Instagram: 3 Billion Users and the Rise Of Reels and DMSInstagram has officially passed 3 billion monthly active users (MAUs), cementing its role as one of the world’s most influential social platforms. Along with the milestone, Instagram is signaling increasing emphasis on Reels and direct messaging (DMs). For marketers of music, this shift marks a new era of how to engage fans, grow audiences, and drive deeper connections.
The post Instagram: 3 Billion Users and the Rise Of Reels and DMS appeared first on Hypebot.

Lunacy Audio CUBE Mini is FREE until October 31st (Usually $49)
Lunacy Audio has made its CUBE Mini virtual instrument free until October 31st, 2025 (regular price $49). You can grab it now for free from Plugin Boutique or directly from Lunacy Audio. CUBE Mini is the streamlined version of Lunacy’s flagship CUBE, a sample-based instrument powered by vector synthesis. Instead of overwhelming you with every [...]
View post: Lunacy Audio CUBE Mini is FREE until October 31st (Usually $49)

We are currently testing and working on a new feature which we actually created last year, but couldn't publish for some time, please stay tuned for new #PublmeUpdates 💫🌌

Faster Master from Mastering The Mix Developed alongside DJs and producers David Guetta and Nicky Romero, the latest plug-in to join...

“It’s okay to not see the whole path. Just take the next step”: Lee Ann Roberts has built a music career from nothingSouth Africa is becoming a major player in dance music, and Durban’s own Lee Ann Roberts is holding the flag for her home country all around the world. Currently based in Amsterdam, Roberts has delivered her raging beats at Tomorrowland, Fabric, and Amnesia Ibiza, among many other hotspots, while also running her label and event series, NowNow.
However, representing South Africa on a global scale doesn’t mean Roberts had the same opportunities as someone who was born in London or Los Angeles. Her childhood was fraught with neglect from absent and addicted parents. No one was encouraging her to pursue music.

READ MORE: How do DJs break out in 2025? Femme House, Beatport & The Lot Radio have ideas

“I come from a place where nothing was handed to me, and I learned early on that you either give up or you fight,” Roberts says to MusicTech over email.
Living in a home with an absent father and an alcoholic mother, Roberts sought environments that provided an escape from the isolation she felt growing up. Like so many before her with the same intention, she turned to music. In her younger years, she dated a promoter who was hosting international DJs in Durban, and she was finding her way to Cape Town on the opposite side of the country to attend psytrance raves (which inspired her latest EP, Africa).
“I was part of the South African psytrance community for about 10 years, going almost every weekend,” Roberts says. “Honestly, those were the best times of my life. Psytrance shaped me. The way a set could completely transport you stuck with me, and with my newest EP Africa, I wanted to channel that same energy…my roots…where it all began but through my own lens.”
Image: Press
But before she could release music inspired by her upbringing, she had to learn to produce. After being involved in her local scene for so long, she picked up DJing and started a radio show on MuthaFM in Cape Town. But production was a different beast. She didn’t have access to equipment. There weren’t a lot of other producers to teach her. And there definitely weren’t any production schools.
So, Roberts built a career as a model and used that as a means of travel. In 2014, while modelling full-time, she moved to Los Angeles and started studying production at Garnish Music School. Through the program, she had individual lessons with the UK’s DJ Rap, and she used whatever spare money she had to throw together a barebones studio so she could practice with YouTube videos in her spare time.
“When I started, my ‘studio’ was a laptop with cracked Ableton and a pair of cheap headphones. That’s it. No fancy monitors. No gear,” Robert says. “I scraped and saved to upgrade little by little, but honestly, those early days taught me you don’t need much to start making something meaningful.”
Roberts put out her first release in 2021, entitled I Want You. Totally accustomed to being in charge of her career at this point, she also launched NowNow Records with her debut. The two-track EP featured a spacey techno track from Roberts alongside a hypnotic remix from the UK duo, Dense & Pika.

Since then, she’s dabbled in other styles like her beloved psytrance and released music on celebrated labels like Sian’s Octopus Recordings and Coyu’s Suara, but she shares the bulk of her music independently, and her primary genre has become hard techno.
“It feels like my heartbeat. Relentless, unapologetic, and full of raw emotion,” Roberts says, and when it comes to producing the fast-paced genre, she has a few tips. “Keep the energy alive. This sound needs movement. Layer percussion, add fills, automate filters. Kick and bass are king. Spend time getting them to work perfectly together. Use distortion tastefully. It adds power but can muddy your mix if overdone.”
Roberts’ connection to hard techno goes beyond her musical preferences, though, and deep into her past:
“That drive, that edge, it’s the closest thing I’ve found to translating my inner world into sound. It’s not just about BPM, it’s about the energy that says ‘I survived, I’m here, and I’m not holding back’,” Roberts says. “It matches the intensity of my story. It’s everything I’ve been through, every moment I thought I couldn’t keep going, and then that surge of strength that kept me moving forward. It’s not just music to me, it’s how I tell my story without saying a word.”
Four years ago, Roberts’ story took another harsh turn when her mother committed suicide after a battle with opioid addiction. She acknowledges the traumatic effect this had on her; it’s something she’s dealing with in therapy, but it also served as a motivator. Just like the other difficult experiences in her past that made it seem like she could never earn her place as a professional DJ and producer.
Image: Press
“It’s surreal. Every ‘no’ I’ve been told that I couldn’t DJ, that I’d never produce, that I’m a model not a DJ, just made me more hungry. It’s not about proving people wrong anymore. It’s about proving to myself that I can keep showing up no matter what,” Roberts says, going on to share how music supported her through such a tragedy. “Losing my mom shaped everything. It was trauma that could have swallowed me but music gave me a way to channel all of that darkness into something alive. Something that made me more hungry and persistent than ever.”
When asked about continuing to pursue her musical journey through all these challenges, the piece of advice she would pass on to anyone in a similar situation is to simply start anyway:
“It’s okay to not see the whole path. Just take the next step, and don’t wait for the perfect time. It doesn’t exist. Learn, experiment, fail, try again,” Roberts says. “The only way to become an artist is to be one even when you feel like you’re not ready. You’ll never feel ready. That’s the secret.”
In reflecting on finding so much success despite the challenges, Roberts’ mind drifts back to her mom, and what she would say if she could see her today:
“I think she’d be proud. She was always proud of me, but now even more so. I think she’d see the strength in me that maybe she didn’t get to fully find in herself, even though I always thought she was the strongest person I knew. She’d know that even though I went through hell, I found a way to turn it into something beautiful. And I hope she knows she’s still here in every track I make and in everything I do.”
The post “It’s okay to not see the whole path. Just take the next step”: Lee Ann Roberts has built a music career from nothing appeared first on MusicTech.

Mastering The Mix’s Faster Master has made me completely rethink my mastering chain£49, masteringthemix.com
It’s always best to get a fresh set of expert ears to master your precious music. But if you’re strapped for cash or just want a clean-sounding demo, then there’s no shortage of all-in-one mastering tools. There are plugins such as iZotope’s Ozone (recently updated to V12), Cradle’s The God Particle, Plugin Alliance’s bx_masterdesk, and Musik Hack’s Masterplan, through to online mastering tools like LANDR that offer a refined set of controls.
This ever-growing list now has a new entry from Mastering The Mix. Faster Master is an easy-to-use plugin that listens to your audio to generate mastering presets. It is co-created by David Guetta and Nicky Romero and offers an affordable alternative to more expensive options as well as simple controls to get results fast.

READ MORE: Musik Hack Fuel review: Polishing a mix isn’t supposed to be this easy

I’m a long-term user of Ozone, but it’s expensive, heavy on CPU, its suite of modules can sometimes feel like overkill, and, occasionally, masters end up sounding over-processed. Faster Master is the opposite of all these things. It aims to deliver pro-quality masters in just a few clicks, and includes only a handful of modules: EQ, Transients, Compression, Stereo-width and Limiting.
Faster Master has 166 presets that cover a wide range of genres and styles, including electronic, house, hip-hop, pop, rock, acoustic, country, dubstep, latin, soul and even soundtrack. To get started, place the plugin last on your output chain, and then click Analyze whilst playing the loudest section of your track. After a few seconds, it will give a warning about how much gain it’s about to apply, which you can click through to switch on the processing. You can then choose from 10 different preset profiles from the list that have been specially selected to best match your track.

The plugin looks at your frequency spread and width, and then uses its EQ and Stereo modules to make adjustments to match the reference profile. The overall loudness is your decision, but it defaults to -6 LUFS every time (this can be changed in the settings). The default compression is always light, and transient adjustment is off. This means you can adjust these things if you think they’re needed, but you may often find that they’re not. By giving you 10 potential presets, you can quickly flick through and hear different options before picking your favourite for further refinement.
Crucially, you can also load in reference tracks, which are then saved as new profiles to choose from. As a nice workflow touch, the loudest part of the track is automatically looped and available to listen to so that you can compare your master with the reference at the click of a button.
The modules are simple and intuitive. The EQ features 11 fixed nodes for fast tonal shaping. These are improved versions of the filters found in MTM’s Mixroom and Bassroom plugins, with minimal phase distortion and transient smearing. There’s also a percentage control so you can scale the amount of EQ applied. I find it incredibly easy to make adjustments by ear to tweak the spread to my liking, although some hover-over frequency read-outs would be appreciated.
Presets. Image: Press
The Transients section has a single control that can be increased or reduced to add extra global punch or tame percussive elements that are poking through too much. If your mix is solid enough, then you probably won’t need to use it, but it has a relatively transparent sound, so a small amount can prove useful in the right situation. The Compress section is also incredibly simple, with a slider that changes from Light, to Dynamic, to Tight (an SSL-style squeeze). The threshold is intelligently set based on the audio peaks, and the other parameters change as you adjust the slider, so all you need to do is use your ears and turn it up. As with everything here, it’s well calibrated so that even the most extreme settings won’t totally destroy your audio. There’s also a switchable sidechain filter at 150 Hz that is used to reduce pumping in bass-heavy tracks.
Next up is the Stereo section that has four fixed bands covering Low End, Low Mids, High Mids and High End. It seems to be using some sort of M/S technique for the widening, which sounds best when used sparingly, but thankfully remains mono-compatible.
This brings us to the main element that makes or breaks any mastering plugin: the limiter. Like it or not, modern music has developed with an emphasis on volume, and even though streaming standards have helped matters, dance music in particular still sounds more powerful with a well-balanced and loud-sounding master. I put Faster Master through extensive stress testing alongside Ozone 11, Sonible’s smart:limit and Musik Hack’s FUEL. Each is pushed to the limit (no pun intended) and beyond just to see how much they can handle, and the results are really surprising.
Transients. Image: Press
All three of these alternatives are excellent (and not cheap) plugins, but Faster Master comes out on top, with the most defined transient punch and the least amount of pumping. Be aware that the intricacies of specific tracks and genres may interact differently with these processors, so it’s not gospel that these results will always be the same, but these are my findings on a range of dance music tracks.
Controls for the Limit section are relatively simple. The track analysis will set the timing parameters in the background, and you simply choose what loudness level (in LUFS) you want to aim for. You have a choice of six slider positions from -10 up to -5. Somewhat confusingly, this is measured in LUFS short-term as opposed to integrated, so it doesn’t totally coincide with values that you might be used to. There’s a white line that moves to show the average volume, but it has a habit of continually moving, which leads me to use a separate metering plugin to get more accurate results. There are also times when I want to select values in between the slider positions, but that’s not currently possible. You can, however, add additional thickness and volume using a Drive slider, set the ceiling output, and change the behaviour to true peak. It would be useful if there was a gain reduction meter, as this would help to make more informed decisions when it comes to refining the mix going into the plugin.
Having David Guetta and Nicky Romero’s names on the plugin will come across as an impressive endorsement to some, and a put-off to others. I would say it’s better to just test the plugin and judge it on its own merits. It turns out though, that both artists were fairly heavily involved in the testing and development stages. Guetta, it seems, came up with the idea of having the whole plugin level-matched so that each move keeps a consistent volume. In practice, this is incredibly useful as you’re constantly focusing on the sonic differences rather than on changes in volume, especially when working with the EQ. Ozone can also do this, but it feels a little smoother here.
Limit. Image: Press
I’m really impressed with Faster Master. I generally prefer plugins that offer more control so that I can fine-tune settings, but the results here speak for themselves. It’s so well set up and calibrated to get fast, great-sounding masters with minimal fuss.
I go through a bunch of tracks and switch out my final Ozone plugin for Faster Master, and as much as I hate to admit it (as I spent a long while tweaking those settings), it sounds cleaner and more refined.
With the exception of the aforementioned shortcomings of the Limit module, I don’t have any complaints; given the quality of the sound, the price is highly competitive. It’s an excellent choice for novices or anyone who’s daunted by complex mastering plugins, and it’s even worth considering for more seasoned professionals. I’ll definitely be using Faster Master in conjunction with other plugins in my mastering chain going forward.

Key features

Mastering plugin with auto preset generation (VST3, AU, AAX)
Co-developed with David Guetta and Nicky Romero
5 modules: EQ, Transients, Compress, Stereo and Limit
166 genre profiles
Import your own reference tracks
Auto volume compensation

The post Mastering The Mix’s Faster Master has made me completely rethink my mastering chain appeared first on MusicTech.

Moon Safari Blows Fresh Air on the Hollywood BowlWhen Air's Moon Safari was released in 1998, it really cemented the fact that some of the most exciting electronic music in the world was coming out of France. Just one year earlier, Paris outfit Daft Punk had dropped their debut album Homework, and singles such as "Around the World" exploded into the charts. But Moon Safari was better still--a heady blend of space pop, contemporary jazz and dream pop.Since then, the Versaille duo have released five more studio albums plus a couple of soundtracks, and some EPs. Outside of 2016's compilation Twentyears, however, their last new release came in 2014 with Music for Museum, a commission for the Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille as part of their Open Museum project.Their show at the Hollywood Bowl was split into two sets: Moon Safari in its entirety, and then choice cuts from their other records. More special still was the fact that the music was enhanced by the brilliance of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra.HB25 Air with Orchestra / KCRW Festival - Hollywood Bowl - September 21, 2025

Truth be told, there were moments when the gentle, orchestral sounds were drowned out by what was going on literally directly above them. But when it did work, when the two worlds collided effectively, magic happened.The order of events for Set 1 contained no surprises. Naturally, "La Femme D'Argent" kicked things off, the opening track on the album. Then came smash hit single "Sexy Boy," with it's cyber hook and gloriously manipulated vocal refrain. It was one of the best electronic tunes of the '90s, and it sounded incredible in Hollywood.Other highlights from Moon Safari included "Talisman" and "New Star in the Sky," and then it was time for set 2.

We got three songs from 2001's 10 000 HZ Legend, including an electrifying "Don't Be Light," and th closing "Electronic Performers." Four were pulled from 2004's Talkie Walkie, with the highlight being a super-sweet "Cherry Blossom Girl." Some of the more gentle moments from that record, such as "Alone in Kyoto" and "Venus" allowed the orchestra to really shine.Additionally, to tracks were performed from Air's score for the movie The Virgin Suicides. These were a real treat and, again, the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra beefed up the tunes beautifully.

That was that. An incredible performance, primarily of a 27-year-old album that doesn't sound dated at all. Still, one can only hope that we get something new from Air soon.Photographs taken by Timothy Norris​​​ at the Hollywood Bowl, provided courtesy of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association
Edit this setlist | More Air setlists
The post Moon Safari Blows Fresh Air on the Hollywood Bowl first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

Bitcoin bulls favored in $22.6B BTC monthly options expiry, but bears still lurkBitcoin’s $22.6 billion monthly options expiry is led by the bulls but macroeconomic headwinds could give the bears a last minute advantage.

Types of microphones: A guide to how they work and best use cases
Join us as we explore a few of the most common types of microphones, what makes them work, and what sets them apart.

3D Printed “Book” Demonstrates Mechanical ActionsA book of mechanical actions is a wondrous thing — mechanically inclined children have lost collective decades pouring over them over the generations. What could possibly be better? Why, if the mechanisms in the book were present, and moved! That’s exactly what [AxelMadeIt] produced for a recent video.
Being just four pages, you might argue this is but a pamphlet. But since it takes up a couple inches of shelf space, it certainly looks like a book from the outside, which is exactly what [AxelMadeIt] was going for. To get a more book-like spine, his hinge design sacrificed opening flat, but since the pages are single-sided, that’s no great sacrifice.
At only 6 mm (1/4″) thick, finding printable mechanisms that could actually fit inside was quite a challenge. If he was machining everything out of brass, that would be room for oodles of layers. But [Axel] wanted to print the parts for this book, so the mechanisms need to be fairly thick. One page has a Roberts linkage and a vault-locking mechanism, another has planetary gears, with angled teeth to keep them from falling out. Finally, the first page has a geneva mechanism, and an escarpment, both driven by a TPU belt drive.
All pages are driven from an electric motor that is buried in the last page of the “book”, along with its motor, battery, and a couple of micro-switches to turn it on when you open the book and off again when you reach the last page. Rather than a description of the mechanisms, like most books of mechanical actions, [Axel] used multi-material printing to put lovely poems on each page. A nice pro-tip is that “Futura”, a font made famous by flying to the moon, works very well when printed this way. If you just want to watch him flip through, jump to 8:00 in the video.
This reminds us of another project we once featured, which animated 2100 mechanical mechanisms. While this book can’t offer near that variety, it makes up for it in tactility.

Neon, the No. 2 social app on the Apple App Store, pays users to record their phone calls and sells data to AI firmsA new call recording app is gaining traction for offering to pay users for voice data from calls, which is sold to AI companies.

On… Spotify and the ‘more free’ burger giveaway.MBW founder Tim Ingham on Spotify making 'free' better, in its bid to fight YouTube and TikTok
Source

Spotify (finally) slides into Rekordbox, Serato, and Algoriddim djay (again) – for better or worse?Spotify Premium subscribers can now stream playlists directly into Rekordbox, Serato DJ, and Algoriddim's djay. It makes discovery and prep easier than ever, but with no offline mode, limited cue support, and licensing gaps, is it ready for pro DJs?
The post Spotify (finally) slides into Rekordbox, Serato, and Algoriddim djay (again) – for better or worse? appeared first on DJ TechTools.

NoiseRverb is a free convolution reverb plugin capturing historic churches in Quito
NoiseRoom UIO has released NoiseRverb, a free convolution reverb plugin that brings the acoustic character of Quito’s historic churches to your DAW. Created by sound designer Jhonatan López (whose free CCMkI: Classic Compressor plugin we featured a while ago) in collaboration with engineers Analí Pinto and Fausto Espinoza, NoiseRverb is more than just a reverb [...]
View post: NoiseRverb is a free convolution reverb plugin capturing historic churches in Quito

Venn Audio V-Clip 2V-Clip 2 is the sequel to Venn Audio's signature plugin, V-Clip. It offers fully featured multiband saturation, pre/post emphasis, mid-side processing, modular and fully resizable GUI, advanced asymmetric waveshaping with brand new clipping functions, and up to 512x oversampling and more. Video V-Clip 2 offers: Highly customisable levels of saturation, featuring mulitband and mid-side processing, using up to 10 separate clipping stages. A pre/post emphasis stage for advanced tone control of the distortion. Large selection of static and variable clipping sigmoid functions to choose from, including the brand new 'super soft knee', providing a variable knee transfer curve in the decibel domain. A modern all new modular, fully resizable GUI. Almost all components can be popped out into separate floating windows to give you an extra level of control. A brand new interactive live shaper visualisation. Multiple new visualisations to choose from, all resizable to preference: shaper, waveform, oscilloscope, envelope, spectrum and histogram views for each clipper. Up to 512x oversampling with three different filter types. Advanced asymmetric clipping supported natively in each clipper, easily set separate waveshaping and thresholds for positive and negative samples. New test generators to help you fine tune your wave shaping, including an adjustable test tone, noise generators and a sampler. Available in VST3, AUv2 and AAX for MacOS and Windows. Read More