contractural rates instead of having 50% of the royalty. Continue reading
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Function Loops Release FREE Vocal Philosophy And Atmospheric SFX
Function Loops has just released a couple of free sample packs called Atmospheric SFX and Vocal Philosophy – Lokka. Let’s explore both freebies from Function Loops. Atmospheric SFX Atmospheric SFX is a collection of 250 royalty-free samples and loops in 24-bit WAV format. As the name suggests, the sounds are mainly cinematic sound effects covering [...]
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Musician’s Guide to Barcodes: EAN vs. UPC vs. GTINWant to expand your brand by selling physical merchandise online and IRL retail outlets? Learning how to identify and differentiate barcodes is essential for physical sales success. by Chris Huff. Continue reading
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Beatport announce Beatport Studio service Beatport Studio brings together a collection of instruments and effects from the Plugin Boutique range with the extensive sample libraries from Loopmasters and the user-friendly workflow of Loopcloud.

Spotify’s royalty payout threshold reportedly set at 1000 streams under new rulesLast month, it was reported that Spotify will be making some major changes to its royalty payout model in a bid to combat “drains on the royalty pool” and direct more money to working artists.
Of the new measures announced, one is the introduction of a threshold of minimum annual streams before a track can start generating royalties. While the exact number of minimum streams required wasn’t specified at the time, a new source has confirmed that tracks published on Spotify will need to reach a minimum of 1,000 streams within 12 months (or over 80 streams a month) in order to begin earning royalties.

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The number was revealed by Kristin Graziani, president of music distribution platform Stem, who explains in a Consequence op-ed that the changes will help deliver on the goal of ‘getting more money into the hands of artists’.
Addressing criticisms of the new streaming threshold, Graziani says, “Critics have said that a minimum streaming threshold would harm artists at the start of their careers, but the actual policy paints a different picture.”
“1000 streams in a 12-month period accounts for, at most, $3.00 in earnings,” she explains, adding that “$3.00 is well below the threshold at which almost every distributor allows artists to transfer earnings into their own bank accounts. In other words, this is money that isn’t currently making it to artists in the first place.”
According to Graziani, it’s the distributors — not artists — who currently benefit from the millions of tiny payments that Spotify pays for content that receives a few streams per month.
“Redirecting those tiny payments can immediately increase the royalty pool by $40 million dollars each year, and that number can grow over time.”
Aside from the new streaming threshold, Spotify will also be making two other changes to its payout system: first, labels and distributors will be penalised for delivering content responsible for “fraudulent streams” and second, functional tracks (like white noise and ambient sounds) will require a longer minimum play time than music tracks to earn a royalty.
“Functional audio obviously plays an important role (it’s in the name), but I think it’s a different role than artist-driven music, and it should be compensated differently,” Graziani argues.
“These new policies acknowledge the simple truth that improving outcomes for artists goes beyond demanding bigger payouts from the DSPs. There are plenty of problems in this industry preventing money that’s already in the system from reaching artists. In addition to increasing payouts, we must plug these holes or else the same bad actors will continue to profit at the expense of artists who are none the wiser.”
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“I grew up with a grid – with visual music”: Kenny Beats says he never learned swing in his drums from jamming away on an MPCProducer Kenny Beats has opened up about how he learned swing in his drums, saying “I grew up with visual music.”
In a recent podcast with Rick Rubin, the musician says that he never learned swing in his drums from jamming away on an MPC, but rather visually from a grid.

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“For me, bounce, swing, groove, any feel – when you grew up making beats on a laptop versus recording music to tape… I see, swing and bounce visually. Yeah, I grew up with a grid, I grew up with visual music.”
Beats adds that while he’s currently interested in working with producers who can “track straight to tape” and do a whole song without a computer, growing up with a grid meant that he could always tell if something “felt off” or “just not right” when it came to certain drums.
“Like if they were too quantized”, he explains, adding that “I knew there was something not good about having everything perfect. I knew that even [when I was] young.”
Beats says that as he began producing more records, he would put the song into his DAW and “look at the drums against the grid”: “I’d look at the tempo, put the song in the right tempo; and then I’d look at where the snares and where the drums sit versus where the grid is.”
Citing the ‘Dilla swing’, for instance, the producer says that he did not pick up the style by experimenting on an MPC till he got the feel of how J Dilla actually did it.
Instead, “I would look at his drums and say ‘okay, if I zoom in to where the grid is now 1/128th. That’s the amount I’m seeing of subdivisions on the grid. If you zoom all the way out it’ll be 1/64th. If you’re looking at the entire song in a program you’re probably looking at a 1:2 or 1:1 ratio.”
“When you zoom in 1/128th, 1/256th — there’s a reason I have these memorised,” Beats adds, “because whenever you get that far, you see that the kick is exactly on the grid. The snare is 256th ahead most of the time, categorically, and the hi-hat is 1/128th behind or two grid spaces when I’m zoomed in to 1/128th.”
“That’s how I learned swing. That’s how I learned from my drums to have a certain feel.”

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Sampletrip AI-03 AI-03 is a Kontakt 5 based sample library inspired by Korg 03R/W AI synthesis module. The included presets are custom sounds that are mostly ambient, new-age, mono/polysynth... Read More

AirWindows Releases FREE ConsoleMC And ConsoleMD Plugins
Airwindows releases ConsoleMC and ConsoleMD, two free situation plugins based on the MCI mixing console. I will admit I’m not readily familiar with the mixer modeled by this suite of plugins. However, I do know that it sounds quite nice on various materials. Those in the know with audio DSP are aware of AirWindows and [...]
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Strymon Deco brings a unique guitar pedal into the DAWs for producers$79, strymon.net
During the early days of multitrack recording, artists and producers began to look for more sounds to incorporate into records. Technology during the mid-60s was limited to tape machines, physical effects and basic outboard equipment. However, this didn’t prevent the engineers of the time using the gear in incredibly ingenious ways.

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For instance, John Lennon notoriously hated recording double-tracked vocals (the process of recording the same vocal part twice to make it sound thicker). So, the engineers at EMI devised a way of creating this effect automatically by using a tape machine that wasn’t quite in sync to create micro-adjustments in timing. Shortly after, those same engineers developed the flanging effect by leaning on the corner of a tape machine to push it slightly out of sync with the signal it was doubling, creating a psychedelic comb-filtering effect on the recording.
It’s these tape-based effects that Strymon has recreated in the Deco. The Deco has been around as a hardware stompbox for many years and has quietly gained a reputation for being a sleeper pedal – an underdog pedal that people who really know what they’re doing can’t live without. Now, Strymon has released it as a $79 plugin for everyone to access.

What’s it all about?
The Deco – despite the relatively small and simple interface – does a surprisingly large amount. It’s sort-of a distortion effect, sort-of a modulation effect, sort-of a delay. It’s all of these and it’s also none of these.
Many brands have emulated the sound of tape to give digital projects a hint of the analogue (such as Waves J37 and the Universal Audio Magnetic Tape Bundle). But Strymon claims to be the first company to emulate the interaction of two tape machines in parallel. This opens up a world of sounds that a single machine can’t create due to the timing differences between them.
Sounding out
The left-hand side of Deco is for saturation – providing the analogue joy of tape emulation. One of the things that we listen for when using a plugin that offers analogue-style warmth is what the effect does before any controls have been adjusted. The Deco does an excellent job at adding some character to the sound – the high-end is softened and the lower frequencies are boosted slightly to create an instantly warmer sound.
Strymon Deco plugin slapback vocal delay settings
When dialling up the saturation knob, this starts to bring in some pleasing distortion to the signal and adds some harmonics that thicken and enhance. The dials all go from 0 to 255; it’s not quite clear what the scale is here, but we find ourselves adjusting by ear, so the numbers don’t impede the workflow.
At low to medium settings, the control adds subtle warmth and from the halfway point upwards, this increases into overdrive and distortion. Depending on the source, the desired level of saturation will vary – subtle warmth sounds tasteful on vocals, whereas crunchy and slammed sounds spectacular on drums.
The saturation side also contains a tone control, a master volume, and a particularly useful Low Trim control. Handily, this rolls off some of the low-end rumble that can end up in the processed signal as a result of the saturation and tape emulation.
Doubling up
The right-hand side of the plugin is the double-tracking side, where modulation and delay controls can be found. The most important control is the lag time. This adjusts the synchronisation (or indeed, lack of synchronisation) between the two tape machines and ranges from -0.3 right through to a massive 500ms on what feels like a logarithmic scale. If you want an exact number of milliseconds, you can double-click on the readout and type in your desired lag time – but we never need this; it’s accurate enough by ear and eye.
Strymon Deco plugin drum saturation settings
The automatic double-tracking creates that thick, slightly chorused effect you’d expect. It sounds most realistic around 25ms, with 30ms or more sounding a little too much like a dedicated chorus. One of the nice touches that Strymon has included is the option to have a widened stereo image when using the track in stereo. By pressing a little button on the screen, the plugin hard-pans the two versions of the audio for a wider double-tracked effect – we find this the most pleasing of the double-tracking sounds.
Modulation, modulation
Because the earliest forms of delay and flanger were created using tape machines, the Deco can achieve these effects but with limited functionality. The auto-flanger is simply either on or off and sets all the plugin controls to create the perfect flanging tone. This sounds exactly as one might expect, but it would be nicer if Strymon hadn’t greyed out the controls to allow adjustment to taste from their dialled-in auto setting, without having to recreate the effect from scratch to achieve this level of control.
The delay functionality works by increasing the lag time into audible gaps. There is a sync button with some functional subdivisions, and other patterns can be found manually. However, because this plugin is emulating two tape machines and not a tape delay, there’s no feedback control. Therefore, you can only get one repeat. Perfect for slapback, but less useful for more ambient sounds.

This is a superb-sounding plugin that does what Strymon claims exceptionally well. It adds pleasing tape saturation and can create automatic double tracking well, and the additional sounds are a bonus.
In pedal form, the features in the Deco are unrivalled. However, in a plugin, it’s more tricky to recommend unreservedly. We can’t think of a direct rival for the Deco as a whole, but there are other plugins that specialise in each of the individual elements. Waves and Universal Audio both offer class-leading tape emulation, FabFilter and Soundtoys offer amazing saturation plugins, while iZotope and Antares cover double tracking. The Deco has stiff competition, even though it offers incredible value for money.
Key features

Tape emulation
Saturation
Double tracking
Flanging & modulation
Simple delay

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FabFilter release Pro-R 2 reverb plug-in The latest version of FabFilter’s popular reverb plug-in introduces two new reverb algorithms, full immersive audio support with channel layouts up to 9.1.6, impulse response import capabilities and much more.