Sonuscore launch Chroma - Upright Piano The latest sample library from Sonuscore contrasts their recent grand piano offering with a lovingly restored vintage upright. 

Moby is frustrated he can’t release more music: “I only release about 2% of what I make… 98% of it is collecting digital dust”With nearly two dozen studio albums to his name, Moby stands as one of the most prolific artists in the electronic music genre, with an output few can match and many can only aspire to achieve.
But did you know that all of the music the Play hitmaker released thus far makes up just 2% of what he actually makes?

READ MORE: Spotify says artists should “actively discourage” fans from “inorganically” streaming music

In a recent chat with MusicRadar, Moby reveals how he’s managed to maintain a consistently high level of output over the years and the reason some artists take a lot longer to release music.
“My question is a really simple one: what else are they doing?” he says. “I only release about 2% of what I make, which doesn’t speak to the quality of my music, but 98% of it is collecting digital dust and has never been released, so one of my sources of frustration is that I can’t release more music.”
“When I hear about musicians taking a long time to make a record, my immediate thought is, ‘gosh, they must have such phenomenal social lives or lots of other hobbies’,” Moby adds.
“I don’t date or socialise that much, I just spend all my time staying home and either working on my weird little TV/film activist production company, Little Walnut, or working on music.”
And while some musicians may attribute their lack of productivity to paralysis of choice given the sheer amount of music-making tools out there, Moby says that that isn’t a problem for him. If anything, he’s more bothered by his inability to explore every single sound his synths are capable of making.
“A part of me would want to be a little glib and dismissive of the idea of paralysis of choice, but at the same time it seems like it actually does inhibit people from making things,” he says. “I work in Pro Tools because I’m old, but when I open it and start playing around with soft synths and all these different things, I just get excited.”
“When you hear all of the different sounds that you can potentially use and [modify], I don’t ever feel overwhelmed or paralysed, I feel inspired that I have such an amazing palette of things to play with. If anything, sometimes there’s a wistful sadness that I won’t be able to hear all of the thousands of sounds from all of the soft synths I have and often wonder what I’m missing when I open up the Arturia CZ-101 or CS80V.”
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“You have to have this psychotic belief – an unreasonable belief, truly – that you will write songs that matter”: St. Vincent gives advice to budding artistsWhile some budding artists find quick success, they are a small minority. The majority spend years trying to get their music heard by the masses, and some never do. So in the face of not-too-brilliant odds, musicians have to find ways to keep morale high in their pursuit of success.
In a new interview with Billboard, the ever-wise St. Vincent – singer-songwriter and disliker of plugins in the studio – offers some words of advice to those looking to find success in the music industry.

READ MORE: No, Daniel Ek, the music industry isn’t like professional football

“In order to get good, you have to go through a series of humbling and humiliating experiences,” she says. “On the other hand, you have to have this psychotic belief – an unreasonable belief, truly – that you are going to write songs and make music that is going to matter. And that’s a really crazy thought.
She continues, reflecting on her own approach throughout her career: “I have that thought – with plenty of self-loathing and self-laceration – but I also have this [feeling], ‘If I don’t do this, I’m going to die.”
So there you have it; perhaps an almost desperate attitude is crucial in achieving success in the music industry.
Elsewhere in the interview, St. Vincent – real name Annie Clark – comments on the current streaming model, saying it “incentivises songs to be consumable over and over again”.
“If you are a big pop artist, streaming is fine,” she says. “But there is some music that reaches you very deeply but isn’t music that you put on every single day. I’m not going to listen to John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme every day. It’s one of the most pivotal records of my life, but I’m not going to stream it over and over.”
She goes on: “Streaming incentivises songs to be consumable over and over again. Now, certainly there’s great music you want to consume like that – but there’s a lot of music that’s excellent and doesn’t fall into that category. And those artists, because of streaming, are wilting on the vine.”
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Underoath is fighting scalpers by making resale tickets worthlessUnderoath is taking on ticket scalpers by attacking them where it hurts the most—their wallets. Like some other artists, The band monitors ticket sales and educates fans, but then they. Continue reading
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Bandcamp expands PRO with Private StreamingBandcamp Pro subscribers can now create and name links for private streaming of albums and tracks. Sharing private albums and tracks can be used to: Learn more about private streaming here.. Continue reading
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Amazon Prime Day 2024: dates and what music technology deals to expectAfter months of buildup, Amazon has finally revealed the dates for this year’s Prime Day, and there’s certain to be a cornucopia of synths, drum machines, and other music tech hardware to get your hands on at a fraction of the price.
Prime Day first took place in 2015 as a way for Amazon to offer huge savings on homeware to electronics to more niche hobbyist gear. It was expectedly pretty popular, and has grown considerably in the nearly 10 years since. For the last few years Prime Day has spanned two days, and this year, in certain parts of the world it’ll last six!
Yep, there’ll be plenty of killer deals to be had on music gear, so the team here at MusicTech will be scanning Amazon for the duration of the event to bring you only the very best.
It should be noted that due to the success of Prime Day, other big music retailers now offer savings across the Prime Day period to compete. That means more discounts for you.
When is Amazon Prime Day 2024?
Until only recently, information as to the exact date of Amazon Prime Day 2024 was unavailable. And now, finally, the e-commerce giant has confirmed that this year’s event will take place across 16-17 July 2024 in both the UK and US.
Worth noting if you’re in Australia or Singapore: for you, this year’s Prime Day will take place over six days. Yep, you read that right. From 16-22 July.
Amazon Prime Day 2024 key information
As we said before, Prime Day has become bigger than Amazon itself, with many music retailers offering savings across the event. But you should bear in mind that to buy any actual Prime Day deals at Amazon you’ll need an Amazon Prime membership. This is priced at £8.99 per month, or £95 for the whole year. There’s also a 30-day free trial available, so you can always sign up for Prime Day and cancel before the end of the 30-day period. Additionally, Prime membership includes perks like fast, free delivery on certain products throughout the year, as well as access to Prime Video.
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SXSW opens Showcase and Panel applications for 2025Registration for SXSW 2025 does not open until August 6th, but the gathering’s community Panel Picker and Music Showcase applications are open now. The next U.S. edition of the SXSW. Continue reading
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Stuck in a loop? Splice’s Create will now match compatible samples to musical ideas you’ve createdSplice’s Create platform has been given an upgrade. The AI-powered inspiration engine can now dig through Splice’s vast library of samples to find sounds that complement your musical ideas with “limitless variations,” according to the brand.
Producers familiar with Splice likely know that it’s home to an overwhelming amount of loops and samples. As reported in an exclusive interview with Kakul Srivastava, Splice’s CEO, the music production services sees over a million daily sample downloads. That’s a lot of artists scrolling through different packs to find that perfect snare.
Create’s new feature will browse Splice’s library for you once you’ve uploaded your track. It will compose a stack of compatible sounds “in seconds,” says Splice, to offer you “limitless variations of instruments and melodic combinations.”
Make no mistake, though, these sounds are not made by an AI algorithm. All the sounds you’re presented with are the same human-created samples found in the entire Splice catalogue, the brand assures. “This latest feature allows creators to extend their work on Splice while leading with the most essential part of their creative process: their unique ideas,” it adds.
Check it out below

In a press statement, Kakul says: “Splice AI delivers human-made sounds that are compatible with the creator’s original idea, which remains at the centre of the creative process.”
“With this tool, creators can start with their own sound, select a genre, and Splice’s AI will surface sounds that fit perfectly in seconds. This sets the stage for the next generation of technology advances at Splice, putting powerful tools directly into our users’ existing workflow.”
Speaking to MusicTech, Kakul also addresses widespread concerns with AI and explains how Splice will navigate this modern industry.
“There’s a lot happening at the intersection of AI and music that’s impressive, but much of it is trained on copyrighted content, it will undoubtedly face a hornet’s nest of legal problems.
“We have Mic and Prompt features coming up next [on Splice] but we’re taking our time. We’re building our AI in the same way we do everything else at Splice: with creators at the centre.”
This week, Splice joined 49 other music technology brands in signing the Principles for Music Creation with AI, which advocates the responsible use of AI in music creation, to “protect the essence of music — its human spirit.”
Read more music technology news.
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Baby Audio unveil Humanoid vocal plug-in Described as an over-the-top pitch corrector, Humanoid takes a new approach to tuning and phase vocoding, transforming performances into heavily processed, synthetic-sounding voices. 

Splice CEO’s message for AI sceptics? “Trust the artists”Artificial intelligence is here, and it’s rapidly evolving in both its capabilities and mainstream infamy. A sudden boom in the adoption of the technology has sparked backing and backlash from musicians, producers, tech bros and everyone in between for months.

READ MORE: Record labels sue AI music generators Suno and Udio alleging “unimaginable scales” of copyright infringement

Generative AI equips users with the power to emulate pop stars such as Drake or The Weeknd, for example (or to emulate 2Pac, if you’re Drake). Arguably, this technology poses the most frightening threat. The three major labels (Sony, Warner, Universal) have expectedly caught onto this quickly and, this week, filed a behemoth lawsuit against generative AI platforms Suno and Udio, seeking damages to the tune of $150,000 for every track in their catalogue that’s been infringed upon.
But it’s not all bad. Some AI tech helps streamline music production, making it easier for more creators to stay inspired and make music quickly. Such services includes Voice-Swap, which aims to fairly pay session musicians for their vocal likeness, and Synplant, a synth plugin that uses AI to turn any imported audio into a novel synth.
Kakul Srivastava, CEO of music creation platform Splice — now boasting the AI-powered Create music arrangement generator tool — is an early adopter and leading voice in AI. Is she concerned? Yes and no.
“I’m not an AI fan girl… It’s a technology that can be used in good ways and really stupid ways”
“I’m not actually very pro AI,” Splice CEO Kakul Srivastava says from her San Fransisco home. “I’m not an AI fan girl.” She bemoans the annoying “noise” around AI today. “It’s a technology that can be used in good ways and really stupid ways.”
One of the “good ways,” from Kakul’s viewpoint of course, is Splice Create. The new platform harnesses AI to help users add to their musical ideas quicker so they don’t lose momentum.

A “crap” use case is generative AI, says Kakul. It’s “just not good enough,” she grumbles. “But I do think that the power of technology and software can make it easier and take the drudgery out of music creation.
“It took Michelangelo painful years lying on his back, suspended high up, to paint the artwork he did. And it takes photographers today just one click to capture a photograph. To say that one is art and the other is not — because they require different levels of effort to make — is challenging.
“The hard part of art is not the physical work; it’s the work of identifying the truth — truths about human nature — that you can translate into something. We need to do enable people to find that truth and convey it into music. I’m focused on getting that musical idea through Create.”
What is Splice Create?
Create is an AI-powered music arrangement generation tool that prioritises creative flow over arduous, momentum-killing manual sample searches. As of today (26 June), Create’s User Audio feature now allows you to import your song ideas; it will analyse your audio and suggest sounds from Splice’s sample library to complement your sonic sketch.

Splice says it sees over a million daily sample downloads, and champions sounds recorded by artists on over 300 instruments, spanning over 130 genres.
Drawing from this vast and diverse catalogue, Create can suggest sounds and styles you may never have previously thought of, according to the brand resulting in a more unique and explorative project.
“An incredible variety of diverse instruments, different genres and ethnic musical types live on Splice,” Kakul tells us. “I’m constantly amazed by people remixing, say, an ancient Korean instrument that three people know how to play and mixing it with hip-hop to get something completely different out of it.”

Speaking about the User Audio integration, Kakul says that Splice is “constantly looking for ways to increase creativity and enhance workflow. Our decisions start and end with creators and it was important that we introduce a solution for musicians looking to expand their original ideas. It gives the creator more options while their authenticity remains at the center.”
“I would like to live in a world where AI drives more human creativity and the reason I think that’s important is because of democratisation.”
Education and democratisation with Splice and AI
When Kakul says “democratisation”, the Splice CEO isn’t just talking about shining a light on a diverse range of recorded sounds and a global pool of players. It’s also about giving more and more budding producers the chance to create music, whatever their ability, technical skills or attention spans.
Tapping into education, Splice now offers an affordable option for students. It’s also teamed up with schools, including Berklee College of Music, to implement Create into the classroom. This means any student – not just those with the most technical prowess – can find inspiration quickly. Plus, the teacher has less chance of losing the class’s interest as they fumble around, thumbing in commands or searching for samples.
The response from teachers has been “profound”, says Kakul proudly. “Create AI allows people to get their students to a starting point of creation quickly. You can use a query to say, ‘I want to create something in this genre and I want to use the same samples’, for example. To get to your final track, you need to do a lot more work and refinement, but when you’re in a learning space and you want to explore, Create is powerful.”

AI tools such as this give creative minds the chance to make music who sadly, for a number of reasons, might not usually get far enough into the music creation process to be excited about it.
Giving young people these opportunities is vital for Kakul. She recalls a story about a friend’s seven-year-old son who played the piano and when asked what he was playing, simply replied, “I was imagining a horse galloping”.
“I was blown away,” she says. “Because if we let ourselves be creative in that way, if we don’t make excuses for ourselves like, “Oh, I wasn’t trained in music,” and if we just allow ourselves to create, something really powerful happens, right?
“That’s what democratisation is about: making you feel like it’s okay to play. It’s okay to make sounds like “a horse galloping” or say, “I wasn’t trained,” because it shouldn’t matter. It’s about giving more people the ability to find that musical story and to get to completion. We are on the side of the quitters, helping them bring these ideas to life.”
The easy accessibility of Create hasn’t been met with total glee, however. Kakul has seen feedback that the feature makes some people “feel a bit like they’re cheating”. She posits that “offering them more control will [mean] creators [can] have more manual settings within their workflow.”
“Our work tells us producers aren’t looking for ways to reinvent how they work, just ways to make it better, more efficient.”
Navigating the future of music with AI
With all manner of negativity swirling around the technology, however, and with only AI’s most controversial, surface-level examples making the most noise, there’s bound to be retaliation from artists.
Kakul says there’s “a lot to be figured out” with generative AI which she “stays away from”, her message for sceptics – and it’s a lot of people – is to believe in the power of AI when put in the right hands.
“Trust the artists,” she says with severity. “Every time we’ve put technology in the hands of artists, they’ve surprised us with what they can do.’” Kakul cites Daft Punk and Stevie Wonder who’ve taken “seemingly disruptive technologies and transformed them into something truly exceptional”.

“A lot of people are concerned with AI, and I count myself as part of that,” admits Kakul. “There are parts of this that are dangerous, especially when it blurs the line of what’s real and what’s not – ‘is this a Drake song? Is this not a Drake song?’. Those areas become important. As an industry, we have to get smart at that.”
Though there are global concerns about AI, we wonder about Splice’s more direct concerns. Suno and Udio are the first generative AI services that can vomit up a song in seconds for free with just a few text prompts — they may not be the last. How can Splice compete with such a unique, original source of free samples?
“We’ve been competing with free samples for years, so that’s not new to us,” Kakul says. “I think Splice is a pretty inexpensive option if you’re looking for royalty-free samples and a license to use them wherever you want! But primarily we need to keep delivering at a high level for our customers and continue improving the experience. Most importantly, the quality of Splice’s sounds is a result of the human’s who make them. Our users know that when they use Splice, they’re collaborating with artists, real-life sound designers and sample producers.”
Still, in Kakul’s vision, AI’s role in the future of music production is unavoidable and inevitable. And, if AI-powered tools such as Create can make it easier for young minds to express their inner musicality without the anxiety of ‘not being good enough’ or ‘not being trained in music’, the importance of this technology can not be overlooked.
“There’s a lot happening at the intersection of AI and music that’s impressive, but much of it is trained on copyrighted content, it will undoubtedly face a hornet’s nest of legal problems,” Kakul concludes. “We have Mic and Prompt features coming up next [on Splice] but we’re taking our time. We’re building our AI in the same way we do everything else at Splice: with creators at the center.
Find out more about Create and read more about AI in music via MusicTech.
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“Most artists’ best songs are still sat on a hard drive right now”: James Blake on modern streaming algorithms and their influence on final recordsIf you want to make it as a musician in 2024, you’re largely at the mercy of large-scale algorithms. While Spotify, for example, has an algorithm that’s highly competent at recommending new music to consumers, on the other end, artists are increasingly having to write to cater to it, rather than for their own creativity alone.
And according to James Blake – a notable critic of the current state of the music industry – streaming algorithms are meaning many artists’ best music is not being heard at all.

READ MORE: James Blake on why he’s stayed anonymous on other artist’s music: “They take it and make it 10 times worse”

In a new Apple Music interview with Zane Lowe alongside Lil Yachty – with whom he’s set to imminently release a new album, Bad Cameo – Blake discusses at length the way streaming platforms influence an artist’s end product.
“If you have a success- and wealth-obsessed culture, then you de-incentivise risk, and you de-incentivise creativity,” he says. “And I think we are in a late-stage capitalist version of the music industry, and right now, the only reason me and Yachty can make this kind of album is because we’re both already successful. If we weren’t, this would be a huge risk. And probably both of us would be like, ‘Let’s postpone this until we put our pop record out.’
“So in order to get people to listen to you, you’ve kind of got to join the ranks, essentially… That conversation has been going on way before me, but I started my Tweets and Instagram messages about that, all from the perspective of just being paid fairly, right? 
“And I think that got some people’s backs up, in some ways, because it’s like people are already paying their subscriptions. People are paying money for music. The issue is that, firstly, your subscription is not proportionally distributed to the people you listen to. So that’s a big part of it. 
“Secondly, this wasn’t ever to blame the consumer. This was to just point out that the industry’s fucked. One of my biggest issues with it is that this format limits creativity. And streaming services now [are where] the artist puts out the music they think they should put out. How I envision a platform in the future is the place people put out the music they wanted to put out.
He continues: “You don’t make music in a vacuum. You’ve got to constantly factor in what’s trending, what’s the new genre. if you want to be actually successful, you want to really play the game. You want to make some money – like you want to actually sustain yourself, then you’re going to have to fit into these narrow categories.
“Ultimately, I think the listener is suffering just as much as the artist, because they’re not getting the artist’s best music.
“When I’m in studios, day in, day out, artists play me their favourite shit from their record… And then it doesn’t end up on the album, it doesn’t end up being the single because it didn’t have the right length intro, it didn’t fit within the genre description, their own catalogue, but this is the best shit. Like, what?
“I don’t blame them – I blame the system itself – but that’s what’s going on. I mean, most artists’ best songs are sat on a hard drive right now.”
Earlier this year, James Blake launched his own streaming platform, Vault, which allows artists to upload unreleased music which fans pay a monthly subscription for.

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“I never expected anyone to listen to it”: Moby says Play was made in a “completely unpressurised environment”Moby has spoken about the “completely unpressurised environment” that led to the making of his breakthrough electronica album Play.
Released in 1999, Play got off to a slow commercial start, only to explode in popularity – the album has since become the best-selling electronic music album of all time, with over 12 million copies sold to date – after it began to be licensed for commercials and other projects.

READ MORE: “People want to talk without doing homework”: Swizz Beats on criticism of Verzuz beat battle deal with Elon Musk’s X

Speaking to MusicRadar about the making of the album, Moby recalls: “The interesting thing is that the music on Play was made in a completely unpressurised environment because I never expected anyone to listen to it.”
“In 1997/98 when I was finishing the music for Play, I’d been dropped by my American record label, and Daniel Miller of Mute Records hadn’t dropped me but it felt like that was because he felt sorry for me.”
“Play was made in my bedroom on cheap equipment and the commercial expectations were so low as to be non-existent, so it was a very unpressurised environment,” he adds.
According to Moby, things changed during the next few records, where he “put a lot of pressure on [himself] to try and make music that would be creatively interesting and commercially successful.”
“But I realised pretty quickly that I’m not good at that,” he says. “Some producers, especially now, are very good at accommodating the commercial marketplace, but whenever I’ve tried to do that the end result has been mediocre.”
The musician, who recently released his 22nd solo album Always Centered at Night, also admits that a young him would not have expected such success.
“For most of my life, up until a certain point, I assumed I was going to make music in my spare time that no one ever listened to,” he says. “I never expected to have a record deal or play concerts or shows to more than 20 or 30 people and certainly never expected to have anything resembling commercial awareness or success.”

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#ICQ

MixChecker Ultra from Audified The latest version of Audified's mix reference tool emulates over 90 devices, supports user-imported impulse response files, and comes packed with handy analysis tools.

From Backyards to Coachella, How The Red Pears Built it The Old Fashioned WayThis week, Ari is joined by Henry Vargas and Jose Corona of the band “The Red Pears,” an indie band who has seen recent success particularly in the live performance scene, coming hot off the heels of their Coachella performance.