Following Anthropic, OpenAI files confidentially for IPOThe filing comes a little more than a week after its main rival, Anthropic, also filed to go public, ramping up the race between the two AI firms.

DECAP on 8 hits built on Drums That Knock, his approach to sample design, and his new label
From Bad Bunny to Charli XCX, DECAP discusses eight of the countless tracks that the music producer community has identified his drum samples on.

Active tokenized RWAs surge almost 600% despite crypto pullback: BinanceTokenized stocks, gold and real estate are driving broader adoption as banks and institutions embrace blockchain-based assets despite a weaker crypto market.

In the Studio with Charles FaunaArtist: Charles FaunaProducer and Arranger: Charles FaunaCo-Production and Additional Instrumentation: Jaguar SunAdditional Bass Production:  Ronnie LanzilottaMixing Engineer: Andy D. ParkMastering Engineer: Ariel Loh

The Origin: Absorbing a world where sound, vision, and feeling overlap, Charles Fauna — the moniker of the LA/NY-based producer and multi-instrumentalist Charlie Mischer—has developed a synesthetic field where emotion, atmosphere, and imagery continuously feed into one another, crystallizing into song. Within this cross-wired framework, auditory signals, visual cues, and sonic impressions lie buried deep in the subconscious. Fauna likens his creative process to excavation: a patient unearthing of these hidden melodies.Through this sensory lens, his musical evolution unfolded in clear phases — bridging early bedroom production with the exploratory work of his first musical project, Paideia, before arriving at the fully realized identity of Charles Fauna.As Fauna, that multi-sensory perception became his compositional spine. He approached each release as a series of self-contained sonic and thematic worlds. From the grief-torn symbolism of Eulogy and the isolated sci-fi transcendence of Yonder, to the rebuilding impulse of Renewal and the synth-soaked neo-purgatory of L I M B O, Fauna’s catalog evolved into distinct themes.Yet even the most expansive musical lifecycles eventually reach a tipping point. For Fauna, “Moon Dog,” the first single from his forthcoming full-length album, signals that inflection point. Driven most notably by profound personal experiences, the track reflects a subtle shift in the way he composes music.

The Production: “Moon Dog” entered his mind in the way Fauna says much of his strongest work does — as if it had already been forming just out of reach, arriving fully intact when it was ready to be heard. Sitting in a Nashville airport terminal, a sudden creative spark emerged from the surrounding ambient noise.“The ‘ooo’ melody for the chorus was the first thing I wrote,” Fauna recalls. To the listener, it plays like a vocalized ache, echoing forever. In hindsight, he connects that moment to the broader gravity surrounding the song: his father’s declining health and later loss. “That image of yearning, howling, desperately reaching out into the universe only to be met with silence, felt so devastating and powerful. It felt true.”That fragmented scribble in the airport foreshadowed a distinct heaviness. As his father’s health later declined, the idea Fauna had already drawn from his subconscious became the outlet. This spurred a creative push, fusing that  melancholic feeling with a specific key and color profile.“I always think in visual terms when I’m writing,” he explains. “I have synesthesia, so different musical keys have very strong color associations for me.” For Fauna, B minor is a key associated with a deep, nocturnal blue. Guided by this vivid sensory palette, the track settled into a vision of wide-open fields bathed in the stillness of the night. This imagery aligned with broader themes of expansiveness and freedom across the forthcoming album— a feeling he describes as “running without resistance.” 

Beyond the visual mechanics of his synesthesia, this concept of boundlessness translates directly into tangible production choices. Upending his usual digital routine, Fauna swapped programmed electronic patterns for live drums to give the rhythmic foundation a more physical, human feel. Leaning into this live instrumentation was a deliberate return to his musical background.“The drums are actually my first instrument, and the only one for which I received any kind of formal training,” he notes. That foundational background shaped how he balanced the rhythm section for “Moon Dog,” ensuring the low-end retained a deep, driving beat while maintaining high-end clarity. Ultimately, Fauna engineered this balance to evoke a specific physical environment: “a song meant for the car, for long meditative drives…”Texturally, this live rhythmic spirit allowed Fauna to layer contrasting musical elements and build a vivid, sensory ecosystem. He explicitly wanted the track to feel kaleidoscopic, juxtaposing a prickly acoustic guitar — which he notes “felt like rain drops down your neck” — against vast, open space.To achieve this fluid spaciousness without relying on electronic patches, Fauna studied intricate fingerpicking styles. “I was really inspired by classical guitar playing — how notes create these cascading waterfalls that seem to bounce downward — like a marble falling down a staircase," he explains. "Gravity dictates a unique rhythm. In this case, I wanted to fill this song with [similar] acoustic guitar textures. That ended up being a sonic throughline for the entire album.”

Translating that physical performance, however, presented a challenge. “It is a dance between creating that lush, transportive ambience while resisting the impulse to fill every empty moment with a sound,” Fauna says. “It’s very easy to start filling up the negative space in a track to the point where it becomes overwhelming to listen to.” Ultimately, the track rejects rigid, pre-constructed digital environments in favor of something more lived-in. This transition toward more tactile textures mirrors a personal evolution. “I wanted the production to reflect a version of me that was a little more mature, more assured, and more relaxed. Where before I might have produced an EDM drum beat and used synth bass, this time I knew it had to all be live. I wanted more of a band feeling with this album.”As one of the first songs to fully realize this new approach, “Moon Dog” signals a broader recalibration in his creative process.  Whether it marks the closing of a chapter or the beginning of something new remains unresolved, but whatever is on the horizon, Fauna is listening through his familiar synesthetic language while remaining open to how it might evolve.“It’s a perfect snapshot of me in my 30s,” Fauna reflects on the song. “Still doing this whole artist thing solely out of passion and personal fulfillment rather than some need to be seen. I’ll always love it for that reason.”

Photo Courtesy of Big Picture MediaThe post In the Studio with Charles Fauna first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

Kreuzberg Audio RUMBLE FORGERumble & Sub-Bass Generator für Techno Kick in, rumble out. The rumble is the foundation Listen to a techno track without rumble. There's a kick, a couple of hats, and nothing happens. That deep, sustained, vibrating thunder underneath the kick is what gets the floor moving. It's not an effect on top, it's the foundation the whole track stands on. The thing is, building one by hand is a grind. Layer a sub, tune it to the kick, draw reverse-reverb tails, saturate, sidechain, mono the bass, time it all together. An hour later you've got a rumble that sounds okay, and on the next track with a different kick you start from zero again. RUMBLE FORGE does it in one click. Drop it on your kick channel, pick a preset, and the plugin listens to your kick, transient and pitch, and builds a rumble that automatically fits that exact kick. Harmonic, because it's tuned to the fundamental of your kick. Solid, because it grows out of the kick body instead of sitting next to it. And fat, because there are nine parallel DSP pipelines behind it. How it works RUMBLE FORGE is not a sub-synth you retune to the kick by hand every time, and not a saturator that smears across everything. The plugin sends your input down two paths: one is the clean kick, the other goes into two analysis modules. The KickDetector spots every hit via the amplitude envelope. It only reads the low-end energy, so it's robust against hats and percussive bleed. The PitchDetector tracks the fundamental of the kick in parallel using a YIN algorithm, typically 40 to 80 Hz. Both run fully automatically, you don't set anything. And that's the trick behind the harmonic sound: because the rumble is tuned to the tracked kick pitch, it always sits cleanly under your kick instead of beating against it. A preset works on any kick as a result, no retuning needed. The 9 rumble pipelines Nine parallel pipelines each generate a different flavor of rumble. Important: this is not a multi-effect. All nine chase the same idea, a coherent kick tail in the sub and bass range, they only differ in how they create it. You mix them freely, from subtle sub-octave thickening with two pipelines to a full wall with all nine. Each pipeline has its own output lowpass that cuts it off up top, so the rumble stays in the basement and doesn't muddy the mids. P01 SOG, Reverse Reverb: the reverb builds up before the hit and resolves into the transient. The classic whoosh run-up for roll sounds and build-ups. P02 PULS, Delay Rumble: tempo-synced delay with dirty feedback. Gritty, percussive, Birmingham industrial school. P03 FUNDAMENT, Sub Synth: wavetable sub, tuned to the kick and mixed into the body. Makes thin kicks fat and breathes with them. P04 ROAST, Saturated Feedback: saturated tail with four characters, from soft tape saturation to wavefolder. For industrial walls with bite. P05 GRAIN, Granular Texture: granular cloud from the kick tail. Smeared sub textures and drones. P06 PHASE, Phase Rumble: five phase modes, including Reese with detuned comb filters. Wide, hypnotic sub movement. P07 FREQ, FM Rumble: FM synthesis with sidebands. Thickens the tail harmonically, from sub to metallic. P08 PULL, Reverse-Swell Sub: tempo-locked sub swell that sucks in before every beat. Continuous build-up breathing under the kick. P09 SHIFT, Frequency Shifter: SSB shift that moves the overtones inharmonically. Slow alien drift on the tail. Breathing between kick and rumble A built-in rhythmic sidechain ducks the rumble bus relative to the kick or the tempo grid. That's the signature pump that gives kick and rumble room to breathe. Trigger classically off the kick, or lock to the grid with 1/4, 1/8, 1/16 including triplets, swing and a phase offset for off-beat pulses. Four release curves from exponential to S-curve. Club-ready at the output The master section makes your rumble PA-ready. Bass Mono folds everything below 120 Hz to mono, mandatory for vinyl and a club system. On top of that, Sub Cut against inaudible subsonics, Dry/Wet to blend it under the kick and a solo mode for auditioning. If you don't have your own bus processor running, for example in a standalone live setup, dial in the channel strip too: glue compressor, saturation, tilt EQ, stereo width and a final limiter at minus 0.3 dB. 51 factory presets Curated by genre and pipeline focus, every one track-ready right away: Rolling: classic techno rolling rumble. Pumping: sidechain-driven breathing. Delay: PULS-focused echo rumbles. Industrial: hard walls. Sub-heavy: FUNDAMENT-focused sub thickening. Granular: smeared textures and drones. FM: FREQ-focused inharmonics. PULL: sub-swell templates. SHIFT: drift textures. Composite: combined multi-pipeline sounds. You can save unlimited user presets. A/B compare with two parameter slots is built in. Technical highlights 9 parallel DSP pipelines, freely mixable, each with its own output lowpass. Fully automatic kick detection and pitch tracking, no tuning needed. Rhythmic sidechain with kick or grid trigger, swing and four curves. Master section with Bass Mono, Sub Cut and a solo mode. Mastering channel strip with Comp, Sat, Tilt, Width and limiter. 51 factory presets plus unlimited user presets. MIDI Learn on every knob, stored per instance with the project. RT-safe and light on CPU, around 3 to 8 percent on an M1 at 48 kHz. Formats and systems. Formats: VST3, AU (macOS), Standalone Systems: macOS 10.13+ (Universal Binary, Intel and Apple Silicon), Windows 10+, Linux from Ubuntu 22.04. License and demo The demo runs with the full feature set, nothing is locked. Every 30 seconds a quiet noise burst mixes in for a few seconds, and it disappears for good the moment you enter your serial number. Activation is fully offline, no online phone-home. Read More

News Sites are Blocking Internet Archive over AI Scraping FearsEspecially in this era of the Internet, the role of the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine has become increasingly essential as more and more web content vanishes into the ether or is surreptitiously altered to hide salient details. More recently a new worry has seemingly cropped up in the form of scraping of data for so-called AI systems, or at least that’s part of the excuses being offered for blocking the Wayback Machine’s web crawlers, with [Andrew Deck] and [Hanaa’ Tameez] of [Nieman Lab] detailing the impact and reasons provided.
Some news outlets like The Baltimore Banner insist that they’re only blocking the Wayback Machine crawlers because they are worried that LLM chatbots would otherwise ‘improperly cite’ the source of content, while outlets like The Atlantic have put a blanket anti-scraping policy in place. Meanwhile news outlets are generally happy to let paid commercial news archiving outlets like ProQuest and LexisNexis index their content, showing a potential financial incentive.
Whatever the reasons, the direct effect is that as content is modified or vanishes during for example a system migration, buy-out or bankruptcy, researchers who rely on the Wayback Machine are pretty much forced to rely on paid offerings by ProQuest and kin, without the pure archiving focus and free access to information. It will also leave big holes in what the Wayback Machine can cover in its archives, with news especially becoming very spotty.
Incidentally there’s an ongoing petition over at SaveTheArchive.com which people can sign.

Universal Music Greater China acquires Carrier Creative catalog, home to ‘golden-era’ Mandopop recordings by Little Tigers and Johnny ChiangThe deal was announced on Monday (June 8) at UMGC's inaugural China Summit in Beijing.
Source

Audeze announce the MM-520 The new MM-520 build on the award-winning MM-500, with the introduction of the company’s SLAM (Symmetric Linear Acoustic Modulator) technology promising to arm the new arrival with unprecedented bass accuracy and spatial detail. 

Plugin Alliance is offering these top plugins at up to 92% off for the whole of JuneSummer’s officially here, so why not upgrade your plugin collection in a bid to spark some inspiration?
Over at Plugin Boutique until the end of June, Plugin Alliance is offering a massive range of plugins at up to 92% off, so you can level up your in-the-box studio for less – much less.

READ MORE: FabFilter make some of the most-loved plugins on the market – and you can save 25% for a short time

With offers in plugins from Brainworx, Unfiltered Audio, AMEK, Elysia, Shadow Hills, SPL and more, you’re bound to find the right plugin – or several plugins – to add to your collection.
[deals ids=”31qxFt7OdFifDJzdgvIh9H”]
Some of our favourites of the plugins on offer include the Shadow Hills OptoMax compressor, now just £27 down from £135 (that’s 80% off!) There’s also Swivel Audio’s Click Boom Transient Shaper for just £27.50 down from £45, referencing tool HEARS Perfection, now £27 down from £117, and the NEOLD RZ062 EQ for only £22.50, down from £116.
Yep, the Plugin Alliance June Sale has compressors, EQs, multi-effects, audio restoration tools, and even a vast array of digital guitar amp emulations, too – so there’s bound to be something in there that will upgrade your workflow as a producer.
Head to Plugin Boutique to browse the full range of plugins on offer.
The post Plugin Alliance is offering these top plugins at up to 92% off for the whole of June appeared first on MusicTech.

XLN Audio RC-20 Retro Color is 60% off on Plugin Boutique
Plugin Boutique is offering XLN Audio’s hugely popular RC-20 Retro Color for $39 until June 14, 2026. The regular price is $99, so this is a 60% discount. RC-20 Retro Color has been around for a while, but it remains one of the most recognizable character plugins for lo-fi, vintage, and slightly broken textures. I [...]
View post: XLN Audio RC-20 Retro Color is 60% off on Plugin Boutique

IK Multimedia’s ARC On-Ear gains IEM support The latest update for IK Multimedia’s headphone-correction system introduces calibration for 50 popular in-ear monitoring (IEM) systems. 

III Points announces the return of the ::444:: stage with 11.1 L-Acoustics surround soundMiami’s alternative electronic music festival, III Points, will return this October, and attendees will once again be able to experience true immersive sound. The event has confirmed it will host its ::444:: stage for the third time, built with an 11.1 surround system and operated with L-Acoustics patented technology for spatial mixing: L-ISA (L-Acoustics Immersive Sound Art). This program allows different channels of music to be placed within a three-dimensional grid, as opposed to simply expanding stereo to different speakers.
Both the DJs performing on the stage and the sound operators will have access to L-Acoustics DJ as well, which uses machine learning to break apart stereo tracks into four distinct elements: drums, bass, vocals, and mid-range sounds. From there, users can individually arrange the four parts around the circular L-ISA grid or use built-in functions to create immersive audio experiences at the touch of a button.

READ MORE: FabFilter make some of the most-loved plugins on the market – and you can save 25% for a short time

In terms of the speakers themselves, the stage will use L-Acoustics L2 line arrays with Progressive Ultra-Dense Line Source (PULS) builds. PULS is based on using multiple loudspeakers inside each L2 unit. This achieves the greatest amount of sound coming from each line array while reducing the number of speakers to reach the desired SPL.
The title of the stage refers to the programming, with three DJs each playing four-hour sets throughout both days of the festival. This extended runtime will offer the opportunity for the artists to maximize the advanced audio setup. III Points hasn’t shared which artists will be performing on the stage as of now, but in the past, renowned dance artists including Seth Troxler, DJ Koze, and Danny Daze have had their turn.
Then, following the conclusion of the festival, Apple Music subscribers will be able to listen back to each mix from the ::444:: stage in full spatial audio. Apple Music’s team will place microphones around the room to capture the complete audio picture of each set to be mastered in Dolby Atmos.
III Points will take place on October 16-17 in Miami. For more information, head to the festival’s website.
The post III Points announces the return of the ::444:: stage with 11.1 L-Acoustics surround sound appeared first on MusicTech.

nClear releases FREE Sibalance and VocRide vocal plugins
nClear has released Sibalance and VocRide, two pay-what-you-want vocal processing plugins for macOS, Windows, and Linux. Both plugins are available through Ko-fi, and you can optionally enter zero to download them for free. That said, these are full versions of these two plugins, not lite versions or time-limited trials. The tools started as more complex [...]
View post: nClear releases FREE Sibalance and VocRide vocal plugins

Get Melodyne 5 Essential for $24 on Plugin Boutique
Plugin Boutique is offering Celemony’s Melodyne 5 Essential for $24 until June 30, 2026. The regular price is $99, so this is a 75% discount. The same promotion also includes Melodyne 5 Assistant for $71 instead of $248. That one is still a bigger purchase, but it is a nice discount if you know you [...]
View post: Get Melodyne 5 Essential for $24 on Plugin Boutique

What happens to Bitcoin if the Nasdaq falls further?Bitcoin eyes a rally toward $92,630 as BTC defends key long-term support while the Nasdaq flashes deeper correction risks.