SoundMagic Releases FREE Piano One Special Edition
SoundMagic releases Piano One Special Edition, an updated version of their freeware piano virtual instrument. Here we are with yet another free piano, and it’s a new version of an already existing freebie. However, don’t let that dissuade you from picking up Piano One Special Edition, as we’ll cover why it is a stellar instrument. [...]
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Zrythm Is A FREE DAW That Offers 25 Tracks
Zrythm DAW is a copyleft, open-source digital audio workstation. The free version of the software offers up to 25 audio tracks per project. There are scads of free synths, effects, samples, and what have you readily available on the web. Free DAWs are an entirely different matter, as the available options are far more limited. [...]
View post: Zrythm Is A FREE DAW That Offers 25 Tracks

How To Make Beats: A Quick Beat Making Guide For Beginners
We’re in the golden age of music production at home, so it’s easier than ever to start making your own beats on a computer. But as a beginner music producer, learning how to make beats can be confusing. Today we’ll do a quick outline of how to make a beat from start to finish. So, [...]
View post: How To Make Beats: A Quick Beat Making Guide For Beginners

Game audio is different. When a player is engaging with a nearby on-screen vehicle in a video game, the auditory experience is totally reliant on the behaviors of the player and the game world. Video game audio is in a creative league of its own, especially when compared to audio in linear mediums such as film.
#Game #Audio #musicproduction #SFX #3d #Education

Musicians are brands. Musicians as artistic agencies, how that grows overall music revenues by Music X.
#Musicians #independent #Music #trends #Agency #PublMe

Ginger Audio Releases GroundControl Sphere
Ginger Audio releases GroundControl Sphere, a multichannel audio routing app for macOS. Over the past few years, we’ve seen a few GroundControl releases from Ginger Audio, including Room and Caster. Sphere is the latest version of GroundControl, and it supports Dolby Atmos speaker layouts from 2.0 to 9.1.6, making it ideal for any surround sound [...]
View post: Ginger Audio Releases GroundControl Sphere

New rules in Europe to curb Big Tech’s market power start to applyGAFAM giants will have marked their calendars today as the Digital Markets Act (DMA), the European Union’s plan to curb the market power of Big Tech, now technically applies, after entering into force last November.
The next major milestone is a few months out, in early fall, when the Commission will confirm which of the usual suspect tech giants will be subject to the bloc’s shiny new ex ante competition regulation regime. But tech giants are facing a busy summer to prepare their regional compliance strategies.
Quick recap: The DMA applies a fixed set of obligations to so-called Internet “gatekeepers” who meet specific, cumulative criteria: Firstly they must operate at least one “core platform service” (these include online search engines, social networking services, app stores, certain messaging services, virtual assistants, web browsers, operating systems and online intermediation services).
Secondly they must be of a large enough size and entrenched market position to fall under the regime. This means reporting annual revenue in the European Economic Area that hit or exceeded €7.5 billion in each of the last three financial years; or else having an average market capitalisation “or equivalent fair market value” that amounted to at least €75BN in the last financial year, as well as providing a core platform service in at least three EU Member States.
Gatekeepers must also be an “important gateway for business users towards final consumers”, as the Commission puts it — which the DMA considers to be the case if the company in question operates a core platform service with 45M+ monthly active end users in the EU and more than 10,000 yearly active EU business users in the last financial year.
Lastly, an entrenched and durable position is presumed if the company met the other criteria in each of the last three financial years. Although the Commission may also apply a subset of DMA rules to companies it suspects will soon become gatekeepers.
Certain big names will very obviously hit the DMA threshold (Apple, Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft seem entirely safe bets for being deemed gatekeepers). But we’ll have to wait a few months to see if the full list contains any surprises.
And on that front, European music streaming giant Spotify clearly isn’t expecting to be one of them…  but, er, let’s see!

This is big. Totally agree with @vestager that the internet was never built to be controlled by a small number of dominant players. Effective enforcement is critical because we've watched Apple try to skirt the rules around the world. Here's our take – https://t.co/PnzglOaafZ. https://t.co/QL61DIonn7
— Daniel Ek (@eldsjal) May 2, 2023

“Now that the DMA applies, potential gatekeepers that meet the quantitative thresholds established have until July 3 to notify their core platform services to the Commission. The Commission will then have 45 working days (until September 6, 2023) to decide whether the company meets the thresholds and to designate gatekeepers. Following their designation, gatekeepers will have six months (i.e. until March 6, 2024) to comply with the requirements in the DMA,” the Commission writes in a press release.
If you’re feeling a sense of deja vu, that’s probably because EU lawmakers recently designated 19 very large online platforms (VLOPs) that are subject to the DMA’s sister regulation, the Digital Services Act (DSA), which reboots the bloc’s ecommerce governance regime.

Europe names 19 platforms that must report algorithmic risks under DSA

It’s likely some of the same companies which have already been named VLOPs under the DSA will also be designated gatekeepers under the DMA — meaning they will accrue additional “specific obligations”, on top of the algorithmic transparency requirements demanded by the DSA.
The DMA’s operational “dos and don’ts” are distinctly targeted at ensuring digital markets stay “open and contestable” by enforcing a fixed set of behavioral conditions on gatekeepers that are intended to curb familiar anti-competitive actions.
Examples of DMA obligations include limits on how gatekeeping platforms can use third party data along with requirements they provide third parties with data on usage their apps generate; bans on self-preferencing and on indelible default apps or settings being forced on consumers; interoperability requirements, including for gatekeeping messenger services; requirements that app stores do not block sideloading nor require developers to use their own services (e.g. payment systems); and a ban on tracking users for targeted ads without consent, among other conditions.
The bulk of the list speaks to the Commission’s experience in past Big Tech antitrust cases, such as several EU enforcements against Google. However there were some later additions, by co-legislators in the Parliament and Council, such as messaging interoperability (which caught many by surprise), as well as limits on tracking ads.
Some similar types of conditions have already been enforced on some tech giants in certain EU markets, using existing competition powers. Such as the Netherlands — which last year forced Apple to allow developers of dating apps to choose to use alternative payment systems.
While Germany has been ahead of the ex ante curve domestically, after it updated its own competition regime back at the start of 2021 — and already has some enforcements on a number of tech giants it has designated as having “paramount significance” for competition locally (such as Google).
Enforcement of EU data protection law is also finally cutting into Meta’s ability to force behavioral ads on users. So we’ve had a taster of bigger things to come when the DMA is firing on all cylinders.
The big change here is that the conditions apply up-front — so the idea is to proactively regulate digital giants that have the power to set rules on others that need to access their core platform services and force them to be supportive of competition and sensitive to consumer needs (rather than just favoring themselves); instead of antitrust regulators having to spend years investigating and amassing evidence of abuses to make cases against bad behavior before it can be stopped, typically long after the harm has been entrenched, as has been the case in most of Europe under classical (ex post) competition rules.
That said, the pan-EU regulation will take some time to spin up. And there are continuing concerns about resourcing and how prepared the Commission is to screw its courage to the sticking place and take on such a hefty oversight role leaning on some of the most powerful platforms in the world.
Time will tell how much pushback the DMA gets from tech giants accustomed to (mostly) operating how they like and/or lobbying like the damned when lawmakers suggest making changes that might get in the way of their money-minting machines. It also remains to be seen how willing the Commission is to stick to its guns and robustly enforce a new digital world order (especially as looming EU elections will reconfigure the bloc’s political power structures next year, including by bringing in new leaders who may not be as committed to the approach as those that drafted the DMA).
We for sure won’t seen any enforcements on gatekeepers until next Spring — since those designated in September will have six months to get their house in order. But we may see some operational changes in preparation for the new rules. And possibly whole new business models emerging down the line as, for example, consentless ad tracking becomes less and less viable for major social media giants. Lots of legal action to test the boundaries and mettle of the DMA also looks inevitable. So the next few years in Europe are set to be filled with interesting new power struggles.
Over in the UK, which left the bloc following the Brexit referendum vote, the government also recently signalled it will move forward with an ex ante reboot of its own to tackle anti-competitive tech giants. The approach being suggested there is for bespoke (tailored) conditions, per platform, on those with “strategic market significance”, rather than fixed obligations for all in-scope giants.

Europe says yes to messaging interoperability as it agrees on major new regime for Big Tech

European parliament backs ‘historic’ reboot to EU’s digital rulebook

New rules in Europe to curb Big Tech’s market power start to apply by Natasha Lomas originally published on TechCrunch

Wreak havoc on your favorite streamer’s game with Crowd ControlYou’re streaming the Sims to your loyal Twitch followers, when suddenly, a fire ignites in the middle of your virtual home. As you scramble to put out the fire before the Sim firefighters arrive, another flame appears out of nowhere. In the Twitch chat, your fans are giggling — they have caused quite the ruckus in your Sim neighborhood, but as a creator, you get the last laugh. You just got paid.
With support for more than 100 popular games, Crowd Control changes the way that streamers engage their fans, while also unlocking fun new ways to make money. Through reverse engineering these games, Crowd Control has created user-friendly apps and plug-ins that let fans pay to trigger an event on a creator’s livestream. So, as a fan, you can summon enemies in Minecraft, spawn a rare, shiny Pokémon in Pokémon Emerald, or make the creator’s avatar tiny in Resident Evil 4. You could use your micropayment to make a creator’s gameplay more difficult, or if you’re nice, you can give them a boost to help them out of a sticky situation.
Over 70,000 creators have already used Crowd Control, which started out as a Twitch-only app. Now, with the release of its 2.0 beta, the app is now available on YouTube, TikTok, Discord and Facebook Gaming.
“It’s been a long road of technical hurdles and experiments,” CEO Matthew “Jaku” Jakubowski told TechCrunch. “We have a really cool solution that just will work on just about any platform.”

Jaku founded Warp World, the parent to Crowd Control, after leaving his job as director of cybersecurity at Uptake. Warp World has developed other wide-reaching video game projects like Turnip.Exchange, which was all the rage when Animal Crossing: New Horizons was at its peak popularity, but Crowd Control is by far its largest technical undertaking. So far, Warp World has raised a round of seed funding.

An obvious risk for any startup that iterates on other platforms is getting rendered obsolete by those platforms themselves. Linktree, for example, was valued at $1.3 billion last year, but now, the company might be sweating: Instagram rolled out support for up to five links-in-bio. Even though Crowd Control doesn’t have any of its technology patented, Jaku doesn’t think other companies could catch up.
“For someone to build a similar sort of service at the speed that we have, and the library that we have… It will take some time,” he said. “I think we’re in a good spot where we’ve established ourselves in the field for over four years.”
If a game is not part of Crowd Control’s library, developers can now implement fan-controlled interactions in their games with Crowd Control’s developer plug-in, which is compatible with any game built on Unity, Unreal Engine, Game Maker Studio and other engines.
“With the developers building out this sort of stuff, it means reaching thousands of creators pretty much instantly,” Jaku said. “Increasing replayability is always huge for gamers or developers — they want that screen time.” He said that a typical Unity developer could probably make their game compatible with Crowd Control within a few weeks, but he’s also seen developers pull it off in a weekend.
As of now, Crowd Control keeps 20% of fans’ payments to creators, which is the standard split for Twitch plug-ins. But now, as a multi-platform app, Crowd Control seems to be getting around Twitch’s cut through a coin system. Other creator platforms like Fanhouse have taken similar steps to circumvent App Store fees and maximize creators’ profits.
“So, $100 is $100 of coins,” Jaku explained. “Instead of those coins only being available on one channel, that viewer will now have $100 worth of coins that they could spend on any channel.”
Crowd Control only has a team of ten, but most of them have been creators themselves at some point. Jaku himself started streaming Super Mario Maker on Twitch in 2015 and climbed the ranks to become a Twitch Partner. Then, he built the software that inspired Crowd Control to spice up his Borderlands 2 streams in 2018.
“We’re a passionate team,” Jaku said. “Everything we do is for the creators.”
Wreak havoc on your favorite streamer’s game with Crowd Control by Amanda Silberling originally published on TechCrunch

Grimes offers AI creators a 50% royalty split for using her voiceGrimes is embracing AI music at a time when most other major artists and their labels are pushing the panic button with an offer to split royalties with any AI. Continue reading
The post Grimes offers AI creators a 50% royalty split for using her voice appeared first on Hypebot.

Hello Zagreb and Tekuno startup on NEAR.
#crypto #NEAR #Blockchain #NFTs #Web3

PSI Audio AVAA C214 active bass trap PSI Audio's latest active bass trap uses digital processing to offer a wider absorption bandwidth and more compact form factor than the original C20.

Free 3D panner for Mac (Transpanner).
#free #spatialaudio #plugin

Vicious Antelope S1 - Massive X S1 soundset for Massive X synth contains 50 sci-fi polysynths with experimental character. They fit for genres like sci-fi thematic music, cinematic, electronica and Synthwave. Massive... Read More