Bootlegs, covers, and scammers: inside Slushii’s fight to reclaim digital ownershipIf having a hit viral song is the dream, then seeing your track go viral with someone else’s name on it must be the nightmare. Julian Scanlan had just such an experience.

READ MORE: Tycho’s $160,000 studio collection is flying off Reverb’s shelves

Better known as Slushii, the producers’ anime-inflected dance tunes have made him a favourite in EDM circles since the release of his full-length debut, Out of Light, in 2017.
However, Julian has a second creative outlet – the more ambient and experimental, sapientdream. It was under this moniker that he uploaded a bootlegged remix of BØRNS’ Past Lives, unwittingly kicking off a chain of events that would see the song garner 40 million daily views on YouTube, 140 million cumulative streams on Spotify, and somewhere north of 2 billion views on TikTok.
Quite an achievement for a song Julian says he originally released online for free and then forgot about.
“I initially heard Past Lives through an advert for iPhone X,” he recalls. “They did a campaign where they use just the intro vocoder part.” That minimalist rendition of BØRNS’ mega hit left Julian feeling inspired to make his own version. He eventually uploaded the resulting track as a bootlegged remix during the pandemic, “as a kind of therapy.”
“I kind of went renegade, against my team’s wishes, and leaked the sapientdream music out there,” he admits. “But, it ended up being for the best because somehow, someway, it gained traction on all these platforms.”
Slushii. Image: Jennica Abrams
Crucially, Julian says that while he sampled BØRNS without permission, he uploaded his remix without any intention to monetise it. It was months later that he discovered the track had been monetised, just not by him.
“I started looking on Spotify and I saw that another artist had distributed my remix,” Julian recalls. “When it initially went viral, there were 200,000 unique videos of the song. I was scrolling through YouTube Shorts, and every two or three Shorts was my version of Past Lives.”
Julian was left with deeply conflicted emotions regarding the track’s viral success. On the one hand, his work was being heard and shared on a massive scale; on the other hand, there were worrying legal and ethical implications.
“At that point, I was very afraid,” he says. “I had initially released that remix for free during the pandemic, and then this guy went ahead and just ripped it off of YouTube and distributed it to Spotify; not only breaking BØRNS’ copyright, but also taking my intellectual property. So, it ended up being extra uncool.”
With his remix spreading like wildfire on streaming platforms and social media, Julian began the daunting task of reclaiming copyright over the song. Working with record label, Trap Nation, they began the slow process of matching all versions of the track across the internet and issuing takedown requests.
Slushii. Image: Jennica Abrams
However, that was only the first step. The original bootlegged upload had featured an unauthorised sample of BØRNS’ voice and to legally monetize the track, Julian and Trap Nation produced a new, official cover version of the song.
“I recorded the vocals myself,” he says. “I’ve always had a love for vocoders, so mimicking it only took about an hour while I was packing for a flight.”
After years seeing his remix attributed to other producers and monetized against his wishes, the new version has now been released under both the artist’s Slushii and sapientdream aliases. While the process leading up to this point has been an unusual and complex one, Julian says it has ultimately all been worth it: “I’m over the moon. I feel so vindicated that people can finally see it’s by me – for years, I’ve gone under the radar and it feels good to be appreciated.”
At the same time, Julian hasn’t lost sight of his remix’s origins as a bootleg and has no plans to fight if the song’s original composer comes knocking: “For me, it’s never really been about monetary gain. If Interscope Records comes to us tomorrow and says ‘we want all of the money that you’re getting from the version with BØRNS vocals’ then that’s cool. I’m just happy that the song was able to have a second life.”
Slushii. Image: Jennica Abrams
While Past Lives was released under both of his artistic aliases, moving forward, Julian says he now sees a much firmer line separating the sapientdream and Slushii projects.
“Now, I’m able to differentiate what’s going to be a Slushii song and what’s going to be sapientdream song. Before, it was like playing with a new can of paint – but now I can actually mix the colours.
Fans won’t have to wait long to hear those new colours, as Julian says a new sapientdream album – his fourth – is nearly completed. In addition to that, Julian is currently in the process of founding his own record label – Sonic Dream. “I want to use it as a platform,” he says. “Not only to release my music, but to sign people who are musically like-minded and to create our own wave.”
Moreover, Julian says the label is part of a larger desire to pass along information, pay forward his own success, and nurture young talent. “I understand my role in the scene now, and I’m beginning to find my tribe of producers. I think once the seed is planted, and you bloom, then it’s your responsibility to keep it going for the next generation; I don’t believe in gatekeeping, I believe there’s really room at the top for everybody.”
The post Bootlegs, covers, and scammers: inside Slushii’s fight to reclaim digital ownership appeared first on MusicTech.

Positive Grid BIAS FX 2 Standard offer In celebration of the International Day of Peace, the offer is only valid throughout today, 21 September 2023.

RELEASE DETAILS
Release title:
For my satisfaction (Deluxe)
Main artist name:
Faygoplexine
Release date:
5th Jan, 2024
https://publme.lnk.to/FormysatisfactionDeluxeVersion
#newmusic #Release #Music #indepedent #artist #experimental #RnB

Automation in music: What it is and 5 creative ways to use it
From shape-shifting reverbs to bouncing stereo effects, we explore just a few of the infinite ways you can use automation to achieve unique sounds.

Tycho reveals new album for 2024 with collab features from Kaelin EllisScott Hansen, the brains behind electronic music project Tycho, has shared with MusicTech the news of an upcoming album for 2024.
READ MORE: Tycho’s $160,000 studio collection is flying off Reverb’s shelves: Why he’s selling and what to expect from his 2024 album
The reveal follows hot on the heels of Tycho’s recent single, Time To Run, which Hansen said in a new MusicTech interview was created with 25-year-old multi-instrumentalist and producer Kaelin Ellis.

“The impetus for that song was this drum part by [producer, multi-instrumentalist and streamer] Kaelin Ellis,” says Hansen. “I just got really into his drumming, so I worked with him on the drums for [Time To Run]. And he has this looser style; I’m used to rigid rhythmic structures I’ve been doing in the past, and more like indie-rock-type drums. So it’s cool to work with a different kind of pattern.”
Hansen adds that there are more tracks featuring Ellis, and that “a set of three songs kind of live in the same space as Time To Run.”
“There are three songs that live in darker [space],” he says. “Like if we kept doing stuff like Epoch, and then there’s some very Tycho original, kind of like Dive and Past Is Prologue era stuff. It feels like it’s a nice balance of stuff from different eras. But it all feels evolved.”
Hansen also details the story of how he met Ellis, who’s cultivated a strong fanbase online following his regular Twitch music production streams, his feature on Mass Appeal’s Rhythm Roulette, and six albums of jazz-funk and hip-hop.

“Reverb wanted to bring somebody who was using a Minimoog clone into my studio, where I had a real Minimoog, and just like, show them around the real thing and have them play it. And that was Kaelin. I didn’t even know him!
“So they had him come out and we just connected that day. And I was like, ‘Man, I’m working on this album. Why don’t you come back out to my studio?’ And he did. So yeah, that was really cool.”
Hansen has recruited mix engineer, Grizzly Bear’s Christopher Taylor will also be working on the new Tycho album. This will be the first time since Dive that mix engineer Count will not be working on a Tycho album.
Full details on the new Tycho album are scarce, but Hansen believes it will be ready for a Spring 2024 release.
The post Tycho reveals new album for 2024 with collab features from Kaelin Ellis appeared first on MusicTech.

International financial group finds gaps in digital euro legislative packageThe Institute of International Finance looked at seven areas where digital euro legislation, which is being developed alongside the technology, is lacking.

More music streaming price rises – now!They're coming soon – mark our words...
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Betweened wants to teach kids how to use social media, not shut them out of itKeeping kids off social media is idealistic at best, and giving them access to it opens a Pandora’s box of privacy concerns.

Tycho’s $160,000 studio collection is flying off Reverb’s shelves: Why he’s selling and what to expect from his 2024 albumDon’t worry, synth nerds and gearheads. Tycho has a dangerous lust for vintage and extravagant music equipment, too. But the esteemed electronica producer, real name Scott Hansen, is being bold: he’s listing over 100 pieces of his studio treasures on Reverb.com from today (20 Sept). Why? Is he retiring from music-making after 25 years in the game? Not even close. He just wants to give these coveted artefacts a better home.
“I started to get this weird sense of guilt,” Hansen says from his California studio “Like, I’m sitting here on this amazing thing that somebody could put to use and do something awesome with. Instead, it’s sitting in a closet, decaying away.”
READ MORE: “Always record ideas on your phone. Whether they’re good or bad – decide that later”: Basement Jaxx’s tips for aspiring producers
Sadly, he’s not giving them away for free. The collection of alluring hardware – from synths such as the Korg Trident, Sequential Prophet 5, and Moog Voyager to outboard like his beloved Ursa Major Stargate 626 reverb and Roland RE-201 Space Echo – totals more than $160,000. That also includes the $31,254 Oberheim FVS-1 and $15,626 Neve 84 mixer. These were all used on his seminal albums: 2011’s Dive, 2014’s Awake, and 2017’s Grammy-nominated Epoch. And, at the time of writing, he’s already sold over 30 pieces of gear.
Tycho’s studio gear from 2020. Image: Tycho
It’s not like he won’t miss these musical companions. But in creating his upcoming album, which he tells us is set for release in Spring 2024, Hansen realised that his sonic palette is now “limitless” after diving even deeper into plugins and software.
“There’s just so many options,” he says. “And I’m definitely a plugin junkie; my gear lust has switched from hardware to software. I’ve used a lot of software in the past it’s not like I just started using software instruments. But I force myself to…if there’s a software equivalent of a tool or an instrument, I’m going to use that instead of the hardware, no matter what.”
Despite Hansen’s favourite instrument being his Minimoog, for example, he’s found himself using Universal Audio’s version more than the real thing. “That’s the sad thing – Universal Audio came out with its Minimoog emulation and, it’s sacrilege to say it but, I like it more. It ended up serving me well on this record.”
Don’t be fooled, though – there’s no way he’s giving up his Minimoog. “No, absolutely not,” he says with a chuckle. “I don’t care if I never use it again. It’s too sentimental.”

With so much hardware and software he’s racked up, we wonder how the producer decides what gear to invest in next. “I’m always just looking for the Holy Grail of sound or something,” he laughs. “[The gear] is either a shortcut to the sound that I want or it can make a sound that I’ve never heard anywhere else.
“I was never a musician,” Hansen continues. “I came to music through musical equipment. I could probably be pretty fulfilled just messing around with gear and never finishing a song. If I didn’t have to for my job, you know?”
Thankfully, Hansen is clearly capable of finishing tracks and albums. With the cult success of his ever-replayable albums, fans are sure to be stoked for new music in 2024. After his 2020 album Simulcast, Tycho moved studio and his workflow changed with so much of his gear going into storage.
“I wanted this album to be flexible in the mix stages. I was always limited by the decisions I made in the moment with hardware equipment,” explains Hansen.
“I’ve finally got around to learning ReaLearn, which is an add-on script in Reaper, for super-deep integration with plugins and controllers. And so it gives you this ability to have a Minimoog [plugin] and really feel the tactile experience of playing when it’s actually software and a controller.”
Hansen says he got a “ton of new plugins” since Simulcast, after being a little “out of the loop” on which ones were worth copping.
“It felt like something major happened between, like, 2015 and 2020, where plugins finally made it to the point where it’s like…Man, if you can hear the difference between a software emulation and the hardware, good for you,” Hansen says. “But this isn’t about the sound anymore. They did it. The argument of sound is over, it’s just more about workflow. So that was when I was like, ‘Well, I don’t care because I love working with computers. And I’m not old-school where I need to be turning all these knobs.’

“So it was just about using as many plugins as I could and figuring out which developers I liked,” he continues. “Now, when I look at plugins, the only thing I’m looking for is a novel approach or a sound that I can’t get anywhere else. Ujam’s stuff is interesting because their plugins sound like nothing I’ve ever heard and that’s compelling to me. But do we need another Roland Juno emulation? Like, Softube’s Model 84 – that’s it! I don’t need another one.”
Alongside new gear and processes comes new collaborators, too. The album’s lead single, Time To Run, comes with an unexpected new collab partner. “The impetus for that song was this drum part by [producer, multi-instrumentalist and streamer] Kaelin Ellis. I just got really into his drumming, so I worked with him on the drums for [Time To Run]. And he has this like, looser style; I’m used to rigid rhythmic structures I’ve been doing in the past, and more like indie-rock-type drums. So it’s cool to work with a different kind of pattern.”

As it happens, Reverb.com also lent a hand in introducing Ellis to Tycho. Hansen and Reverb had been discussing the gear sale for almost three years, developing a pretty close relationship. Separately, the marketplace was planning to create a video to promote the sale of a Minimoog reissue and found Hansen and Ellis as the perfect candidates.
“Reverb wanted to bring somebody who was using a Minimoog clone into my studio, where I had a real Minimoog, and just like, show them around the real thing and have them play it. And that was Kaelin. I didn’t even know him!
“So they had him come out and we just connected that day. And I was like, ‘Man, I’m working on this album. Why don’t you come back out to my studio?’ And he did. So yeah, that was really cool.”

According to Hansen, though he keeps the album’s details close to his chest, the material can be categorised into sets of three. “I’d say there’s a set of three songs that kind of live in the same space as Time To Run. There are three songs that live in darker [space], like if we kept doing stuff like Epoch, and then there’s some very Tycho original, kind of like Dive and Past Is Prologue era stuff. It feels like it’s a nice balance of stuff from different eras. But it all feels evolved.”
Until then, we wonder how he’s going to feel when his cherished studio gear goes into new studios for other artists to create with. “You know, I really appreciate my time with it. And I’ll always remember it. But I think it’s time – you got to keep things fresh, you know?”
Check out the official Tycho Reverb shop.
The post Tycho’s $160,000 studio collection is flying off Reverb’s shelves: Why he’s selling and what to expect from his 2024 album appeared first on MusicTech.

Grainge and Huffington Host Music + Health SummitSir Lucian Grainge, Chairman and CEO of Universal Music Group (UMG), and Arianna Huffington, CEO, Thrive Global hosted the MUSIC + HEALTH summit in Los Angeles, in association with Havas Health. The focus of the event was exploring the direct relationships between music and health, discussing recent research that has documented music’s therapeutic and medical benefits, showcasing innovators integrating music into products and services devoted to fitness and wellbeing, and introducing some of the new applications of technology that are helping to harness it. 

The event brought together leading experts from across the fields of music, science, health & well-being, fitness and technology including legendary nine-time Grammy-winning producer, and recent author of ‘The Creative Act: A Way of Being’ Rick Rubin, in conversation with Dean Willow Bay on Creativity, Music & Wellbeing. Panel discussions featured prominent voices from science and medicine including Dr. Lisa Miller, Dr. Daniel Levitin, Dr. Assal Habibi, Jaron Lanier and neurosurgeon and scholar Dr. Ali Rezai. Closing the event was a special conversation between Sir Lucian Grainge, Arianna Huffington and singer, businesswoman and actress Selena Gomez on music for mental health. 

Speaking at the event, Sir Lucian Grainge said, “Throughout my life, I have experienced countless examples of how music can change people’s mood, comfort them in times of emotional crisis, or even help them physically. At Universal, I wanted this powerful relationship between music and health to not simply be a series of anecdotal observations, I want it to be a key component of our strategy, so we can really put music to work in ways it has never been used before. As a company, we are fundamentally rooted in the belief that music is a powerful force for good, and now we have the science and technology—with AI and therapeutics and more— to help accelerate these developments. It really is one of the most interesting and exciting new frontiers for music.”

Arianna Huffington, Founder & CEO, Thrive Global said, “Music has always been a moving force throughout human history. And our goal with the conference was to move beyond anecdotes and highlight the science and the applications which confirm the power of music to impact our mental and physical health. We’re thrilled to partner with Universal Music Group to put this into practice by licensing Universal music for Thrive Reset, our 60-second stress reducing product that uses music and breathing to help move users from the sympathetic to the parasympathetic nervous system in just one minute. Universal’s catalog will make Thrive Resets more engaging, personalized and joyful to drive even greater behavior change through our platform, helping people reduce stress and connect each day with what they love about their lives. As we learned today from neuroscientists, historians, doctors and entrepreneurs, we’re just getting started with all of the ways we can leverage music, both for preventive health and to augment medical treatment, and I am looking forward to using today’s conference to accelerate this growing movement of music and health.” 

In recent years, UMG has led the industry in exploring creative and commercial opportunities for music to play an even greater role in health & well-being, licensing its catalog of music to more than 40+ companies across the field. Today UMG’s music is not only being used to soundtrack fitness, mental well-being, relaxation and meditation, but also harnessed to be used alongside treatment for a broad array of serious/chronic medical conditions including Stroke and Traumatic Brain Injury recovery, Alzheimer’s, Dementia, Parkinson’s, Anxiety, sleep and mental healthconditions, among others.

During the event, UMG announced a new partnership with Arianna Huffington’s Thrive Global, that will see UMG become the exclusive music partner for their Thrive Reset stress reduction product featuring music and breathing. In 2016, Huffington launched Thrive to help individuals, companies, and communities improve their well-being and performance – and debunk the collective delusion that burnout is the price we must pay for success. Since then, Thrive has been working to bring its AI-powered behavior change technology platform and Thrive Microsteps – small, science-backed steps to improve health and productivity – to employees at more than 125 organizations in 140 countries, from frontline and call center workers to executives at multinational companies.

The day featured a presentation from MedRhythms co-founder and CEO Brian Harris, to discuss their product’s innovative usage of music as medicine, helping patients learn to walk again after debilitating strokes. Their InTandem device was recently listed with the FDA as the world's first prescription digital therapeutic product that uses music. In the device UMG recordings are played based on data that the service algorithm receives from sensors the patient wears on their body. The sensors monitor the user's gait and positioning and play the "right" music to fit each patient's current walking ability. 

During the event, UMG announced that it was licensing innovative digital therapeutic company soundBrilliance, providing selections from its catalog for use in closed clinical trials for music and health research. These trials will use music, psychology, & measurement techniques to create tools & exercises which empower people to better self-manage the fundamentals of health: emotional balance, fitness, quality sleep and pain control. UMG also introduced Sollos, its forthcoming music-centric wellness app that uses cognitive science and proprietary audio technology to support focus, relaxation and sleep.

The day featured a performance and conversation with Republic Records’ artist Chelsea Cutler, Breathing Session and performance from Decca Records’ Pianist and composer Chad Lawson and panel appearances from UMG partners including Apple Fitness +, Endel, Music Care, Universal Production Music, Thrive Reset and Havas Health’sWelltainment panel, a look at music’s power to help end the health equity crisis. 

UMG is not only the world-leader in music-based entertainment, but has a historical track record of technological, scientific and medical innovation, dating back to the beginning of the 20th Century. These include significant breakthroughs in the fields of sound recording, television, radar, computing and in medicine – most notably for the invention of the CT scanner, the pioneering X-Ray technology that heralded a new era in medical diagnostics. In 1979, in recognition for its impact to global health, EMI engineer Godfrey Hounsfield was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his role in its development.

Soundiron Sitarion Sitarion is a powerful virtual electric sitar library designed to harmonize tradition and innovation. Chithrinie Nirupama sampled her beautiful custom sitar built by luthier Sanjay Rikhi... Read More

Proposed US bill would allow indie artists to negotiate collectively with streaming services, AI companiesThe Protect Working Musicians Act of 2023 was introduced on Tuesday (September 19)
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RELEASE DETAILS
Release title:
Rhyme Felony
Main artist name:
Sina Arpa,Ahorock
Release date:
13th Feb, 2021
https://publme.lnk.to/RhymeFelony
#newmusic #Release #Music #indepedent #artist #hiphop