Cybercriminals claim breach of Oracle PeopleSoft servers at 100-plus organizationsThe ShinyHunters hacking gang claims to have compromised the Oracle PeopleSoft servers of more than 100 organizations, including many universities.

Bitcoin miner margins fall to record low: Will BTC’s $60K floor hold?Bitcoin miner profits recently fell to record lows, while Bitcoin struggles to hold the $60,000 floor. Should traders be worried?

Safely Using Old EV Batteries in Your Home Solar SetupAs straightforward as the concept of taking battery packs out of an old electric or hybrid car and reusing them for home power storage sounds, this thought process skips a few essential steps. As argued by [Ed] in a recent video based on his own experiences with high-voltage Nissan Leaf batteries in a home PV system, the main problem is that you’re taking a battery out of a larger system including a lot of the management hardware and software.
The referenced Battery Emulator project is an open source effort to create a suitable interface between these EV batteries, with the mentioned Nissan Leaf being just one example in the project Wiki, with the connection scheme shown in the top image. It’s also noted that the Leaf battery BMS is not designed to operate continuously, so they need to be restarted every day or so lest they become too inaccurate.
These and other things are all solid reasons why you have to be absolutely certain that you want to integrate these high-voltage battery packs into your 12 – 48V low-voltage DC system. You’re after all assuming all the responsibility of setting up a system that’s both safe and reliable, so having a good read through something like the Battery Emulator Wiki and sourcing first-hand experiences from the folk in this community would be a very wise first step.

Fender Studio Pro 8.1 puts an AI assistant and Moises stem separation inside the DAW
Fender Studio Pro has received the 8.1 update, offering a brand-new AI assistant (public beta) and Moises Studio integration. As if we haven’t talked about Fender enough recently, here we are again with the legendary manufacturer as the topic of the day. This time, we’re not talking about guitars or lawsuits, well, not directly, anyway. [...]
View post: Fender Studio Pro 8.1 puts an AI assistant and Moises stem separation inside the DAW

Jai’Len Josey Signs With Def Jam RecordingsDate Signed: March 2026 Label: Def Jam RecordingsType of Music: R&B, Soul-PopManagement: Taryn Anchrum - Top Ten Management; Al Branch - The Blueprint Group; Anastasia Wright - Imperial Marketing GroupBooking: Michelle Martinez, Josh Sanchez - WMELegal: Dorna TaylorPublicity: Bryan Pierce, Humbert Luna, Becky McElrath - 1964 AgencyA&R: Drew Corria - Def Jam; Laurne Munroe - Sony Music Publishing; Taryn Anchrum - Top Ten Management LLCWeb: jailenjosey.com

Jai’Len Josey is a force to be reckoned with. Being a triple threat —songwriter, singer, and actress—made her a desirable asset. Cynthia Erivo became aware of the Broadway star while producing a stage show in which Josey was performing. Erivo subsequently became a mentor. Josey knew about Erivo getting into music, so she voiced her desire to make similar waves. 

As luck would have it, Erivo was friends with screenwriter Lena Waithe. The creator of Showtime’s The Chi had a label with Def Jam, Hillman Grad Records, a perfect fit for the diva in the making. Josey signed with them in June 2021.

Two years later, the label dissolved. “Long story short, they took me straight under Def Jam,” says the R&B powerhouse hailing from Atlanta. While signed to Hillman Grad, she went on tour with recent MC cover artist Ari Lennox. That stint allowed Josey to prove her mettle, thus instilling faith in Def Jam that she has what it takes. “I was proving myself,” Josey proclaims, “to where they had no other choice but to believe what others were saying.” A songwriting deal with Sony Music Publishing, plus a management deal with WME, also came to fruition.

Before all this, a producer she felt close to did her dirty. Josey was therefore cautious when it came to signing anything. Fortunately, her mother has a music industry background, so she always had someone with insider experience to help guide her through the process. 

Josey remains content that things took longer than expected to fall into place. She’d rather shine bright for years than merely come and go like a shooting star. “I don’t want to be microwavable,” she cheekily suggests. “I want to be a pot roast. And I want to be a pot roast that tastes really good.”

Serial Romantic, Josey’s major label debut executive produced by Tricky Stewart, made its initial splash in April. The post Jai’Len Josey Signs With Def Jam Recordings first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

It’s time independent music retail found its VOICEThe following MBW op/ed comes from Stephen Godfroy, Co-Owner of independent music retailer Rough Trade
Source

ebbandflow launch with deFORM Designed to “shape sanity out of chaos and instability”, the new arrival captures and an array of the company’s favourite synths and sets its sights on big-screen soundtrack composition.

Vital vs Surge XT: How To Pick Your Free Synthesizer in 2026
Every few weeks, someone asks me some version of the same question. Should I learn Vital or Surge XT? It’s a tough question because these are the two best free synths you can download in 2026, and either one can realistically be called the greatest free synth of all time. So I decided to test [...]
View post: Vital vs Surge XT: How To Pick Your Free Synthesizer in 2026

“The artist is always first”: Inside the Fender Studio Pro 8.1 UpdateWhen Fender rebranded PreSonus Studio One as Fender Studio Pro, the change was more than just a shiny new badge. It married a fully mature DAW with one of the most recognisable names in guitar history, raising an obvious question: would Studio Pro continue serving the producers and musicians who already swore by it, or begin drifting towards a broader, more beginner-oriented ecosystem?
Now the rebranding dust has settled, I’ve journeyed to the Fender Showroom in Covent Garden — located in an 1859 Grade II-listed former stained glass factory — to find out.
The evening begins with a demo from Fender’s General Manager of Software, Arnd Kaiser. He’s joined by Gregor Beyerle, the man behind the camera for the DAW’s tutorials and educational content. The big question of the evening, of course, is what’s new in Fender Studio Pro 8.1 — and does this first major update after the rebrand suggest a bold new direction, a careful continuation, or a bit of both?

Moises AI integration
The most show-stopping features introduced in Fender Studio Pro 8.1 come by way of a collaboration with Moises: stem separation, stem generation, and voice replacement.
These tools have been available on Moises’ own platform for some time, but using them in combination with another DAW was cumbersome, requiring multiple steps of exporting, uploading, processing, and reimporting. In Studio Pro 8.1, Moises is integrated directly into the browser.
A light but palpable unease emerges, though Arnd is quick to reassure the room of Fender’s stance: “We have a very strict rule. We embrace modern AI technologies — you’ve seen a few of them today — as long as the artist stays in control.
“We want to have tools available to us, as artists, that make our lives easier, our workflows easier, that allow us to create, to be creative, but we would never do anything that replaces creativity or replaces the artist. The artist is always first.”

Native stem separation is nothing new. FL Studio received the functionality in October 2023, Logic Pro six months later, and Live more recently in November 2025. But Studio Pro isn’t simply playing catch-up here — the Moises stem splitting is more detailed than its peers, even pulling orchestral elements like strings and woodwinds into their own tracks.
During the demo, I’m thoroughly impressed by the quality; the separated stems are almost indistinguishable from the master when summed.
The stem creation features are even more astounding. Users can pipe in audio from their session alongside a prompt, and Moises responds with new context-aware parts. It’s Splice on steroids, and the process requires just a couple of clicks.
Last comes the vocal replacement. It’s no secret that many producers and songwriters hate the sound of their own voice. In Fender Studio Pro 8.1, the stage-shy can record a scratch vocal and immediately replace it with a professional vocalist, perfect for references and demos where the part will be sung for real later down the line.
An AI-assisted studio assistant
Moises isn’t the only way the Fender Studio Pro team have worked artificial intelligence into the DAW.
No more will users be hunting through manuals or skimming community forums when they get stuck, since the 8.1 update introduces a new ‘studio assistant’ chat feature that can solve both technical and creative roadblocks. It’s aimed primarily at production newcomers, for whom a professional DAW can be overwhelming.
Arnd Kaiser introduces the feature: “We wanted to create a new system that allows people to find the answer to their questions fast without having to leave the application, without having to search the internet.”
The assistant can ‘see’ the user’s open session, giving it richer context to provide accurate solutions. He then puts it to task troubleshooting a greyed-out track arm button — identified as a lack of selected input — and asks it to configure a signal chain that can grunge up an acoustic guitar take.
I quiz him on how intelligent it really is, and whether it’s listening to your audio. Could it identify problem frequencies in a boxy recording, for example?
“It doesn’t listen. I don’t know if it will listen at some point — it could — but that would take it in another direction.”

A new autotune device for vocal production
Fender Studio Pro already boasts tight-knit integration with Celemony Melodyne, but 8.1 introduces a new native autotune device designed for achieving professional results fast. Arnd and Gregor take us through the classic use cases first, from subtly tightened tuning to the all-too-familiar Cher effect.
They then introduce contemporary R&B sounds via the formant shifting control, though this can also be applied more practically to duplicated harmonies, mimicking the sound of a small ensemble. It’s a potent workflow for dense vocal stacks on a budget. As Arnd puts it: “These kinds of effects used to be only available in third-party plugins that often cost more than the [DAW] software itself.”
New scoring and composer tools
Elsewhere, Fender Studio Pro appears to be sizing up to Cubase, shipping an abundance of improvements for composers with the 8.1 update. It’s already a natural fit thanks to the existing integration of Notion, a scoring tool PreSonus bought in 2013 — and Studio Pro 8.1 further dissolves the barrier between score and DAW.
Arnd introduces the changes: “We’re at a point now where you could say there’s almost no difference in workflow, whether you start from the score and then move into mixing and playback, or whether you start in the traditional sequencer or DAW workflow, but then build a score from there.”
For anyone who’s worked with orchestral libraries, the benefits are clear. Articulation MIDI keyswitches have been separated from note data in the piano roll for more efficient editing, and each articulation change is automatically reflected in the score with appropriate symbols. Users can now set attack compensation — ideal for sustained or legato passages — so notes trigger earlier but remain perfectly locked to the grid.
The editing workflow is more holistic too, with repeats entered in the score reflected on the linear timeline, creating ghosted arrangement sections and keeping lyrics aligned for recording.
Most impressive of all? Users can now devise global instrument racks that live in shared memory for reuse across sessions. If you need to swap to an earlier version of a project, for example, you won’t have to wait for memory hogs like Omnisphere or Keyscape to load again.
Workflow and interface improvements
Along with a rebrand, Studio Pro 8 brought a broader interface refresh, including a timeline overview and native device controls — both somewhat akin to Ableton Live — and greater flexibility through detachable, scalable panels.
The 8.1 update continues this process of workflow refinement. Pitch curves are just one significant addition, letting users draw transposition envelopes directly onto audio clips in the timeline without having to use automation.
While online sentiment around the One-to-Pro rebrand was mixed, Arnd makes it clear that the DAW’s users remain the priority: “[Pitch curves are] a feature that so many people have requested, and I think this is a testament that we’re still listening to all of the feature requests out there, which really define the future of our versions.”
What does Fender Studio Pro 8.1 cost?
A perpetual licence for Fender Studio Pro is £170 which includes the current version of the software and one year of updates.
Users can also subscribe to Pro+, which bundles the DAW with the Fender Studio mobile app, Fender Notion scoring software, cloud-based collaboration tools, plus additional loops, samples, and plugins. The Pro+ Annual Plan is £159.99/year and includes a perpetual licence, while the Pro+ Monthly Plan is £20/month.
For owners of PreSonus Studio One who want to upgrade, discounted pricing is available.
AI, ethics, and the wider Fender ecosystem
The evening closes with a short Q&A. Arnd Kaiser is joined by Matt Henninger, VP of Business Development & Strategy at Moises. There’s an easy rapport between the two, who are now seeing their companies’ collaboration on the cusp of release. Fender’s united ecosystem is a tantalising prospect: the Studio Pro DAW, interfaces, hardware controllers, and now AI creative tools — not to mention world-renowned guitars, amplifiers, and effects — all under one roof.
Also on the sofa is Fender Studio Pro evangelist and chart-topping producer, David King, who highlights an inspiring use case for the Moises stem separation: “Back when there were the Malibu fires, part of my studio got burned down. We lost a lot of files … Now with the stem separation, those songs can come back.”
Matt Henninger then speaks about Moises’ stance on ethical AI within music — how it’s trained on fully licensed content, and how he’s often hitting pause on new ideas to ensure the company only develops tools that sit on the right side of the line. It’s a sober, cautious approach that requires, in his words, ‘knowing when to stop’. It feels like Henninger truly understands the gravity of what this technology could create, but more importantly what it might destroy if not handled with care.
But after witnessing the Moises integration during the earlier demo, he’s clearly excited, too: “To me, all art comes from giving musicians tools that they can bend, break, destroy, wire wrong. That is our job. Our job is to provide a tool that can be leveraged in a way that the artist chooses.
As a tool, this stuff is fascinating and can really change the way art is consumed … This is the beginning of something awesome, and I can’t wait for people far more creative than me to break it, and then I can’t wait to hear the music.”
Read more music technology news.
The post “The artist is always first”: Inside the Fender Studio Pro 8.1 Update appeared first on MusicTech.

Aurora DSP This Heavy Earth Suite (Early Access)This Heavy Earth Suite This Heavy Earth Suite is a complete high-gain guitar production environment developed by Aurora DSP in collaboration with This Heavy Earth Effects. Built around boutique hardware circuits and designed specifically for modern heavy music, the suite combines amp simulation, pedal effects, cabinet processing, modulation, delay, reverb, and utility tools in a single plugin. Based on the Fleshrot amplifier and a growing collection of This Heavy Earth pedals, the suite delivers an end-to-end signal chain for aggressive guitar and bass tones, eliminating the need for complex pedalboard setups while providing extensive tone-shaping flexibility. Key Features Fleshrot high-gain amplifier simulation. Integrated cabinet section with two distinct voicings. GRIM3 overdrive pedal. Spectral Gate noise gate. Additional This Heavy Earth pedal models planned for future updates. SpeakerX nonlinear speaker simulation technology. Graphic output EQ for final tone shaping. Built-in chorus, tremolo, delay and reverb effects. Integrated tuner, recorder and metronome. Transpose control for instant down-tuning. Studio Environment monitoring option. Preset management system. GateMate noise gate technology. Full MIDI compatibility. Built for Modern Heavy Guitar Production At the core of the suite is the Fleshrot amplifier, a high-gain design created for aggressive rhythm tones, articulate leads, and modern metal production. Combined with the included cabinet section and output EQ, users can quickly move from tight, focused tones to massive doom-inspired textures. Pedals Inspired by This Heavy Earth Effects The suite includes software versions of boutique pedals from This Heavy Earth Effects. The included GRIM3 overdrive is designed to tighten low frequencies and push the front end of an amplifier, while Spectral Gate provides transparent noise reduction. Future updates are planned to expand the pedal collection with additional distortion, boost, delay and reverb effects. SpeakerX Technology SpeakerX is Aurora DSP's proprietary speaker modeling engine designed to recreate the nonlinear behavior of real guitar speakers. By simulating speaker coloration, dynamics and diffraction effects, SpeakerX adds depth, realism and a more natural cabinet response compared to traditional static processing. Integrated Effects and Utilities Beyond amp and pedal processing, This Heavy Earth Suite includes a complete post-effects rack with chorus, tremolo, delay and reverb. Utility tools such as a tuner, recorder, metronome, transpose control and MIDI support make it suitable for both studio production and practice workflows. Formats Available in VST3, AU, AAX and Standalone formats for Windows and macOS. Read More

MONO Music Conference 2026 Set to take place on November 13-14 2026 at The Midway in San Francisco, CA, the MONO Music Conference will bring together more than 750 music creators for two days of connection, creativity and growth. 

Aurora DSP releases GRIM3 FREE overdrive plugin
Aurora DSP has released GRIM3, a free overdrive plugin based on the feel of a guitar pedal. You can put GRIM3 before an amp or amp sim and use it to tighten the low end, add a bit of midrange overdrive, or push the input stage harder. Aurora DSP optimized it for modern high-gain guitars, [...]
View post: Aurora DSP releases GRIM3 FREE overdrive plugin

Release Title:
Уже 18
Main Artist:
Pchelsh
Release Date:
12/06/2026
Primary Genre:
Pop
Secondary Genre:
Dance / Electro Pop
https://publme.lnk.to/18
#newmusic #Release #Music #indepedent #artist #pop #dance #electronic

Expressive E Osmose CE review: The Cadillac of MIDI keyboardsOsmose CE 49 €999
Osmose CE 61 €1199
expressivee.com
To improve upon the humble keyboard is no small thing. For at least 500 years, the principle behind those black and white keys has remained essentially the same: press down to trigger a sound.
So when Expressive E unleashed the Osmose synthesiser in 2023 they quite rightly turned heads with their innovative keybed design. Andrew Huang gave it a rave review, Hans Zimmer gushed that the instrument allowed him to “transform a sound completely” while working on his soundtrack to the second instalment of Dune. Meanwhile, regular musos checked the price tag and shook their heads in dismay.
But now we have the Osmose CE, an all-MIDI version that drops the onboard synth engine, lowers the entry fee, and still offers a next-generation playing experience.

READ MORE: ROLI Airwave review: Prepare yourself for hyper-expressive MIDI control in six dimensions

With all that in mind, there’s really only one place to start when evaluating Osmose CE: the keybed. The company bills it as ‘a keyboard unlike any other’ and it’s hard to disagree.
The important thing here is that, in their pursuit of maximum MPE expressivity, the designers haven’t strayed too far from the solid foundation of black and white keys. In comparison to the ROLI Seaboard 2, which really does require mastering a unique playing style, the keybed on the Osmose CE takes a familiar experience and, quite literally, deepens it.

Press down on a key and you hit the usual stopping point – but then you keep going, and going, and going. The amount of space for aftertouch pressure feels absolutely huge, even if officially it’s only seven millimetres of travel distance. In practice, this means that you can execute super fine pressure control over filter cutoffs, LFO depth, or really any parameter your heart desires. I find an unreasonable amount of joy in arpeggiating a held chord while gradually varying pressure depth for individual notes, creating shifting accents and timbres.
Regarding the hands-on feel, it’s a firm, springy, ultra tactile experience – even if you do kinda feel like you’re kneading bread dough. But don’t think that you need a lot of force to get sound out of this thing since the keys have easily customisable sensitive ranges. So sensitive, in fact, that even an ultra light tap can produce sound if you wish.
Image: Press
Up and down is not the only axis in play here, there’s also side to side. Keys can be vigorously ‘wiggled’ to produce vibrato just as you might traditionally do on a stringed instrument. The left/right travel of each key does introduce one issue: keys can occasionally knock against each other. It could just be that I’m still getting used to the instrument, but when I play fast melody lines coupled with deep key presses, there are noticeable clicks as released keys snap back into place. Personally, I didn’t find this to be a dealbreaker, but for those looking to play virtuoso passages, it’s something to be aware of.
While Osmose CE may lack the onboard synth engine of its big brother, it does add deep DAW integration. Tested across a number of workstations —including Cubase 15, Ableton 12, and Bitwig 6—implementation is solid.
Using the 4.3-inch colour LCD, a handful of push buttons, and six clickable rotary knobs, you can navigate across tracks, activate loop regions, scrub through a session, open and close instrument plugins, control plugin macros, and start and stop recordings, all without touching a mouse or computer keyboard. If you’re using the instrument’s companion software, Ctrl-e, then the onboard screen displays additional guidance for navigating the different instruments and selecting presets.
Ctrl-e interface. Image: Clovis McEvoy
Ctrl-e is designed to take full advantage of Osmose CE’s expressive potential, but, for my money, it’s actually the weak link here. To be clear, none of the sound presets are bad, but they don’t exactly inspire me either. Perhaps that shortcoming is harder to ignore when the hardware itself is such a standout.
This isn’t much of a concern as it’s simple enough to set Osmose CE up to work with a favoured software or hardware instrument. Using the onboard menu, you can switch between preset MIDI modes, including poly-aftertouch, multichannel, and classic keyboard, and to assign pressure and aftertouch gestures to individual continuous controller (CC) messages. It’s worth noting that, at present, side-to-side gestures are hardcoded to pitch bends and can’t be assigned to other control change messages – something I can only hope will be remedied in future updates.
Ctrl-e interface. Image: Clovis McEvoy
In addition, the unit comes with incredibly nifty onboard functions for arpeggiation and pitch glides. For example, it’s possible to assign individual arpeggio parameters to specific gestures – so, if you’d like to add some octave jumps only when you bend a note sideways, no problem! For pitch glides, you can set specific interval ranges within which a glide will trigger, and then control the portamento time by ‘seesawing’ between two notes. The interval range can be extended to cover the entire keyboard range, which effectively gives you a ribbon-style controller for massive pitch sweeps. I love the level of control offered here, and the level of specificity Expressive E offers gives you a clue as to who this instrument is intended for.
Osmose CE is a professional-level instrument through and through. It might be more affordable than the original synthesiser version, but at €999 for the 49-key version, and €1199 for larger 61 iteration, it’s priced in a similar tier as the ROLI Seaboard 2, far beyond mere mortals like the Arturia Keystep Pro or the Novation Launchkey MK4 61.
MPE Arpeggio. Image: Clovis McEvoy
However, for that ticket price you get something built like a bulldozer. The aluminium top case and metal under-panel are rock solid and roadworthy, the sliders and rotary knobs feel premium, and the whole thing will look downright gorgeous sitting on a desktop or a stage.
More to the point, for you to even consider this instrument you should already be at a point where you’ve exhausted what a standard MIDI keyboard can offer. For producers and performers Osmose CE genuinely elevates classic keyboard design in musically meaningful ways, all without sacrificing playability. For composers, it’s a sound design machine that excels at quickly producing the kind of nuanced fluctuations in timbre that would otherwise take painstaking parameter automation to achieve.
For those who have the skills, ambition, and bank balance, Osmose CE is the MIDI controller of the moment.
Image: Press
Key features

MPE-compatible controller keyboard with an innovative keybed
Available in 49-key and 61-key sizes
Multiple gesture inputs, including tap, press, pitch bend, vibrato, and shake
Onboard arpeggiator and pitch glide functionality
Ctrl-e companion software with 900+ sound presets
DAW integration with Live, Cubase, Bitwig and Logic Pro
4.3-inch colour LCD screen
9 buttons and 7 knobs/encoders
Pitch and modulation sliders
MIDI in/out/thru
2 assignable pedal inputs
Weight: 10 kg (Osmose CE 49) / 11 kg (Osmose CE 61)

The post Expressive E Osmose CE review: The Cadillac of MIDI keyboards appeared first on MusicTech.

How This Manager Sold Out Tours Without Venues and Develops Artists, Songwriters and ProducersThis week, Ari is joined by manager Joseph Pepin to discuss how artists turn viral moments into lasting careers.