Keeping Alive The Future Of Cars, 1980s StyleHere at Hackaday we’re a varied bunch of writers, some of whom have careers away from this organ, and others whose work also appears on the pages of other publications in different fields. One such is our colleague [Lewin Day], and he’s written a cracking piece for The Autopian about the effort to keep an obscure piece of American automotive electronic history alive. We think of big-screen control panels in cars as a new phenomenon, but General Motors was fitting tiny Sony Trinitron CRTs to some models back in the late 1980s. If you own one of these cars the chances are the CRT is inoperable if you’ve not encountered [Jon Morlan] and his work repairing and restoring them.
Lewin’s piece goes into enough technical detail that we won’t simply rehash it here, but it’s interesting to contrast the approach of painstaking repair with that of replacement or emulation. It would be a relatively straightforward project to replace the CRT with a modern LCD displaying the same video, and even to use a modern single board computer to emulate much of a dead system. But we understand completely that to many motor enthusiasts that’s not the point, indeed it’s the very fact it has a frickin’ CRT in the dash that makes the car.We’ll probably never drive a 1989 Oldsmobile Toronado. But we sure want to if it’s got that particular version of the future fitted.
Lewin’s automotive writing is worth watching out for. He once brought us to a motorcycle chariot.

Bifurcation theory | How today’s music business will become twoOne of things we pride ourselves on at MIDiA is helping the marketplace peer over the horizon with disruptive, forward-looking ideas and vision. We have a long track record of doing this (you can find a list of report links at the bottom of this post). While many of these ideas were difficult to swallow, or a little ‘out there’ at the time of writing, they became (or are still becoming) a good reflection of where markets ended up heading. Well, it is now time for another of those big market shaping ideas: bifurcation theory.

Today, MIDiA publishes its major new report: ‘Bifurcation theory | How today’s music business will become two’. The full report is available to MIDiA clients here and a free synopsis of the report for non-clients is on our bifurcation theory page here. So, check those out to find more, but in the meantime, here is an overview of just what bifurcation theory is, and why it is going to affect everyone in the music business, whatever role you play in it. 

The old maxim that change is the only constant feels tailor-made for the 21st century music business. Piracy, downloads, streaming, and social all triggered music industry paradigm shifts. Now, all the indicators on the disruption dashboard are flashing red once more. AI is, of course, standing centre stage, but it is not the cause of the coming change. It is simply a change enabler.The causal factors this time round are all direct byproducts of today’s music business, unintended consequences of a streaming market that has cantered along its natural path of least resistance. Everyone across the music industry’s value chain has played their role, often unwittingly. Whether that be shortening

songs, increasing social efforts, changing royalty systems or following viral trends, each of these micro actions has contributed to a macro effect.

The fracture points of today’s music business are simultaneously the catalysts for tomorrow’s. For example, the commodification of consumption is resulting in a raft of apps and industry initiatives that try to serve superfans; the rise of the creator economy’s long tail is resulting in both traditional rightsholders raising the streaming drawbridge (long tail royalty thresholds) and a fast-growing body of creators opting to invest less time in streaming.

Streaming was once the future but now it is the establishment, the cornerstone of the traditional music business. It has rocketed from a lean forward, niche proposition for superfans into a lean back, mass market product for the mainstream. Music consumers have always fallen into two buckets:

1.    Fans

2.    Consumers

The former used to buy music, the latter used to listen to radio. Streaming put them both into the same place, pulling up the average spend but pulling down fandom into consumption. Streaming is the modern day music business’ radio, just much better monetised than the analogue predecessor. Now though, everyone across the music industry’s complex mesh of interconnected value chains is realising there needs to be something more, built alongside, not instead of, streaming. This is the dynamic behind bifurcation theory. This report explores how today’s music business challenges are becoming the causal factors of a new business defined by two parallel consumer worlds.

The music business is bifurcating – splitting into two – with streaming emerging as the place for mainstream music and lean back consumption, and social as the spiritual home of fandom and the creator economy. We identify these two segments as:

1.    LISTEN (user-led): streaming services, monetising consumption at scale

2.    PLAY (creator-led): highly social destinations where fans lean in to create, connect and express identity

Of course, this process has already started, but social is still largely seen as a driver for streaming. Many artists who try to get their fans to participate on social do so primarily in the hope of driving streams rather than for the inherent value of fans participating in their creativity. However, many next-generation creators are realising they will simply never reach the scale needed to earn meaningful income from streaming.They are therefore shifting focus to building fan relationships on social media and monetising them elsewhere, be it via merchandise or brand sponsorships. Meanwhile, a new generation of fans are creating as a form of consumption, whether that means using songs in their TikTok videos or modifying the audio of their favourite song. While copyright legislation and remuneration have lagged behind these developments, they will be an important part of the future of PLAY. Over time, PLAY will evolve as a self-contained set of ecosystems, built around the artist-fan relationship. It will not be an easy transition. Mainstream streaming will become even more lean back, and social and new apps will exert what will increasingly look like a stranglehold on fandom and the creator economy.

Social apps are plagued with challenges (royalty payments not the least of them) but they will emerge as a parallel alternative to streaming, rather than simply a feeder for it. To this end, the full bifurcation theory report not only describes the lay of the future land, but also presents bold visions of how we think both sides of the music business equation should evolve. We present detailed frameworks for what PLAY services will look like and how LISTEN services can evolve, focusing on core competences to continue to appeal to the mainstream but also deepen appeal to – and better monetise – superfans.

AI will play a key role in the future of both sides of the bifurcated music business, but rather than being tomorrow’s business, it will act as an accelerant for the underlying dynamics of bifurcation theory.

Bifurcation is such a big concept with so many layers and nuances, we have only been able to skim through some of the highest level trends here. We encourage you to check out the full report and report synopsis to learn more.

We’ve spent a long time gestating this concept, so we’d love to hear your thoughts. We’re not expecting bifurcation theory to be to everyone’s taste, but if nothing else, hopefully it will spark some creative thinking and debate.

Don’t forget to check out our bifurcation page for a video discussion of bifurcation theory and a free pdf report synopsis.

As mentioned above, here are some of MIDiA’s most impactful future vision reports, in (roughly) chronological order:

Agile Music (Free report)

Music Format Bill of Rights (Free report)

Rising Power of UGC (Free report)

Independent Artists (Free report)

Music Rights Disruption

Insurgents and Incumbents

Creator Culture

Rebalancing the Song Economy (Free report)

New Top of Funnel

Slicing the Funnel

Music’s Instagram Moment

Scenes – a New Lens for Music Marketing

Attention Recession

Creator Rights (Free report)

Creator Hubs

Music Product Strategy

Fan Powered Royalties (Free report)

Addressable Creator Markets

Misaligned Incentives

Artist Subscriptions

Field of All Levels

Kill the Campaign

Rise of a Counterculture Industry

Tesla layoffs, Cybertruck recalls and Serve Robotics goes publicWelcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Sign up here — just click TechCrunch Mobility — to receive the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. Subscribe for free. Tesla is back in the news cycle and our crystal ball says it’s one of those long-term affairs. The […]
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Manual Supports for 3D Printing[MakerSpace] wanted to 3D print an RFID card holder. On one side is a slot for a card and on the other side has recesses for the RFID antenna. They used these to control access to machines and were milling them out using a CNC machine. Since there were no flat surfaces, he had to turn on supports in the slicer, right? No. He does use supports, but not in the way you might imagine.
Inspired by creating cast iron using sand casting, he decided to first 3D print a reusable “core” using PETG. This core will support future prints that use PLA. When printing the actual item, the printer lays down the first few layers and pauses. This allows you to stick the core in and resume the print. After the print completes, you can remove the core, and the results look great, as you can see in the video below.

While the PLA doesn’t stick well to the PETG, it can stick a little, but using a glue coating as a release agent solved that problem. This is one of those ideas that once you see it, it seems obvious, but it probably isn’t something you’ve thought about doing until you see it at least once.
There are a few other tricks in the video. For example, the core is a little larger than necessary, so there is a tab that sticks out. This makes it easy to tape down to the bed and also helps when you try to remove it from the PLA print. The results are great, and it makes us want to revisit our abandoned badge holder project from years ago.
Some people never print flat. Others do very specific support structures at key points. It seems there’s always multiple ways to print the seemingly unprintable.

After $1.5bn takeover proposal, Hipgnosis Songs Fund’s board tells Blackstone: We’re listening…Bring on a firm offer, HSF's board tells private investment giant
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This camera trades pictures for AI poetryThe Poetry Camera takes the concept of photography to new heights by generating poetry based on the visuals it encounters.
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Relatively Universal ROM Programmer Makes Retro Tech Hacking AccessibleThere’s treasures hidden in old technology, and you deserve to be able to revive it. Whether it’s old personal computer platforms, vending machines, robot arms, or educational kits based on retro platforms, you will need to work with parallel EEPROM chips at some point. [Anders Nielsen] was about to do just that, when he found out that a TL866, a commonly used programmer kit for such ROMs, would cost entire $70 – significantly raising the budget of any parallel ROM-involving hacking. After months of work, he is happy to bring us a project – the Relatively Universal ROM Programmer, an open-source parallel ROM programmer board that you can easily assemble or buy.
Designed in the Arduino shield format, there’s a lot of care and love put into making this board as universal as reasonably possible, so that it fits any of the old flash chips you might want to flash – whether it’s an old UV-erasable ROM that wants a voltage up to 30 V to be written, or the newer 5 V-friendly chips. You can use ICs with pin count from 24 to 32 pins, it’s straightforward to use a ZIF socket with this board, there’s LED indication and silkscreen markings so that you can see and tweak the programming process, and it’s masterfully optimized for automated assembly.
You can breadboard this programmer platform as we’ve previously covered, you can assemble our own boards using the open-source files, and if you don’t want to do either, you can buy the assembled boards from [Anders Nielsen] too! The software is currently work in progress, since that’s part of the secret sauce that makes the $70 programmers tick. You do need to adjust the programming voltage manually, but that can be later improved with a small hardware fix. In total, if you just want to program a few ROM chips, this board saves you a fair bit of money.

Green Day Pop Up at the EchoplexPhotos by Greg Schneider

Since the release of their third album, Dookie, in 1994, Green Day have arguably been the most popular punk band on the planet. So if you didn't catch them during the 924 Gilman Street days, the opportunities to see Green Day in venues that aren't enormous have been extremely rare.

As a result, it's been tough for many to view Green Day as a punk band at all, so much as an arena rock outfit. A really fucking good one, armed with a ton of rapid-fire, catchy tunes. But a festival-headlining arena rock outfit all the same. So this Hella Tiny Tour of smaller venues, which already saw them play the House of Blues in Anaheim in March, is priceless because we get to see Green Day in an environment where, to be completely honest, they thrive. It's like they're still in the Kerplunk era, fighting for their lives. The youthful energy is there in mountains -- snotty, joyful and very punk!

These guys connect with their crowd like few others. Peers such as the Offspring are full of on-stage banter, but Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt and Tré Cool make it their business to make every single person in the Echoplex feel like they're a bonafide part of the show. Green Day does that even when they're playing an enormodome, as they will this summer when they play the SoFi Stadium with the Smashing Pumpkins, Rancid, and the Linda Lindas. But it hits so much more intensely in a relatively intimate room.

All of these shows -- the Hella Tiny ones and the big gigs that will follow -- are a three-part celebration. Dookie is 30 years old, the American Idiot album is 20 years old, and they have a new album too -- Saviors was released in January.

So at the Echoplex we got both Dookie and American Idiot played in their entirety, plus a handful from Saviors. Each and every song sounded glorious in this environment. Dookie classics including (but not limited to) "Longview" and "Basket Case" allow us to imagine for a moment that we're catching this superb band in the moments before they explode onto the global stages.

The likes of "American Idiot" and "Jesus of Suburbia" prove that, even when the band had achieved insane levels of success, they were at their peak when it came to socially conscious, intelligent and politically aware songwriting.

And the new songs, particularly "The American Dream is Killing Me," are clear evidence that this timeless, apparently ageless band are still filled with fire, energy, and tunes.

"We can't wait to see you this summer," Armstrong says as the band leaves the stage. Ditto, fellas.

Let the Solder Scroll Take Care of Your Feed Needs[Victor]’s nifty tool the Solder Scroll is a handheld device that lets one feed solder out simply by turning something a little like a scroll wheel. It looks like an intuitive and comfortable design that can adapt to a wide variety of solder thicknesses, and is entirely 3D printed.
One part we particularly like is the feed system. One rolls a wheel which feeds solder out using a mechanism a lot like extrusion gears in many 3D printer hot ends. Both wheels have ridged surfaces that grip and feed the solder; their gears mesh with one another so that moving one moves both in unison.
Solder feed tools like this have seen all kinds of interesting designs, because while the problem is the same for everyone, there are all kinds of different ways to go about addressing it. We love this one, and we have seen many other takes that range from a powered, glove-mounted unit to an extremely simple tool with no moving parts. We’ve even seen a method of hacking a mechanical pencil into a new role as a solder feeder.

Strap in. Blackstone is ready to bid $1.5 billion for Hipgnosis Songs Fund.To paraphrase Pink Floyd, Will the sun (Concord Chorus) be eclipsed by the moon (Blackstone)?
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Getting It Done: Last Week in D.I.Y. & Indie MusicLast week, our tips and advice for the independent, do-it-yourselfers out there covered how to book better gigs, release new music, use TikTok as a tool, and much more.....
The post Getting It Done: Last Week in D.I.Y. & Indie Music appeared first on Hypebot.

REWIND: The new music industry’s week in reviewIt was a busy week by any definition, and the music industry was no exception. The DoJ eyed Live Nation and Ticketmaster, new National Recordings Registry inductees were announced, songwriters fought for expression in China, and more.....
The post REWIND: The new music industry’s week in review appeared first on Hypebot.

Steinberg release VST Live Pro 2 With the launch of VST Live Pro 2, Steiberg's live performance software gains a new Flex Loops system, DMX and MIDI plug-ins, enhanced automation features and more. 

Taylor Swift’s return to TikTok includes an in-app experience for ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ with ‘first-of-its-kind’ featuresIn-app experience follows the return of the superstar's music to TikTok, amid its licensing dispute with Universal Music Group
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Sometimes video #Games inspire #pop #Music