Why This Sound Engineer Lost The TourWhenever I’m out at a local show I always pay attention to who’s mixing.  Good FOH sound engineers are hard to come by. I get it. It’s not a glamorous job. It doesn’t pay well for most of the ladder climbing. And the hours are tough. You have to put up with all sorts of […]

ASCAP CULTIVATES SONGWRITER COMMUNITY AT SXSW WITH SXSW SONGS WRITING CAMP AND INDUSTRY HAPPY HOUR ON MARCH 12 AND 13Dedicated to supporting music creators throughout their career, The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) returns to South by Southwest (SXSW) with events designed to connect the music community. The performing rights organization is a presenting sponsor of the SXSW Songs 2025 writing camp and listening party, and will host a happy hour for industry and music creators alike. SXSW Songs 2025ASCAP, the original innovators in performing rights, advocacy and service for music creators, is a sponsor of the SXSW Songs 2025 writing camp, which takes place from March 10 - 12. The song camp was created for established producers, songwriters and artists with commercial co-writing credits. It brings together a curated group of 15 - 20 songwriters from all over the world for a three-day collaboration to create new potential hit songs and wraps up with an official SXSW listening party on Thursday, March 13.SXSW Songs' first five editions have produced eight commercial cuts and identified up-and-coming songwriters and producers such as Grammy Award-winner and 2024 ASCAP London Songwriter of the Year Peter “Lostboy” Rycroft (Kylie Minogue) and global hitmakers James “Yami” Bell (Tiesto) and Victoria Zaro (Tate McRae).Rising stars participating in SXSW Songs 2025 include innovative Italian songwriter-producer Fudasca, Canadian powerhouse vocalist and songwriter Kassidy, unconventional UK pop artist Ruby Duff and Swedish singer-songwriter Zikai. ASCAP Happy Hour and PerformancesWednesday, March 12 from 5:00 - 7:00 PMRules & Reg at The Fairmont, 101 Red River St in AustinHosted by the ASCAP Rhythm & Soul team, this networking event gives music creators a chance to connect with ASCAP membership representatives, enjoy some special guest performances and build their musical community during a laid-back industry happy hour.Admission to the party is free with a SXSW badge or wristband.For more information on ASCAP at SXSW, visit: www.ascap.com/sxsw25. Music Mentor Session with Brooke EpleeThursday, March 13 from 1:00 - 2:15 PMAustin Convention Center, Room 15, 205 Trinity St in AustinThe SXSW Mentor Program is an opportunity for education professionals, students, innovators, and entrepreneurs to connect with seasoned mentors and gain invaluable guidance. As a SXSW Music Mentor, ASCAP SVP of Strategy and Business Development Brooke Eplee will be available to share valuable industry insights with SXSW attendees. Advance sign-up is required and will be limited to SXSW badge holders with primary access. For more information on this mentorship session, visit: https://schedule.sxsw.com/2025/events/PP1147536SXSW Songs Listening Party and ShowcaseThursday, March 13 from 6:00 - 8:00 PMMarlow on Sixth, 700 E. 6th St in AustinThe SXSW Songs 2025 Listening Party invites SXSW attendees to hear newly recorded creations, hot from the studio, and enjoy live performances from some of the writing camp’s artists. Participating producers, songwriters and advisors share their experiences from the three-day intensive and discuss the current state of songwriting with SXSW attendees.Admission to the party is free with a SXSW badge or wristband.The post ASCAP CULTIVATES SONGWRITER COMMUNITY AT SXSW WITH SXSW SONGS WRITING CAMP AND INDUSTRY HAPPY HOUR ON MARCH 12 AND 13 first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

Streamer Amouranth claims she was robbed at gunpoint over crypto fortuneIn November, Amouranth, real name Kaitlyn Siragusa, revealed that she owned around 211 Bitcoin — worth over $20 million.

Here’s A Spy Movie-Grade Access Card Sniffing ImplantSome of our devices look like they’re straight out of hacker movies. For instance, how about a small board you plant behind an RFID reader, collecting access card data and then replaying it when you next walk up the door? [Jakub Kramarz] brings us perhaps the best design on the DIY market, called The Tick – simple, flexible, cheap, tiny, and fully open-source.
Take off the reader, tap into the relevant wires and power pins (up to 25V input), and just leave the board there. It can do BLE or WiFi – over WiFi, you get a nice web UI showing you the data collected so far, and letting you send arbitrary data. It can do Wiegand like quite a few open-source projects, but it can also do arbitrary clock+data protocols, plus you can just wire it up quickly, and it will figure out the encoding.
We could imagine such a board inside a Cyberpunk DnD rulebook or used in Mr Robot as a plot point, except that this one is real and you can use it today for red teaming and security purposes. Not to say all applications would be NSA-catalog-adjacent pentesting – you could use such a bug to reverse-engineer your own garage door opener, for one.

Roland offers FREE TB-303 plugin but only 3,030 licenses are available
Roland announced that they’re offering 3,030 free licences of the TB-303 plugin for Roland Cloud to celebrate 303 day. Before you continue reading, please note that a very limited number of free licenses is available. I’m very sorry if you don’t manage to claim your free license on time, but as they say… don’t kill [...]
View post: Roland offers FREE TB-303 plugin but only 3,030 licenses are available

Drake reaches settlement with iHeartMedia in legal dispute over Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Not Like Us’However, Drake's legal petition against Universal Music Group will remain active in a Texas court
Source

Rick Beato has a theory that “all babies can develop perfect pitch up to nine months”Musician and YouTuber Rick Beato believes all babies can develop perfect pitch up to nine months old.
Beato came up with this theory after watching a TED talk from Patricia Kuhl, a professor known for her research on early language learning, which he recently discussed on Rick Rubin’s Tetragrammaton podcast. Kuhl showcased a study which looked into the sounds that babies can hear in their early life, and how they are “geniuses” when it comes to detecting language.

READ MORE: “The availability of having anything at your fingertips devalues music”: Rick Beato and Rick Rubin discuss the impact of streaming

Beato feels a baby’s detection of language may also be similar to their detection of pitch. During the podcast, he explains, “I saw a video on YouTube called The Linguistic Genius of Babies. There’s a woman Patricia Kuhl and she had this theory, it’s pretty much proven out, that babies have this ability in the first nine months of their lives – she calls them citizens of the world – where they can hear the sounds of all [over 7,000] languages on earth, so they have all the synapses available and their ears can detect these things.
“Starting at nine months they begin to lose the ability and then they become culturally bound listeners so they can only hear the sounds of the languages spoken in the household. But if you expose a child to, let’s say Mandarin, only a few times within that first nine months, they can hear those sounds of Mandarin forever. So I have a theory that all babies can develop perfect pitch up to nine months of age if they have a certain threshold of this high information music played for them [where] they hear all 12 notes,” he says.
Beato, who previously worked as a college professor, worked on ear training with his students. He found it fascinating that some found it especially hard to pick up on pitch. He to goes on to suggest that old recordings, which may not have been as technically polished as music today, may have had a positive impact on how some people might have developed good relative pitch: “When I meet people with perfect pitch there’s so many different levels of that, and relative pitch is far faster, so people that have good relative pitch, they’re not confused if things are in tune or not, because so many old recordings are out of pitch.”
You can check out the full podcast below:

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Sample Logic release Morphestra Ultra With over 650 multi-sampled orchestral instruments and morphed presets, this tool brings together traditional orchestral timbres and cutting-edge cinematic design.

How to grow an Engaged Fanbase using Identity ResonanceDo you want to grow an engaged fanbase that truly connects with your music? Olivia Jones from MIDiA Research shares how identity resonance turns listeners into superfans who stream more, buy more, and often become fans for life.
The post How to grow an Engaged Fanbase using Identity Resonance appeared first on Hypebot.

Sony Music backs AI rights startup Vermillio in $16M funding roundSony Music backs AI rights startup Vermillio leading an $18 million funding round along with DNS CapitalSony Music backs AI rights startup Vermillio leading an $18 million funding round along with DNS Capital.
The post Sony Music backs AI rights startup Vermillio in $16M funding round appeared first on Hypebot.

303 Day: Get Roland’s TB-303 software version absolutely free – but you’ll have to be quickEvery year, the 3rd of March marks 303 Day, a celebration of the classic Roland TB-303 Bass Line bass synthesizer and its impact on music.
While its official production run which took place between 1981 and 1984 was a commercial failure – owing partly to its somewhat unrealistic take on natural bass sound – remaining units were sold off cheaply by Roland and subsequently snapped up by savvy electronic musicians and producers. Its sound became a staple in EDM genres like acid house, Chicago house and techno.

READ MORE: Is Serum 2 arriving soon? Here’s what we know so far

Roland retrospectively saw the cult success of the TB-303, and created its own software version. Now, to celebrate 2025 303 Day, the company is giving away 3,030 TB-303 Software Bass Line synthesizers via the Roland Cloud.
To be in with a chance to claim yours, you can sign up at the Roland Cloud from now until Monday, 10 March at 12AM PST, or until 3,030 TB-303 Software Bass Line Lifetime Keys have been claimed.
“Get hypnotic all over again with the TB-303’s warm, energetic sonic signature – the bouncing pulse that defined the acid house music and dance movement,” Roland teases.
To further facilitate the experience for new TB-303 soft synth owners, Roland has written four deep-dive features taking you through how to master its interface and create your own great sounds, and detailing its use in tracks Song of Life by Leftfield and Praise You by Fatboy Slim.

Mastering the TB-303 Sequencer in Roland Cloud
Beyond Acid: Pushing the TB-303 into New Sonic Territory  
Sound Behind the Song: “Song of Life” by Leftfield
Sound Behind the Song: “Praise You” by Fatboy Slim

For more information, head to Roland and sign up to the Roland Cloud.
The post 303 Day: Get Roland’s TB-303 software version absolutely free – but you’ll have to be quick appeared first on MusicTech.

Audio Assault releases Mix Locker mixing suite with 10 FREE modules
Mix Locker is a newly-released, free mixing suite from Audio Assault, the developer behind Amp Locker, Bass Locker, and freebies like BassTR. Mix Locker is similar to IK Multimedia’s MixBox, a virtual collection of 500 series modules. The free Mix Locker comes with ten modules, with additional modules and bundles available for purchase. The included [...]
View post: Audio Assault releases Mix Locker mixing suite with 10 FREE modules

Is Serum 2 arriving soon? Here’s what we know so farIt looks like Serum 2 is in the works – the latest advancement of the popular Serum software synth by Xfer Records – and will potentially be free for existing users.
Interestingly, mentions of the updated edition of the iconic wavetable synthesiser have been cropping up on the official Xfer Records site, as well as Splice. These new leaks also arrive off the back of written communication from creator Steve Duda and Dave Gamble of DMG Audio, also said to be working on Serum 2, who have both spoken of the project via forums across the last few years.

READ MORE: The best free and paid-for plugins you need to know about this week

First among the evidence of a new Serum update is the fact that a Splice user recently noticed that “Serum 2” was showing up in a dropdown box for existing Serum users. It does, however, look like this has now stopped showing as an option.
Another piece of evidence comes in the form of a leak on the Xfer Records website, which reads: “This machine is not yet authorised for Serum 2, please click the OK button to open a web browser for license retrieval… To authenticate your license of Serum 2, you need to open the plugin in your DAW and open the plugins editor. You will need to log in using your credentials.”
Rumour also has it that Serum 2 will be free, according to an old Reddit post from Steve Duda, in which he said updates to Serum “are always free”, including a 2.0 version. In another post, Duda also said he’s considered a “pay-what-you-want” model for the potential upgrade. Currently, the original Serum is priced at $189.
Comment byu/jovanovic3d from discussion inserum

Moving on to suspected features, an old post on Gearspace by Dave Gamble dives into potential new tools for Serum 2. It suggested there will be new synthesis types, more filters, changes to the modulation system, and changes to the UI. He also hinted there will be more than two oscillators and a sub-oscillator, as currently found in the existing Serum.
Be sure to check back on MusicTech for any further updates, or find out more about what Serum currently has to offer over at Xfer Records.
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Excite Audio releases Bloom Synth Atmosphere Excite Audio have introduced Bloom Synth Atmosphere, designed for crafting immersive soundscapes, ethereal textures and evolving ambient sequences.

“His contributions have left an indelible mark on the world of music”: Korg president and M1 inspiration Seiki Kato dies at 67Korg has announced the passing of its President and Representative Director, Seiki Kato, at the age of 67, following an illness.
A statement posted on the brand’s Instagram page reads, “It it with profound sadness that we announce the passing of Mr. Seiki Kato… Born in Tokyo in 1957, Mr. Kato was a visionary leader whose dedication and passion for innovation shaped the future of Korg and the music industry. From his early days in domestic sales to his pivotal role in the development of groundbreaking instruments such as the M1, his contributions have left an indelible mark on the world of music.”
After graduating from university in 1980, Kato joined Keio Giken Kogyo Co. Ltd, which would later become Korg Inc. While he started in sales at the company, he became the head of product planning by 1985. Kato was instrumental in driving Korg to its well-respected position in music tech, nurturing the brand during the 1980s and gaining recognition for its M1 synthesizer and subsequent evolutions and spin-offs.
The M1’s success can be attributed to its status as the first true workstation synthesizer, combining a synth, sequencer, and effects in one unit. Its high-quality pulse code modulation-based sounds, including iconic presets like the M1 Piano and house Organ, would go on to become staples across all music genres. It is one of the best-selling and most influential synths to exist.
Korg’s statement continues, “As President of Korg USA and later Korg Inc., Mr Kato’s leadership and commitment to excellence were instrumental in expanding our global presence. His warm, compassionate spirit and exceptional guidance earned him the deep respect and trust of colleagues and industry partners alike.”
In 1988, Kato relocated to the USA Korg offices, and the following year was appointed President of Korg USA, committed to improving and expanding Korg’s presence in America. Following that success, he became the Executive Vice President in 1995, and further became the President and CEO in 2003.
Korg concludes, “We remain committed to carrying forward his passion and spirit of innovation, striving to inspire musicians around the world, just as his legacy will continue to inspire us all.”
The post “His contributions have left an indelible mark on the world of music”: Korg president and M1 inspiration Seiki Kato dies at 67 appeared first on MusicTech.