LALAL.AI launches its first stem-splitting VST plugin for “unlimited experimentation” inside your DAWLALAL.AI has launched its first VST plugin, bringing its industry-leading stem-splitting technology to your DAW for the first time, “significantly reducing the time spent switching between workflows”.
The plugin uses its Lyra model, and is designed to run locally on nearly any hardware. According to LALAL.AI, Lyra delivers “fast and effective” stem separation for “unlimited experimentation” right inside the DAW.

READ MORE: Will.i.am: “I can’t be that critical of AI – because I have a career sampling music”

With the new plugin, artists and producers can split any vocal track into a vocal stem and instrumental bed, with multi-stem splitting for six separate instruments currently in the works. Additionally, it also works in any DAW compatible with VST3 technology, including Ableton, FL Studio, Audacity, and others.
LALAL.AI says this latest release marks the next step in the “quieter side of the AI transformation of music” that eliminates tedium and increases fun. Nik Pogorsky, product owner and co-founder, says: “LALAL.AI’s VST is not only the best in terms of quality, but it is the only AI-powered VST that truly functions as a VST within a DAW. Isolating vocals or making a purely instrumental track can happen as fluidly as a producer or artist does any other task inside their preferred software.”
Pogorsky adds, “Professionals are already adopting tools like LALAL.AI because they solve key problems for them. We’ve simply put that tool right where they need it, in their workstation, so that they can get more creative without getting dragged out of their flow.”
As for other AI-powered launches, following LANDR’s recent acquisition of Reason Studios, the company has launched two new tools to help inspire artists: LANDR Blueprints, which offers songwriting support, and LANDR Layers, assisting with the final mix. This dual release promises to “streamline your production process”.
The new plugin with its Lyra model is available now to LALAL.AI’s premium subscribers. Find out more via the LALAL.AI website.
The post LALAL.AI launches its first stem-splitting VST plugin for “unlimited experimentation” inside your DAW appeared first on MusicTech.

Carve Audio offers new BusBoy channel strip for FREE until March 2nd
Developer Carve Audio has released BusBoy ($49), a mixing utility plugin for macOS and Windows. It is currently free until March 2nd, 2026. BusBoy is best described as a simplified channel strip for stereo buses, but I think it’s also an excellent choice for individual channels. The main idea here is to help you establish [...]
View post: Carve Audio offers new BusBoy channel strip for FREE until March 2nd

UVI PX Apollo ‘70s Analog Emulation Synth is now just $19
UVI’s PX Apollo synth is now available for just $19, down from $79, in an exclusive deal at Audio Deluxe.  This 64-bit-only release is available for macOS and Windows in AU, AAX, VST, and VST3 formats.  PX Apollo is based on a rare prototype from the early ’70s-an early polyphonic analog synth with a 71-voice [...]
View post: UVI PX Apollo ‘70s Analog Emulation Synth is now just $19

So, AI music charts are a thing now…The first ever weekly charts to track AI-generated and assisted music have been launched, tracking the top 100 new songs and covers across each week.
While this news might feel rather scary for most, the company that runs them, The Sonic Intelligence Academy (SIQA), says these charts have consistent guidelines in place to not only determine what qualifies as AI-generated music, but also to verify and evaluate each entry “to support transparency, integrity, and ethical standards”.

READ MORE: Deezer plans to license its AI-detection tool to other companies – after using it to demonetise 85% of AI music on its platform

The SIQA AI Music Top 100 and Top 100 AI Covers charts spotlight AI-created tracks “gaining meaningful traction” across streaming, video, and social platforms, along with airplay. AI music creators can submit eligible releases through its submission system, similar to traditional chart consideration.
SIQA says that by establishing dedicated standards and visibility for AI-generated music, it aims to “reduce confusion across the broader music industry”. It believes that instead of positioning AI music as a replacement for traditional artistry, recognising it as a separate creative medium that warrants its own standards and systems is better for all.
To be considered for the charts, a song must be transparently created, properly attributed, and must not use cloned or simulated voices of real public figures, living or deceased, or misrepresent the identity of artists or performers. SIQA also plans to roll out several initiatives that will support both traditional artists and the AI music creator community through education, research, partnerships, and cultural initiatives focused on “ethical AI music creation, collaboration, and literacy”.
The current top songs in both of its charts are:
Top 100 AI Songs:

I Don’t Care – Cain Walker
Jag vet, du är inte min – Jacub
I See Her Different – Drew Meadows
A Little Thing Like Love – Kayla Kross
It’s La Vida Loca – Kelly Boesch

Top 100 AI Cover Songs:

Papaoutai (Afro Soul) – Mikeeysmind, Chill77, Unjaps
Heaven Knows (Rock Cover) – Skate Avenue PH
Where Have You Been (Orchestra) – Lune, Mikeeysmind, Unjaps
Move Bitch (1973 Version) – King Willonius
Sisqo Thong Song – Unjaps, PhantomGroove

To find out more or read its FAQs, head over to SIQA.
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Need killer drum sounds? Synsonic Instruments’ paid drum synths are now free to downloadSynsonic Instruments has made three of its formerly paid drum plugins completely free, and together they form a versatile toolkit for producers who prefer shaping their drums from scratch.
Previously priced at around $20 each, Apollon, BD-808 Pro, and BDE-01 are now available for download from the Synsonic Instruments website. They join the developer’s long-running free lineup, which already included the popular BD-808 Free and BD-909 Free kick emulations.

READ MORE: Waves Curves Resolve: this plugin “listens” and fixes conflicts between multiple tracks in your mix, intelligently

First up is Apollon, a drum machine inspired by old analogue hardware. It features eight fully synthesised instruments – bass drum, snare, low and high toms, closed and open hi-hats, clap, and rimshot – each with straightforward controls like tuning and decay for quick shaping. There’s also a built-in 16-step sequencer with velocity-sensitive steps and per-track shuffle, making it easy to dial in groovy patterns. Additional features include basic reverb and delay with send levels per instrument. Users can also trigger each instrument individually via MIDI.
Next is the BD-808 Pro, which expands on Synsonic’s free 808 kick drum plugin. As the name suggests, it’s designed to recreate the classic Roland TR-808 bass drum, but with extra sound-shaping capabilities. Alongside a fully adjustable oscillator and an AHD envelope, you get dedicated controls for click and drive to help the kick cut through a mix.
Built-in compression and overdrive adds extra punch, while a glide function lets you use the plugin as a simple bass synth. Users can also save their own 808-style presets and play them with MIDI and advanced velocity control.
Finally, we have the BDE-01, a powerful and versatile drum bass synth designed for more advanced drum sound design. The plugin features three main sections: The Sound Section which creates the body of the bass drum, the Noise Section which adds a click, noise or sample sound and the Master Section, which allows general settings.
“[The BDE-01] allows recreating sounds from analogue hardware or finding completely new sounds,” says Synsonic.

All three plugins are available now for macOS and Windows in 64-bit formats.
Download them today at Synsonic Instruments.
The post Need killer drum sounds? Synsonic Instruments’ paid drum synths are now free to download appeared first on MusicTech.

“Biggest contributor to global music revenue”: Spotify reports a record $11 billion in royalty payments last yearSpotify says it paid out more than $11 billion to the music industry in 2025 – a record annual total that the company positions as evidence of streaming’s growing role in the business.
In a note published on the Spotify for Artists blog, the platform says its royalty payments rose by more than 10% year-on-year – a whopping $1 billion more than it paid out in 2024. According to Spotify, this marks the largest annual payment to music rightsholders from any retailer in history.
The streaming platform also says independent artists and labels accounted for half of all royalties distributed in 2025 – a figure it cites as evidence of a more accessible music economy.

READ MORE: Spotify, Sony, Warner and UMG sue shadow library over the scraping of 86 million tracks

Spotify now represents roughly 30% of total recorded music revenue, and claims its payout growth is outpacing the rest of the industry. While Spotify royalties rose by more than 10%, the company says other revenue sources across the music industry grew by closer to 4%, “making Spotify the primary driver of industry revenue growth in 2025”.
Among the headline figures is Spotify’s claim that more artists now earn over $100,000 per year on the platform alone than there were artists stocked in record store shelves “at the height of the CD boom”. The comparison underscores how streaming has shifted the scale and structure of artist earnings, even as debates continue around how that revenue is distributed.
Spotify has long faced criticisms from artists and industry bodies over low per-stream payouts and the growing gap between superstar earnings and the long tail of creators. These concerns have sharpened with recent changes to the platform’s royalty model. In 2024, Spotify introduced minimum stream thresholds for royalty eligibility, a move that effectively demonetises tracks with fewer than 1,000 streams.
Elsewhere, Spotify attributes wider industry growth to a combination of rising subscriber numbers and recent price increases. It notes that roughly two-thirds of its revenue is paid out to rightsholders, with the remaining share reinvested into platform development, discovery tools and recommendation systems aimed at attracting and retaining paying listeners.
Looking ahead, Spotify says 2026 will bring new measures to tackle fraud and platform abuse. The company acknowledges that AI is increasingly being used by bad actors to “flood streaming services with low-quality slop”, and says it is working on stronger systems for artist verification, song credit integrity and identity protection.
Editorial curation is also set to take on a more prominent role. While algorithmic discovery remains central to the platform, Spotify says it plans to expand the role of human-led playlists and programming, describing them as crucial cultural touchpoints in an era of highly individualised, algorithm-driven listening.
“In 2026, you’ll see us create new programs where editorial can unlock more sustained support for emerging artists that help turn early recognition into ongoing momentum. And we’ll bring more of the human voice behind that curation into the listening experience,” says Spotify.
The post “Biggest contributor to global music revenue”: Spotify reports a record $11 billion in royalty payments last year appeared first on MusicTech.

WMG’s Paul Robinson honored with Recording Academy’s ELI Service Award: He ‘stands for everything that is honest, diligent, fair.’Robinson has served as WMG's top lawyer since 2006
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Elon Musk’s SpaceX officially acquires Elon Musk’s xAI, with plan to build data centers in spaceThe merger creates the world's most valuable private company, and paves the way for Musk to try and prove out the usefulness of space-based data centers.

A Song That Changed My Life: Blackwater Holylight on Judas PriestBand Members: Allison ‘Sunny’ Faris, guitar, bass, and vocals; Mikayla Mayhew, guitar; Eliese Dorsay, drums.The Storyteller: Eliese DorsayThe Song: “The Hellion,” the gallant, standalone twin-guitar tone prelude to Judas Priest’s classic “Electric Eye.” Its anthemic metallic opening—crafted by the architects of modern metal—set the standard for monumental hard-rock salvos, both in song and on stage.

The Background: Blackwater Holylight’s unsettling atmospherics began circulating through Portland’s foggy mists several years ago. Finding fertile ground for their doom-gaze sound, the band crafted three full-length albums and cultivated a devoted following. Despite their Pacific Northwest success, the slow burn of Los Angeles’ darker subterranean world drew them toward the Southland, where they conceptualized and recorded the EP If You Only Knew before ultimately relocating.With the forthcoming 2026 release Not Here Not Gone, drummer Eliese Dorsay reflects on the unlikely origin story behind her lifelong admiration of metal —a thirty-second commercial — and how it unexpectedly shocked her into the electrifying world of Judas Priest, altering how she hears, feels, and creates music.The Story: Sometimes the smallest, most ordinary moments carry the greatest significance, leaving a profound impact in the most unexpected ways. For Eliese Dorsay, it was an unassuming after-school ritual—sitting in front of the television—when a Honda Odyssey advertisement transformed the mundane, amplifying it into the monumental. In short: the sound—Judas Priest’s “The Hellion”—careened through the air. The spectacle unfolded: a man made his way toward a minivan, pyrotechnics erupted as a panther prowled. The end scene: the hatchback opened, revealing a towering Marshall Amp stack. Jaw dropped. Metal nirvana.“In an instant,” Dorsay recalls, “I had never heard any riffs like that before—something that heavy and epic.” The collision of searing sonics and stylized visuals shifted Dorsay away from the three-chord melodics she’d been listening to and toward the darker, more metal side. “It changed my life hearing this song.”  She adds, “This sound—the riffs. It was something I just needed more of—I was caught up listening to pop-punk, and that was the first time that I thought—this is real metal.”This brief snapshot rewired how Dorsay embraced music altogether. “I thought to myself, ‘This is what I want to do with my life forever… my life is now metal.’”  Judas Priest instantly became one of her all-time favorite bands. “I immediately looked up the band and dove into a portal of heavy metal. I could not stop listening to Screaming for Vengeance.”  Dorsay’s rigorous examination of The Metal Gods’ work opened the door to a wider world of music and technique. “Judas Priest introduced me to some of the greatest heavy-hitting acts that would go on to inspire me as a musician to this day,”  she notes. This trajectory soon led her to Def Leppard and other big, commanding, and precise drummers of the 1980s, whose style continues to shape her drumming approach in Blackwater Holylight.“Every one of my drum hits I craft to be powerful and tough, while also balancing simplicity with fills that complement the riffs,” she explains, “knowing when to pull back is just as important as knowing when to hit hard.”  Her approach, shaped by her early metal discoveries, reflects the precision, drama, and intensity she first encountered in that snapshot in time.In retrospect, a brief vignette of daily life became more than a short-lived moment—it crystallized the deep-seated connection between sound, vision, and memory.  Today, hearing “The Hellion,” Dorsay recognizes how it forever altered the way she listens to and crafts music. For metal lovers everywhere, the track remains one of the most epic and toughest album intros of all time, and for Dorsay, a flashback she can summon anytime for inspiration behind the kit.  As she puts it simply: “One of the greatest metal bands on earth… Judas Priest!”

Photo Credit: Candice Lawler

The post A Song That Changed My Life: Blackwater Holylight on Judas Priest first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

Bitcoin hits ‘fire-sale’ value as capital flows capitulate: BitwiseBitcoin flashed a major discount signal after capital outflows increased following BTC’s abrupt drop below $75,000. Historical data now points to a potential 10% rebound rally in the short-term.

How to choose a DAW as a beginner
In this in-depth guide, we break down how to choose a DAW as a beginner that's best for you, covering everything from budget to unique features and more.

A Higher-End Pico-Based Oscilloscope
Hackers have been building their own basic oscilloscopes out of inexpensive MCUs and cheap LCD screens for some years now, but microcontrollers have recently become fast enough to actually make such ‘scopes useful. [NJJ], for example, used a pair of Raspberry Pi Picos to build Picotronix, an extensible combined oscilloscope and logic analyzer.
This isn’t an open-source project, but it is quite well-documented, and the general design logic and workings of the device are freely available. The main board holds two Picos, one for data sampling and one to handle control, display, and external communication. The control unit is made out of stacked PCBs surrounded by a 3D-printed housing; the pinout diagrams printed on the back panel are a helpful touch. One interesting technique was to use a trimmed length of clear 3D printer filament as a light pipe for an indicator LED.
Even the protocol used to communicate between the Picos is documented; the datagrams are rather reminiscent of Ethernet frames, and can originate either from one of the Picos or from a host computer. This lets the control board operate as an automatic testing station reporting data over a wireless or USB-connected network. The display module is therefore optional hardware, and a variety of other boards (called picoPods) can be connected to the Picotronix control board. These include a faster ADC, adapters for various analog input spans, a differential analog input probe, a 12-bit logic state analyzer, and a DAC for signal generation.
If this project inspired you to make your own, we’ve also seen other Pico-based oscilloscopes before, including one that used a phone for the display.

Rockheyday SlowShade (Free Standalone)SlowShade is a powerful standalone audio tool for creative sound design and detailed analysis. It allows you to: Adjust Playback Speed: Slow down or speed up audio with pitch following speed. Drive: Add rich, analogue warmth and gentle push to your sound with soft saturation. Shade: Sculpt your tone by smoothly filtering out harsh high frequencies, creating a darker or brighter feel. Width: Expand or narrow your stereo soundscape, from focused mono to super-wide. "Fully coded DSP & GUI — no images, no SVGs, no skins. Pure signal." Key Features • Engine: Slow-Playback & Tone Transformation Processor. • Speed Control: Variable 0.5x to 1.5x tape-style playback rate. • Tone: Drive, Shade, and Width controls for audio enhancement. • Processing: Smooth real-time DSP with zero-latency architecture. • Utility Controls: Bypass for instant A/B. • Analyzer: High-Resolution Real-Time Spectrum Display (Dual-Layer Dry/Wet FFT). • FFT Engine: 4096 / 8192-point resolution with Blackman window. • Response Model: Internal 4.5 dB tilt and 350 ms ballistic decay. • Metering: Dual-layer LR Peak meters (background = input, top ticks = output). • Stereo Tool: Correlation meter for phase monitoring. • Output: Post Gain trim control, -12 dB to +12 dB. • Playback: Drag & Drop loading with Loop functionality. • Export: Disabled and 2 seconds of silence for every 45 seconds. • Precision: 32-bit floating-point processing. Standalone Architecture The standalone architecture enables instant loading, looping, and analysis of audio files without requiring a DAW. It's designed for fast, focused audio work—whether checking references, making precise adjustments, or performing detailed evaluations. Read More

The open-source Shortcircuit XT sampler by Surge Synth Team is now in beta
Shortcircuit XT by Surge Synth Team is an open-source sampler plugin for macOS, Windows, and Linux, and it’s now in beta. Fans of the original Shortcircuit sampler and the Surge Synth Team have been eagerly awaiting the next step in the plugin’s progress since we covered the pre-alpha release years ago. We have a lot [...]
View post: The open-source Shortcircuit XT sampler by Surge Synth Team is now in beta

Zero G release Nostalgia Reborn Nostalgia Reborn brings together more than 4500 samples drawn from over four decades of electronic instruments, delivering an all-in-one genre-spanning collection that promises to fit into just about any modern production.