SSL to introduce O-Series V2.0 SSL's upcoming O-Series V2.0 software will establishing complete project compatibility between the Oracle and the recently launched Odyssey console.

Coco Smith Signs with VHS RecordsDate Signed: June 2026Label: VHS RecordsType of Music: Singer-SongwriterManagement: mauricemusicmanagement@gmail.com Booking: mauricemusicmanagement@gmail.com Publicity: Kenzie Davis, Big Hassle - kenzie@bighassle.com A&R: Reed Black, VHS Records - reedblacksound@gmail.com Web: instagram.com/cocosmith__

New York singer and songwriter Coco Smith comes from a family of musicians and, as a child, she would regularly listen to The Beatles (courtesy of her dad) and Eleni Mandell (her mom’s influence) in the car. She would sing along, but writing her own songs began in high school.

“I began to feel a lot of strong and deep emotions, probably to do with being gay and my dad’s illness,” Smith says. “I didn’t know any other way to put them out except to write them into music—my parents had already kinda taught me how. Performing and playing the songs solo came soon after, a band came years later, in college. I would probably advise other parents to do the same, if they want their child to make music and still love it as they get older.”

While her sound may have progressed and developed over the years, Smith’s influences remain the same: Big Thief, Pinegrove, Julia Jacklin, John Lennon, and Maisy.

“I think, honestly, I just got more confident, and that changed my sound,” Smith says. “The first couple of years of college, I didn’t think anyone would care enough to play my music with me. It wasn’t until I began playing the basements in Allston that I was like, ‘okay, I want a band so badly.’ I started wanting songs with ‘teeth’ as Sam Skinner would say, and it took me a while to figure out what that meant. I had angry things to say, in a mellow way, like Julia Jacklin.”

Smith’s new album, You Won’t Get My Message but You’ll Hear It, is out now via Brooklyn-based indie label VHS Records. “I found them online,” Smith says. “I wanted an artist-forward label that wasn’t affiliated with any major labels, based in N.Y.C. I also knew Fish Hunt’s music and loved it and had seen People I Love open for my guitarist Ash’s release show for her own project, Wulfer, and loved that too.”

Smith recently dropped “Multiform,” a single taken from the new album. “’Multiform’ was recorded with Sam Skinner, in his studio, with Isaiah, Isaac, and Theo,” Smith says. “It was a part of my album, You Won’t Get My Message but You’ll Hear It. We recorded it last December, for three days. The ‘triumph, despite’ theme was nailed into the ground. That is always what I want for my music, the hopeful tinge out of something horrible, and Sam got it.”

With the album out, Smith is looking forward to more releases this year. “I’m working on a song with my friend, Remy, and a couple long-distance songs with my friends Corbin and Cade,” she says.The post Coco Smith Signs with VHS Records first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

Saint Mike DSP Abyssos Bass Amp ProFinding a bass tone that actually holds a mix together is harder than it looks. Getting a usable bass sound is quite the challenge. Abyssos Bass Amp Pro was built to solve this issue. This is a fully unlocked ecosystem built around a single cohesive signal path: Pre-Pedal Dynamics Triple Amp Architecture Cabinet & User IR Loader Surgical 9-Band EQ Post-FX. You get a fully integrated workflow featuring an advanced "Pro Quality" oversampling engine, a precision noise gate, a mono-safe stereo widener, a global Blend control, and a mutable visual tuner to keep your session moving. Each amp head has its own character. Paired with six voiced cabinets and custom IR loading, three pre-pedals and two post-pedals, you have a production-ready rig on day one. Features. Complete Bass Rig: Combines input dynamics, three amplifier characters, cabinet environment, a surgical EQ and time-based effects in a single cohesive workspace. Three Modelled Amp Heads: Each head is a distinct circuit with its own control set, not a shared engine with different voicings. ΒΥΘΟΣ (Bythos): The all-rounder. A full-range valve head with Gain, Bass, Mid, Treble, Output and a sweepable Mid Selector covering 200 Hz to 1.6 kHz. Clean and articulate at low settings, thick and compressed when pushed. Responds to playing force, dig in and it closes down, back off and it opens up. ΑΒΥΣΣΟΣ (Abyssos) [PRO EXCLUSIVE]: The heavy one. Three controls: Gain, Tone and Output, because it does one thing extremely well. Built for doom, sludge and anything that needs to sound enormous. ΜΕΣΟΠΕΛΑΓΟΣ (Mesopelagos) [PRO EXCLUSIVE]: The clean, articulate one. A high-headroom head with Gain, Bass, Low Mid, High Mid, Treble and Output. Voiced for post-punk and anything where the right hand is the tone. Pre-Amp Dynamics & Drive: Shape your attack before it reaches the amplifier. ΠΙΕΣΗ Compressor: A bass-focused compressor that tightens transients and evens out note-to-note level without squashing the attack. ΟΚΤΑΒΑ Octaver [PRO EXCLUSIVE]: A low-latency monophonic octaver with independent Sub, Up and Dry levels. The octave-up voice is generated instantly with no tracking delay; the sub is built from a harmonic ladder so its pitch stays audible on small speakers, not just felt on a subwoofer. ΦΘΟΡΑ Fuzz: Adds aggression and fuzzy character early in the chain, with Gain, Tone, Level and a Mix control so the low end survives. Cabinet: Replicates authentic speaker responses to bring raw DI tracks to life. Includes low-cut and high-cut frequency trimmers and a dedicated level control. Free Version: 3 voiced cabinet models. Pro Version: 6 cabinet modes plus an integrated User IR Loader for your own impulse responses. ΖΥΓΟΣ 9-Band Surgical EQ: A bass-focused graphic equalizer mapping the frequencies that matter on this instrument: 31 Hz, 62 Hz, 125 Hz, 250 Hz, 500 Hz, 1 kHz, 2 kHz, 4 kHz and 8 kHz, with a ±12 dB range. The bottom band reaches below a low B, where a guitar-derived EQ cannot. Post Effects (FX): ΔΙΝΗ Chorus (Free & Pro): A bucket-brigade-voiced chorus with Rate, Depth, Mix and a dedicated crossover control that keeps your fundamentals dry while the upper band modulates. Cold and vintage rather than glossy, the post-punk chorus sound, without the mud. ΗΧΩ Space [PRO EXCLUSIVE]: A combined delay and reverb engine with DAW tempo sync, standard and ping-pong routing, and a Wear control for tape-style degradation. Ranges from tight slapback to enormous ambient wash. Global Utilities & Performance Controls: Blend: Mixes the processed signal against your untouched DI. Automatically delay-compensated, so the two paths stay phase-aligned no matter what is engaged in the chain. Spread Widener: A toggle that expands a mono track into a wide stereo image. Genuinely mono-safe. Noise Gate: A tight threshold barrier that removes hum and hiss. Pro Quality Mode [PRO EXCLUSIVE]: Engages higher-rate anti-aliasing across the drive stages for a smoother, cleaner top end at high gain settings. Curated Preset Library: An integrated preset manager for browsing, saving your own, and instant A/B comparison between two states. Includes 50 presets (Pro Version). Built-In Utility Tuner: Activating the footer utility mutes the plugin output and brings up an accurate visual tuner with adjustable target calibration in Hz. Read More

"Music, Fashion, Film" by Charli xcxAtlanticProducers: A.G. Cook, Finn Keane

Thirteen years after the release of her debut True Romance album, British pop artist Charli xcx has dropped her seventh full-lengther and, while not the year’s best album by any means, it offers further proof that her musical journey is a rewarding one, both for her fans and herself. It’s gratifying to see Charli xcx having a Gaga-esque period of her career where the naysayers, the people decrying her for being over-produced and over-stylized, are being silenced by the sheer quality of her recent output, this album included.

Music, Fashion, Film has also arrived just a few months after Charli xcx’s soundtrack for the recent Wuthering Heights movie, and in many ways, it feels like a continuation of that, more so than 2024’s much-heralded Brat. This is pop, sure, but it’s so much more. The artist, and we use that word deliberately, does her thing of taking the listener on a rollercoaster of emotions with the backdrop of contemporary life looming over everything. But it’s the left turns that she takes on a song like “Yeah” or “Persona,” where she’ll just slam on the brakes seemingly on a whim (though obviously not really). 

There are moments that feel bleak, others that are lush. She lashes out on “Camera,” justifiably so. And then unleashes melody overload on “Magic Metal Montana.” The albums ends with “No One Lasts Forever,” a collab with movie legend David Cronenberg, which included the line “You need to understand the feeling, of the crushing highs and lows of ego.” One gets the feeling that, as she continues this journey, she’s understanding it more and more. The post "Music, Fashion, Film" by Charli xcx first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

Neocloud Lambda secures $1B in debt to buy more chipsNeocloud Lambda has raised $1B in private debt to buy Nvidia AI chips and lease them to Microsoft. It's the latest in a string of loans, underscoring the high cost of the AI boom.

DOOM Played on Series of 555 TimersIt’s technically true that any piece of software can be reproduced in hardware, although modern software’s size and complexity generally makes this a non-starter. But if we go far enough back in time, older software becomes easier and easier to implement in hardware. The original DOOM from 1993 might one day be recreated in full this way, but that day is not today. Instead, [Nick] has recreated the original music from that game, playing the opening track in nothing but 555 timers.
The circuit starts with a 555 timer that acts as a system clock with a rate of just over 7 Hz. These pulses feed a binary counter which in turn feeds a decoder, giving the circuit 15 positions. Each output of the decoder feeds to a diode matrix which stores information about what pitch the circuit should play. The circuit only needs to play six pitches so the diodes effectively connect each moment in time to one of these six notes. From there the circuit feeds into a set of switches which select different resistor networks of another 555 which is actually responsible for producing sound. The resistor networks have different values to adjust the timing of the 555 to produce different pitches.
Of course this entire exercise is largely academic as almost any microcontroller would be able to be programmed to play this chiptune quite easily, but it’s not a bad idea to get down into the weeds of digital logic from time to time in order to refine one’s skills and knowledge about what’s really going on in the inner workings of circuits. Or, go even deeper than that and build the logic gates themselves from first principles.

Spotify promotes Joe Hadley to VP of Global Music Content, Partnerships; J.J. Italiano named Head of EditorialSpotify says the new structure will preserve Editorial's "distinct voice, expertise, and decision-making," while creating "a more connected Music team."
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Voxis from CEDAR Audio Voxis is a low-latency voice isolator that has been optimised for live environments where engineers have to contend with troublesome background noise.

A free version of the acclaimed Reason Rack has just launched – here’s everything you need to knowThe iconic Reason Rack has been a core component of the Reason DAW since its launch in 2000. But in 2019, it was made available as a standalone plugin for the first time, offering producers the chance to harness its power within DAWs outside of Reason.
Reason Rack is highly acclaimed, and allows producers to stack virtual instruments on top of one another with total control over the routing between them.
Now, Reason Studios has unveiled a new free version, offering 15 Reason instruments, effects and creative utilities for no cost at all. This isn’t a trial, and has no expiration or watermark, Reason confirms.

READ MORE: Polyend has unveiled a new MIDI controller – and it looks an awful lot like a QWERTY keyboard

Reason Free – what’s actually included?
 
Credit: Reason Studios
The 15 included Devices consist of four virtual instruments, five effects, and six creative utilities.
The flagship virtual instrument available within Reason Free is Europa, a powerful wavetable synthesizer geared towards “modern sound design”, with three spectral engineers, advanced waveform shaping, modulation and effects, and a bank of over 600 presets for instant inspiration. The full list of included Devices is below:
Instruments

Europa – Powerful wavetable synthesizer for modern sound design
Kong – Versatile drum machine for beats, samples and percussion
ID8 – All-in-one collection of essential songwriting instruments
Monotone – Monophonic synthesizer for deep basses and expressive lead

Effects 

Scream 4 – Creative distortion and saturation
The Echo – Flexible stereo delay with modulation and filtering
Audiomatic – One-knob effect for vintage and lo-fi character
RV7000 MkII – Professional reverb for realistic and creative spaces
MClass Maximizer – Mastering limiter for louder, cleaner mixes

Creative utilities

Scales & Chords – Creates melodies and chords that stay in key
Combinator – Combines instruments and effects into custom devices
Pulsar – Dual modulation device for adding movement to any Rack parameter
Spider Audio Merger & Splitter – Splits and combines audio signals
Spider CV Merger & Splitter – Routes and combines modulation signals
MIDI Out Device – Controls external plugins and hardware

How is Reason Free different from the full Reason Rack?

Where Reason Free offers 15 instruments, effects and utilities, the full Reason Rack – included in a Reason+ subscription – offers more than 90, as well as weekly Sound Packs, plus access to the full Reason DAW.
Also included in Reason+ is access to the LANDR ecosystem, with unlimited music distribution and tools for creativity, mixing and mastering. Additionally, Reason users can expand their setup with individual Rack Extensions and Refills, or by buying a perpetual Reason licence.
What is Reason Studios saying about Reason Free?
Credit: Reason Studios
“Reason has always been about musical exploration – when you connect two Devices, turn the knobs, and discover a great sound you weren’t looking for,” says Mattias Häggström Gerdt, Product Manager at Reason Studios.
“With Reason Free, we’re giving everyone a piece of that experience. The included Devices are fantastic in their own right, but the Rack also gives you the freedom to go deeper, experiment and build something entirely your own.”
Pricing & availability
As the name might suggest, Reason Free is totally free, and is available now as a VST3, AU and AAX plugin for compatible DAWS. “It is free forever, with no trial period, expiration date or watermark,” Reason Studios says.
Additionally, Reason Free can run as a DAW of its own, offering producers up to 16 tracks.
Learn more at Reason Studios.
The post A free version of the acclaimed Reason Rack has just launched – here’s everything you need to know appeared first on MusicTech.

Decomposer releases Dert, a FREE one-knob distortion plugin
Decomposer has released Dert, a free distortion plugin with one knob and four increasingly mangled flavors of dirt. If the developer name sounds familiar, Decomposer is the team behind Sitala. I love Sitala; it is one of my go-to tools when I want to load and play drum samples quickly without firing up a more [...]
View post: Decomposer releases Dert, a FREE one-knob distortion plugin

SoundCloud is finally letting artists sell music directly to fans – with zero commissionSoundCloud has spent years being the place where you stumble across your next favourite artist. Now, it wants to be the place where you actually buy their music, too.
The company is currently testing a new feature that lets artists sell and deliver music directly from their SoundCloud profiles, meaning fans can discover a track, decide they want to own it and buy the download without being sent off to another platform.
Artists can set their own prices and offer music in formats including MP3 and WAV. More importantly, SoundCloud takes no commission from those sales. Once standard fees and taxes are deducted, artists keep 100% of the revenue.

READ MORE: How to get playlisted on streaming services: 7 playlist pitching tips

It’s a notable addition to a platform that has traditionally been much better at getting music heard than getting it sold. A stream might introduce an artist to a new fan, but a direct purchase puts actual money into the artist’s pocket.
SoundCloud says there’s already a sizeable appetite for that. Around 250,000 artists currently direct fans to external platforms to buy their music, with 2.4 million tracks linked to purchase pages. The company says more than 500,000 SoundCloud users are sent to those external sites every year, while 28% of surveyed artists either already sell downloadable music or want to start.
The feature will initially be tested with 200 US-based Artist Pro creators. Feedback from the beta will help shape the service before it rolls out to all eligible creators later this autumn.
Participating artists will be able to monitor their sales through Artist Studio and the Fan Support Dashboard. Direct sales will also add to SoundCloud’s existing artist monetisation tools, including Fan-Powered Royalties, Fan Support, on-demand vinyl and ticketing.
“Artists should be able to build their audience in one place, on one platform,” says SoundCloud CEO Eliah Seton. “SoundCloud has always been where artists find their first fans and build real communities. We’re continuing to bring more of what they need to grow their careers into that same experience, while letting fans directly support the music they love.”
SoundCloud’s move follows the lead of Bandcamp, which has long championed direct-to-fan music sales and launched its Bandcamp Fridays initiative in 2020.
Learn more at SoundCloud.
The post SoundCloud is finally letting artists sell music directly to fans – with zero commission appeared first on MusicTech.

IK Multimedia announce Sinphonica Maestosa Strings IK Multimedia have announced the upcoming launch of Sinphonica, a new family of Italian orchestral virtual instruments designed for modern composers and created entirely in Italy.

Kenny Whitmire Signs with MCADate Signed: May 2026Label: MCAType of Music: CountryManagement: River House ArtistsBooking: The Neal AgencyLegal: Hunter Cottingham PLLCPublicity: LEDEA&R: MCAWeb: kennywhitmire.com

Hailing from Woodstock, GA, Kenny Whitmire came to Nashville in 2022. The blossoming country star’s music draws on ‘90s-flavored hits every bit as much as the genre’s most famous traditionalists. He started putting original songs on social media, with one in particular, “I Gave Her The Moon,” taking off big time and generating a wave of industry attention.

Yet the wheels were already in motion for signing with MCA before that happened. Zebb Luster, who would eventually become Whitmire’s manager, connected him with Hannah Wilson, one of the storied label’s A&R reps. “She came to watch me play a gig, and soon after we had a little meeting,” reveals the crooner, whose voice has been compared to Keith Whitley and Randy Travis. “We got dinner and talked about music.”

That led to Wilson connecting Whitmire with producer Dave Cobb. “I had some phone calls with him, which is the coolest thing in the world,” admits Whitmire, “because I grew up on a lot of Chris Stapleton.” The artist was also impressed by MCA’s current crop of rising newcomers, including Carter Faith and Vincent Mason. 

Before offering a contract, the brass at MCA had Whitmire perform a quick acoustic show in their offices. “I played them five or six songs I had been writing. They seemed to enjoy most of them,” he recalls with characteristic modesty. Whitmire believes that the quality of his songwriting, combined with his videos going viral, is what ultimately got the venerable label to put forth a deal.

“It felt like the right choice. I trusted my gut and the good Lord,” tells Whitmire. Instinct aside, he sought the opinion of fellow Georgian Austin Snell, for whom he’d played guitar. “I talked to him a lot about what I should do,” he recalls. “And he seemed to be aligned with MCA.”

Whitmire further felt comfortable going with MCA based on Luster’s advice. “I put all my trust in him,” the young performer swears. “I knew he had my best interests at heart.” And despite meeting with other labels, he wanted to remain loyal to the home that first showed interest, calling it “a pretty easy choice.”

The down-to-earth singer is currently in the midst of a major tour supporting Billy Currington, Ian Munsick, and Tracy Lawrence. His debut EP, Fool In A King Size Bed, is out now.The post Kenny Whitmire Signs with MCA first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

Authentic Brands Group acquires majority stake in IP of Drake’s OVO brandAs part of the transaction, Authentic network partner Vince Holding Corp. (Nasdaq: VNCE) has acquired OVO's operating business and will oversee the brand's design, product development, merchandising, and retail stores.
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Virtu, Tradeweb complete onchain repo using Marshall Islands digital bondThe transaction used the Marshall Islands-issued USDM1 bond as collateral and completed the full repo cycle on the Canton Network in under 10 minutes.