AI chatbots are getting worse over time — academic paperA dwindling consumer interest in chatbots caused a drop in AI-sector revenues during the second business quarter of 2024.

Avicii auction raises over $700,000, with guitars and personal DJ set up selling for the highest pricesAn auction of Avicii’s personal items and music gear has raised over $700,000 USD for the mental health charity set up by his family.
The auction took place on 1 October, and saw 267 items that belonged to the artist go under the hammer. All proceeds have been donated to The Tim Bergling Foundation, which was set up under his real name by his parents after he tragically died by suicide in 2018.

READ MORE: Watch never-before-seen footage of Avicii’s last-ever Sweden show

7,732,805 SEK was raised from the auction in total, which equates to approximately $695,952 USD (based on current conversion rates), and bids were placed from over 40 countries, as reported by EDM.com.
The highest selling items were Avicii’s Martin Custom X Series acoustic guitar, which sold for 280,000 SEK ($25,500) and his 2015 Fender Telecaster, which sold for 240,000 SEK ($22,000).
A personal DJ setup consisting of two Pioneer CDJ-2000 Nexus DJ Multi-Players and a Pioneer DJM-900 Nexus Mixer in their original black cases also found a new home, and sold for over $11,000. A pair of Sennheiser headphones also sold for 80,000 SEK ($7,000).
“We are very happy with the outcome of yesterday’s charity auction, and the funds these items have generated will help us in our continued work for young people’s mental health and well-being,” comments Stefan Rudels, acting director of The Tim Bergling Foundation.
Cecilia Gave, CEO of Stockholms Auktionsverk, adds: “It feels fantastic to convey this significant amount to The Tim Bergling Foundation. With this auction, we once again confirm that Stockholms Auktionsverk is the given choice when it comes to selling unique collections. We are very pleased to see how The Avicii Collection has also appealed to a younger audience. Many here in the hall have placed their very first auction bids today, and it feels very honourable for us to be a part of that.”
Among his music gear, a number of clothing items and other gadgets were sold. All final sale prices and items can now be viewed online.
The post Avicii auction raises over $700,000, with guitars and personal DJ set up selling for the highest prices appeared first on MusicTech.

U2’s live sound engineer says he tried to break The Sphere’s monster sound system: “I tried my best and I couldn’t break it”Longtime U2 live sound engineer Joe O’Herlihy has pulled back the curtain on the monster sound system powering the band’s groundbreaking Las Vegas Sphere residency.
Speaking to U2.com, O’Herlihy reveals that he received a call from Bono to check out the Sphere and its sound system in as early as August 2021.

READ MORE: Behringer’s new Grind hybrid semi-modular synth features oscillators from Mutable Instruments

“[Bono asked] if I could go over to Berlin and see if I could break it.” the engineer recalls. “That has been my brief since year dot. And to be perfectly honest, I tried my level best and I couldn’t break it.”
“I went to Leipzig, to the Congress Messe where there was an exhibition of the sound system – the first time they’d put together sixty of these boxes. They had industry types like myself give it a listen. I was scheduled to have a brief demo, but I was so enthused by the whole thing that I actually stayed for the week.”
To give you a sense of what O’Herlihy was dealing with, the ‘Sphere Immersive Sound’ system — developed by Berlin company Holoplot — is comprised of 1,586 fixed and 300 mobile Holoplot X1 Matrix Array loudspeaker modules, and features a total of 167,000 individually amplified loudspeaker drivers.
Using advanced 3D Audio-Beamforming technology, the system delivers highly precise, consistent and crystal-clear audio to the audience. The entire sound system is also completely hidden behind Sphere’s 160,000 square foot interior LED display plane, which wraps up, over and around the audience for a fully immersive environment.
Ready to put the system through its paces, O’Herlihy brought multitrack recordings of U2 tours held in venues across the world, which included the Sydney Cricket Ground and the 55,000-capacity Phillipene Arena in Manilla.
“I did that to get an idea of the sonic value of all of those,” says O’Herlihy, who was blown away by what he found. “I ran extremely loud and I ran extremely hard to see if I could break it or not. The sub-bass and all of that energy was second-to-none.”
“When Adam [Clayton] steps on the [Moog] Taurus pedals it’s like a low-end heaven. When you deliver it at full-pelt it’s got an incredible wow factor.”

O’Herlihy soon followed up by sending Bono and The Edge an email detailing his findings, which ultimately paved the way for the 40-show run of Achtung Baby Live that concluded earlier this year: “My opening line was, ‘this is going to be quite a biblical report’, because this is what happened. Eight pages later after explaining everything that I had been through, my parting shot on it was – ‘you guys definitely have to the best the first band into The Sphere, because this is the future.’”
Read more music tech news.
The post U2’s live sound engineer says he tried to break The Sphere’s monster sound system: “I tried my best and I couldn’t break it” appeared first on MusicTech.

How drum and bass inspires artists from across genres
From PinkPantheress and Bring Me The Horizon to NewJeans and BTS, hear how artists across genres find inspiration in drum and bass.

CCC To Host “Tuning Into Television: Building Your Career As A TV Music Composer”“Tuning Into Television: Building Your Career As A TV Music Composer”Tuesday, October 8, 2024 ZOOM WEBINAR2:30 PM PDT - 4:00 PM PDT

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Join the CCC for an engaging panel discussion on building a career as a television music composer, designed to provide you with the tools and knowledge needed to take your career writing music to the next level! In this session, seasoned professionals and industry experts will share invaluable insights and practical advice on how to find your path to success in the challenging and fast-paced world of composing music for TV.From understanding the demands of the industry to honing your storytelling skills, networking effectively, and securing your first opportunities, panelists will cover a wide range of topics. Learn about navigating the creative process with producers and executives, the newest industry trends, and the importance of building a strong portfolio that showcases your unique talent and style, and more.Don’t miss this opportunity to gain valuable insights, ask questions, and connect with like-minded individuals who are passionate about the art composing for TV. Whether you’re a recent graduate, a professional musician looking to transition into television, or simply curious about the world of TV music, this is sure to inspire and inform as you embark on your career journey.The post CCC To Host “Tuning Into Television: Building Your Career As A TV Music Composer” first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

Single Rotor Drone Spins For 360 Lidar ScanningMultiple motors or servos are the norm for drones to achieve controllable flight, but a team from MARS LAB HKU was able to a 360° lidar scanning drone with full control on just a single motor and no additional actuators. Video after the break.
The key to controllable flight is the swashplateless propeller design that we’ve seen few times, but it always required a second propeller to counteract self-rotation. In this case the team was able to make that self-rotation work for them to achieve 360° scanning with a single fixed LIDAR sensor. Self-rotation still need to be slowed was successfully done with four stationary vanes. The single rotor also means better efficiency compared to a multi-rotor with similar propeller disk area.
The LIDAR comprises a full 50% of the drones weight and provides a conical FOV out to a range of 450m. All processing happens onboard the drone, with point cloud data being processed by a LIDAR-inertial odometry framework. This allows the drone to track and plan it’s flight path while also building a 3D map of an unknown environment. This means it would be extremely useful for indoor or undergrounds environments where GPS or other positioning systems are not available.
All the design files and code for the drone is up on GitHub, and most of the electronic components are off-the-shelf. This means you can build your own, and the expensive lidar sensor is not required to get it flying. This seems like a great platform for further experimentation, and getting usable video from a normal camera would be an interesting challenge.

YouTube apologizes for falsely banning channels for spam, canceling subscriptionsA misfire of YouTube’s systems led to the accidental banning of YouTube channels affecting numerous creators who were informed their channels were removed for “Spam & Deceptive Practices.” YouTube has now apologized for the problem and says it’s rectifying the situation, but did not comment on the cause of the bans, leading creators to wonder […]
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Interactive Project Teaches Lessons About Electromagnets And WavesWhether you’re a kid or a nerdy adult, you’ll probably agree that the interactive exhibitions at the museum are the best. If you happened to get down to the Oregon Science Festival in the last couple of years, you might have enjoyed “Catch The Wave!”—a public education project to teach people about electromagnets and waves. Even better, [Justin Miller] has written up how he built this exciting project.
Catch The Wave! consists of four small tabletop cabinets. Each has physical controls and a screen, and each plays its role in teaching a lesson about electromagnets and sound waves, with a context of audio recording and playback.
The first station allows the user to power up an electromagnet and interact with it using paper clips. They can also see the effect it has on a nearby compass. The second illustrates how reversing current through an electromagnet can reverse its polarity, and demonstrates this by using it to swing a pendulum. The third station then ties this to the action of a speaker, which is effectively a fancy electromagnet—and demonstrates how it creates sound waves in this way. Finally, the fourth station demonstrates the use of a microphone to record a voice, and throws in some wacky effects for good fun.
If you’ve ever tried to explain how sound is recorded and reproduced, you’d probably have loved to had tools like these to do so. We love a good educational project around these parts, too.

Ninajirachi: “People love to ask artists how they’d describe their sound… I just want to surprise myself”On her latest full-length release, girl EDM – disc 1, Nina Wilson, better known as Ninajirachi, firmly plants her flag as a producer of and for the internet age.
Ninajirachi. Image: Billy Zammit for MusicTech
The 25-year-old Australian rising star — whose artist moniker combines her first name with the psychic Pokémon Jirachi — makes electronic music that channels her tab-hopping life, with a sonic palette that blurs hyper-pop, trance, hard dance, electro-house and video game music. Her thematic inspirations are equally online, from gaming to Reddit deep dives to vast fantasy worlds and subcultures. Then there’s her process as a remixer and collaborator, bouncing files back and forth across oceans and consulting over FaceTime on finishing touches.
“I love living in the 21st Century,” Nina beams when we connect over a video call. She’s at home in Melbourne, taking a brief pause between international tours. In conversation, the producer is bright and effusive, still speaking about dance music with the enthusiasm of a recent convert. While girl EDM – disc 1 is resolutely not an album, it reflects Nina’s creative streak over the past few years, combining tracks from her last two EPs, 4×4 and girl EDM, alongside a new addition, Angel Music, made with New York-based duo MGNA Crrrta.
Image: Billy Zammit for MusicTech
Nina’s whirlwind journey to this point began, naturally, on the internet. Growing up in a house with music-loving parents (her mum frequented Ministry Of Sound in London), she heard everything from The Prodigy and Daft Punk to Kylie Minogue and Jamiroquai. Her first obsession was Lady Gaga: “I was in primary school when Gaga was kind of blowing up, and she was my hero. My 12th birthday was Lady Gaga themed.”
In high school, she discovered YouTube, tunnelling into the catalogues of Skrillex, Madeon, Deadmau5, Flume and her absolute favourite, Porter Robinson. “I had no idea about clubbing,” Nina recalls. “But the sonic palette was so crazy and made me feel so euphoric. Also, just the dynamics of it — the tension, the build-ups, the drops, were just so thrilling. I would just listen to it on the bus to school in my headphones.” The vast world of dance music felt like her own private rabbit hole. “It was such a solo endeavour,” she laughs. “I would never really be [given] the AUX [cable], because I was the friend with the ‘wob wob’ taste.”
“Everyone likes to hear the human voice, even if it’s a vocal chop or just a texture”
While a fan first, Nina soon got curious about how these otherworldly sounds were made. With her mum’s encouragement, she’d started experimenting in primary school with iMovie and GarageBand, recording and looping herself playing clarinet and piano. In high school, after Googling, ‘What does Porter Robinson use to produce?’, she started tinkering with the trial version of FL Studio. “My mum got me the full version for my 14th birthday, which was very sweet of her,” she adds.
Her earliest productions using FL Studio won the attention of tastemaking Australian DJ Nina Las Vegas, who supported her development and ultimately signed her to NLV Records. “She’s been like a big sister to me,” Nina says of her mentor. “I met her at such a crucial time because I was kind of having a bit of success online and getting show offers. I was 18 and didn’t know who I was, and didn’t even know if I wanted to have a music career. She was the first person who got me and took care of me, and she’s been endlessly generous and kind. I owe her everything.”
Image: Billy Zammit for MusicTech
In 2018, Nina shifted her allegiance from FL Studio to Ableton Live, which remains her go-to DAW. She points to her 2019 release, Water Gun / Stingray, as her first made entirely in Ableton, and she’s never looked back. “I think because of the way I learned to use Ableton really methodically when I was 18 or so, it just stuck with me,” Nina explains. “I know the key commands really well. I don’t use a mouse — just the trackpad and the keyboard, and I can navigate and edit so fast. The most streamlined process from brain to page is always what I’m looking for, and Ableton has done that for me.”
Since making the switch, Nina has gone deep on the potential within Ableton Live. “I use Wavetable so much, especially if I just need a quick Reese Bass,” she enthuses. “I feel like it’s everything I need and nothing I don’t for a simple sound design moment.” Nina also name-checks Ableton Operator and Simpler’s Slice mode (“I love to freeze and flatten, resample and re-record”), and the new Roar saturation plugin in Ableton 12, which she’s just starting to explore. While she swears by Xfer’s Serum, Nina also recently re-downloaded LennarDigital’s classic, Sylenth1, as “the old presets are really nostalgic for me.” The Ableton respect goes both ways — in 2021, the company tapped Nina to create the official demo track for Live 11.
Image: Billy Zammit for MusicTech
At 17 years old, Nina took to Reddit to introduce the Ninajirachi project. In response to a Redditor’s question, she wrote, “I really love recording sounds from around my house and seeing what I can do with them. It’s fun to show someone a demo and then tell them that the snare came from a toaster.” Eight years and many experiments later, she still grabs snippets from everyday life to feed into her music. “I’m voice memo-ing all the time,” she says. “I like to be surprised by stuff that I hear just going about my day. It’s so much fun.”
Nina also gets a kick from sampling her own tracks and giving them new life. Ninacamina, a collaboration with British-American producer Izzy Camina that first appeared on the girl EDM EP, samples Tiankeng, an ambient cut on Nina’s 2022 release, Second Nature. (That song itself samples a snippet from a YouTube documentary about China’s enormous Xiaozhai Tiankeng sinkhole – a textbook Nina internet obsession.) “Sampling is so fun, because samples are so frequency rich,” she says. “You kind of put a whole song in one little bit of audio. And by doing that from my own discography, I also avoid any copyright problems.”
“That’s my goal with any music I make — I just want to surprise myself”
A constant from Nina’s teenage years to now is her love for Porter Robinson’s music — as evidenced by the tattoo of his logo on her wrist. “It was very much the emotion I was drawn to [early on],” she says. “Or the contrast of the emotion and gorgeous chord progressions with the really, like, disgusting sound design.” Her first-ever live experience was an underage Porter Robinson matinee show in Sydney. While she lived 90 minutes away in the coastal town of Kincumber, her parents drove her down with two high school friends. “It was the first time I felt the bass within my chest,” she recalls. “He has this song called 100% In The Bitch that I didn’t really get, and then at the show, I was like, ‘Oh, OK, this is really crazy.’” Nina has closely tracked and taken inspiration from Robinson’s evolution from EDM upstart to accomplished electro-pop performer. “I’ve been a fan all the way through, and love everything he does,” she adds.
One area where Nina’s journey mirrors that of her musical hero is a growing comfort with her own voice. On Undo U, one of four club-focused tracks on the 4×4 EP, Nina’s own vocals glide airily over glitchy, pulsing sound design. “When I was younger, I really thought that a singer was a certain type of person — I thought you had to be Adele,” she says. That rigid perception shifted after she met singer and NLV Records labelmate Kota Banks and began participating in sessions to learn about songwriting and vocal production. “I was like, OK, I want to get better at this,” she says. “I’ve always loved songwriting, but I just didn’t feel like I had a voice.”
Image: Billy Zammit for MusicTech
As a producer, Nina treats vocals with a light touch: “It sounds really basic, but I love to use delay in interesting ways. Having the delay kind of pitch bend and then resampling that can often yield really interesting results. I also love to fully reverb out vocals and resample that.”
“I find having some element of vocal in every song makes it feel more familiar,” she adds. “Everyone likes to hear the human voice — even if it’s a vocal chop or just a texture.”
Coming out of COVID, Nina increasingly made music that would work in her DJ sets, which typically feature primarily her own productions and edits. The past two years in particular have been a succession of ‘pinch yourself’ touring moments, from opening for Rezz at Colorado’s Red Rocks Amphitheatre to playing Lollapalooza and Excision’s Lost Lands Festival. This May, Nina made her debut at EDM behemoth Electric Daisy Carnival, marking the occasion with a disbelieving Instagram caption: “just opened the edc main stage wtf. i am from kincumber.”
Image: Billy Zammit for MusicTech
“The reason I captioned it that way was because I was with four of my friends from Australia who have known me for a long time,” she says, still sounding awed. “It just felt really full circle to be there with them, and so random.” Instead of reaching for obvious anthems, Nina foregrounded her own productions, including several from girl EDM – disc 1. As she reasons, “If I play my favourite song of mine, and only 10 per cent of the crowd actually like it, that’s still more valuable to me than playing something everyone knows and likes, but no one’s really going to remember because every other DJ plays it.”
Nina sees her success as evidence of technology’s democratising potential. “In the past, someone would have to spend 20 grand on a studio, an engineer and a mix person to create something that people would deem consumable,” she says. “When I was in high school, I was making songs on my laptop that sounded fully professional. With a computer, you can hypothetically make any sound. That’s so awesome.” To illuminate this point, Nina invokes another of her musical heroes, SOPHIE, who manipulated technology to bold and thrilling effect.
On the topic of AI in music production, Nina sees its value in improving the “brain to page” flow. “My hope for AI is that it develops in a way that’s assistive for creators and is not replacing the creative work,” she says, adding that she and her friends played around with AI music generators in the studio for a lark. “We were trying to give it the most obscure prompts, just to see what we could get out of it,” she recalls. “We didn’t get anything good.”
Image: Billy Zammit for MusicTech
With girl EDM – disc 1, Nina has laid claim to a sub-genre all her own. (As she explains in the release’s press notes, “People love to ask artists how they’d describe their sound, and recently I realised mine is literally girl EDM.”) The ten tracks filter the giddy rush of 2010s-era EDM through a SOPHIE-skewed pop sensibility, arriving at a sound that’s distinctly Ninajirachi. That heady mix is also present at the Dark Crystal parties she curates each year in Australia – creating an IRL community around “the specific type of electronic music and pop music” she loves. “I wasn’t really seeing any parties that had all of these niche artists on the same lineup,” she explains. “The Dark Crystal crowds are so gorgeous, and it’s just diverse and fun.”
For now, the producer is focused on completing her debut album as Ninajirachi. “I’m so excited about it,” she says. “I’ve made one or two songs that don’t really sound like something I’ve made before. That’s my goal with any music I make — I just want to surprise myself.” And with all the world at the touch of a trackpad, the possibilities are limitless.
The post Ninajirachi: “People love to ask artists how they’d describe their sound… I just want to surprise myself” appeared first on MusicTech.

Immersive Machines release Immersive Master Pro  Immersive Machines have announced the launch of a powerful new tool designed to streamline the way audio professionals handle their Dolby Atmos and ADM files. 

From Pink Floyd’s $400m deal to TikTok’s scrapped Merlin talks… it’s MBW’s Weekly Round-UpThe biggest stories from the past week – all in one place…
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Music Marketing on YouTube Shorts just got 3X betterYouTube just announced several updates, but one in particular offers a major improvement to marketing music on YouTube Shorts. Music Marketing on YouTube Shorts just got 3X beter Starting October. Continue reading
The post Music Marketing on YouTube Shorts just got 3X better appeared first on Hypebot.

Nurturing a fanbase is more important than growing itMany artists focus on growing their fanbase, but nurturing a fanbase is key to building lasting success. Learn why shifting your strategy from gaining new followers to cultivating meaningful engagement. Continue reading
The post Nurturing a fanbase is more important than growing it appeared first on Hypebot.

The Realities and Opportunities of Licensing Music for Games The music and video game industries are teaming up for sync licensing opportunities, but many rights-holders are losing out due to pre-cleared music libraries and compulsory licensing. Learn how game placements can revive entire catalogs, offering a lucrative and overlooked revenue stream for artists and their estates.
The post The Realities and Opportunities of Licensing Music for Games  appeared first on Hypebot.

Coldplay launch exclusive TikTok ‘MOON MUSiC’ in-app experienceColdplay become latest artists to launch an interactive in-app experience on TikTok
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