An updated guide to YouTube’s best practices in 2024YouTube is essential to the ever-evolving digital music landscape, and The Orchard shares their 2024 YouTube Best Practices, where to learn about new features, branding tips, and how to reach goals successfully.....
The post An updated guide to YouTube’s best practices in 2024 appeared first on Hypebot.

“When someone doesn’t have the sauce anymore, they go elsewhere to shock”: Jack Antonoff criticises Kanye WestJack Antonoff isn’t holding back when it comes to Kanye West, saying in a new LA Times interview that the rapper “just needs his diaper changed so badly”.
The record producer and Bleachers frontman says of Ye, “It’s been a long time since I would’ve taken Kanye’s call. I’m so incredibly bored when someone doesn’t have the sauce anymore, so they go elsewhere to shock. It’s just a remarkable waste of space.”

READ MORE: Jack Antonoff awarded Producer Of The Year for the third year in a row at the 2024 Grammys

It’s not the first time Antonoff has had words for West, either. Earlier this year, Antonoff called him a “little cry baby bitch” (via NME) after West’s album’s release date changed to become the same as Bleachers’. Kanye’s record Vultures 1, a collaborative project with Ty Dolla $ign, came out on 9 February, with the follow-up set to drop on Friday (8 March), the same day as Bleachers’ self-titled new album.
Bleachers have released four tracks from the new album so far, with the most recent, Me Before You, being shared on 22 February. The other singles released are Modern Girl, Alma Mater, and Tiny Moves.
Also in the interview, Antonoff discusses the comments Damon Albarn made about his frequent collaborator Taylor Swift, who he’s worked with for over a decade, going back to the song Sweeter than Fiction for the movie One Chance.
The Blur frontman suggested in a 2022 interview that Swift doesn’t write her own songs. In response, Antonoff calls him a “herb” and says, “I’m a little bitch sometimes, but you come after my friend Taylor, you’re toast to me.” He also says that questioning her songwriting prowess “is like challenging someone’s faith in God. You just don’t go there.”
And he also looks towards the release of Lasso, Lana Del Rey’s upcoming country album, which he’s worked on with the singer. “We’ve been cooking,” he says of the album, which marks Del Rey’s first foray into country music. “It’s fucking brilliant.”
Kanye West also recently found himself on the bad side of Ozzy Osbourne, after using a sample from a 1983 Black Sabbath performance of Iron Man on his new album Vultures 1 without permission.
The post “When someone doesn’t have the sauce anymore, they go elsewhere to shock”: Jack Antonoff criticises Kanye West appeared first on MusicTech.

New FREE SoliderSound S Doubler Plugin is Out Now
The SoliderSound S Doubler was released on Saturday, and the Windows and Mac plugin is available to download for free.  The S Doubler is designed to “add depth, width, and a true sonic dimension” to your vocal and instrument tracks. SoliderSound states that the plugin “replicates the psycho-acoustic effects of sound proximity to create a [...]
View post: New FREE SoliderSound S Doubler Plugin is Out Now

“The brainwashing worked and now people think music is free”: James Blake on TikTok’s impact on the music industryJames Blake has spoken out on TikTok’s impact on the music industry and the financial difficulties facing artists.
Although TikTok has become a platform where many new artists are discovered, Blake argues that labels are now waiting for their artists to get lucky and land on a viral hit, and even then those artists are not always fully compensated for their virality.

READ MORE: James Blake: “It takes about six months before you can get anything out of a modular synth”

On his X (Twitter) account, alongside a repost where Blake is quoted saying that neither himself nor Frank Ocean made any money from his viral Godspeed cover, Blake adds further context to his concerns over fair royalty payouts for artists in the TikTok era.
“It’s worth noting this is just an example I used in a post talking about the wider effect of TikTok on music,” he says. “Just seeing this part makes it seem navel gazing but I’m speaking on a thing that’s affecting artists all over the world.

It’s worth noting this is just an example I used in a post talking about the wider effect of TikTok on music. Just seeing this part makes it seem navel gazing but I’m speaking on a thing that’s affecting artists all over the world. https://t.co/4pd2iRuNlB
— James Blake (@jamesblake) March 3, 2024

​​“Something I keep seeing is, ‘If you’re lucky enough to go viral, just use the exposure to generate income some other way.’ Musicians should be able to generate income via their music. Do you want good music or do you want what you paid for?”
Blake further adds, “If we want quality music somebody is gonna have to pay for it. Streaming services don’t pay properly, labels want a bigger cut than ever and just sit and wait for you to go viral, TikTok doesn’t pay properly, and touring is getting prohibitively expensive for most artists. The brainwashing worked and now people think music is free.”

Something I keep seeing is ‘if you’re lucky enough to go viral, just use the exposure to generate income some other way’. Musicians should be able to generate income via their music.
Do you want good music or do you want what you paid for?
— James Blake (@jamesblake) March 3, 2024

If we want quality music somebody is gonna have to pay for it. Streaming services don’t pay properly, labels want a bigger cut than ever and just sit and wait for you to go viral, TikTok doesn’t pay properly, and touring is getting prohibitively expensive for most artists.
— James Blake (@jamesblake) March 3, 2024

The brainwashing worked and now people think music is free.
— James Blake (@jamesblake) March 3, 2024

Also via X and his Instagram account, Blake comments on the impact of both AI and sped up/slowed down versions of tracks being used online:

James Blake on the TikTok-ification of music (sped up/slowed down versions of songs) pic.twitter.com/pjLBCEbcsR
— w-lar (@w_larproducer) March 2, 2024

And by the way, since it’s cheaper to produce fast, synthetic music to drop on streaming every week to capitalize on the strengths of the model, watch how the model is preparing you for AI generated music that pays musicians nothing at all.
— James Blake (@jamesblake) March 3, 2024

Despite his concerns over AI, Blake has previously made music integrating the tech. In 2022, he released an ambient album called Wind Down, made to help its listeners have a better night’s sleep. The music was originally made for Endel, an app that uses AI technology to provide personalised soundscapes.
The record became the first-ever full-length LP made using AI technology to be released on a major record label. Asked about this contradiction online, Blake explains how Endel takes what is considered an ethical approach to artificial intelligence:

There’s a difference. Endel uses AI to take music an artist has already made, and remix it into ambient form designed for sleep/other functional applications. They then give the artist a cut and it lives as a separate entity.
— James Blake (@jamesblake) March 3, 2024

View James Blake’s upcoming live dates via his website.
The post “The brainwashing worked and now people think music is free”: James Blake on TikTok’s impact on the music industry appeared first on MusicTech.

Apogee introduce Groove Anniversary Edition The latest version of Apogee's portable DAC boasts improved technical performance and compatibility with high-resolution lossless audio formats. 

Everything Everything: “You’ve got to keep pushing”“There are loads of things in the world I hate, and there are other things I’m angry about, but I get it across in a different way now,” Jonathan Higgs tells me. The frontman of Everything Everything is discussing the inspiration for the band’s new album, Mountainhead, which came out on 1 March before the Manchester art-pop quartet’s UK tour.

READ MORE: REZZ just wants to keep it simple

“Something like Mountainhead is clearly not a positive outlook but it’s not entirely negative either. There’s a lot of humanity on show.”
It’s a record that fits the zeitgeist: full of discussion about powerful figures, “crypto wankers”, and Andrew Tate-esque individuals. Wild Guess opens the record, and it starts with a drone sound courtesy of guitarist Alex Robertshaw.
“It was a sample of my voice singing that I made a synth out of. I’ve had it since 2014,” he tells me. “And I’ve always liked the sound of it – how silly it sounds. Especially when you can edit the MIDI to bend. I’ve always been a fan of early Aphex [Twin] and that sort of stuff, all the Ambient Works. There’s a load of those sorts of choral voice synths, So I made my own which isn’t anywhere near as good, but it’s got its own feel.”
Robertshaw has been EE’s guitarist since 2009, and he looks after production too. It’s at his studio at home where I meet him and Higgs, the principal songwriters of the band. He describes himself as always having been “the guy in front of the computer,” and he’s taken a more prominent production role since the band’s 2015 album Get To Heaven.
Jonathan Higgs (left) and Alex Robertshaw (right) in Alex’s studio
He explains that the two of them will work in Ableton Live and “get an idea going,” sending it between each other and gradually building the song up. To begin with, they just use Ableton’s stock sounds, before using their gear when it comes to recording the track.
With Mountainhead, Robertshaw anticipates a misconception – people may assume an absence of guitar recordings, but there’s likely more than on 2022’s Raw Data Feel. “But a lot of these guitars are run through modular synths,” he says, “Or they’re played in a way that makes them sound like they’re not guitars. I saw people saying they like the synths at the end of Cold Reactor, but it’s actually guitar.”
Though the more techy side of things sit firmly in Robertshaw’s domain, Higgs chimes in here: “[Robertshaw] doesn’t really use classic guitar tones, which used to be what people say you’re meant to do. Now, people can’t even tell what’s the guitar anymore.”
Compared to Raw Data Feel, Mountainhead avoids too much signal processing. “I like the idea of tracking into Ableton and keeping the amount of EQ’ing and everything to a minimum … You’re continually fixing things when you put things in. And if they’re not right when they went in the first time, you’re forcing something.”

And Robertshaw prefers not to use synth plugins, describing them as “super complex.” He says, “You get the soft synth but there’s also a layer of effects, or there’s some crazy routing that you can’t redo.
“I find that these big sounding synths that – they sound great on their own, obviously – don’t work with a band. You’ve got four guys lined up with their instruments. And you want to put some synths on it. All of a sudden, you’ve got a lot of stuff in a track, and you want to keep it. You want to make sure everything’s got its own space.”
I ask whether the band has perhaps gone back to basics with Mountainhead, but Robertshaw says it’s more that the process has become streamlined.
“I feel like I’ve always wanted to get away from the computer,” he says, “And as our career’s gone on, I’ve amassed enough gear to be able to do that. But when we started, it was like you just use what you’ve got, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”
Everything Everything
He explains that, now, the band will lay down drums and bass in a studio before he works on the tracks at home. He might go back and change the drums and synths before they finally add the vocals.
The gear the band use on Mountainhead is the same as the gear they used for Raw Data Feel. “The Strymon stuff is what I use for most of the record. Like, I’ll put all the guitars through there and use the filters to EQ … I use what’s there. There’s nothing really new in the studio.”
That said, their process of making music has evolved over the last decade and a half. Next year marks 15 years since Man Alive was released, and Robertshaw explains that it’s a gradual evolution. He describes hearing younger bands making music together in one room, perhaps just with a guitar and a laptop, and it makes him feel nostalgic.
“Now, it’s a different process,” he continues. “You’re writing for multiple instruments – your head’s not like, ‘I’ve got a guitar, here’s a chord sequence, let’s write!’”
Higgs (left) and Robertshaw (right) in Robertshaw’s studio
We had to talk about Higgs’ use of artificial intelligence on Raw Data Feel. Higgs developed an AI bot, Kevin, which he fed information from four key sources with a view to it composing lyrics. In the end, it produced the album imagery, about 5 per cent of the lyrics, and a song title.
However, for Higgs, it was a gimmick that “overshadowed” the album. “Everyone latched onto it. People were initially quite surprised that it was possible. I said it was, and then there was lots of confusion about how much had been done.
“It opened a lot of questions about AI in music, but it was really a small part of that album. The album is a highly personal, emotional journey of redemption, trauma, and all this stuff. And then quite a lot of people just wanted to talk about the AI.”
What does Higgs think about the future of AI in music? “It’s got a present and certainly a future,” he says. “Do humans have a future in music, is the question? Realistically, I think there’s already maybe more generated music in the world than human music now.
“There’s masses of it uploaded to Spotify every day by machines. No one’s ever even heard this stuff, let alone made it. It’s being generated and swamped in the hope that one of those billion tracks generates some money.”

Everything Everything have been together for almost two decades now. Higgs and Robertshaw describe themselves as “pretty proud” of their earlier material, though Higgs did admit that in the early days, they were all “thrashing about in every direction.”
Higgs says he wants to “move on” from their previous work without forgetting or dismissing it. “That’s still a big part of why we want to make music,” he explains, “We want to destroy everything and we want to have fun and communicate. I feel like we’ve done that all along, but it’s more relaxed now. We’re confident about what we do. We know how to get what we want.
“We feel quite in control now, which maybe isn’t the best thing to be,” he jokes. “I’m glad that Alex is trying to push production and writing into areas that I don’t want to go. Things I wouldn’t think of – put it that way.
“Otherwise, you just get too comfortable. It’s a fine line between feeling relaxed and feeling comfortable. We feel like masters of it now, but you’ve got to keep pushing.”
Having the producer in the band certainly helps too, says Higgs. “The band are going to try and make [the album] into the best thing they’ve ever heard because it’s literally their band. You can’t always trust that a producer will do that.

“You’ve got a limited time with them and they’re expensive. With Robertshaw, he’s here all the time and it’s his band and you can talk to him – it’s not like he’s some hot shot from LA you’ve got three weeks with. It’s different and makes so many more things possible.”
Robertshaw explains that they’ll bring so many ideas to the table that need to come together, which he’ll sit down and sort out before presenting the idea to the rest of the band and getting everybody’s thoughts. “You have to re-work out how you can make it work and keep all these bits in. And sometimes that can lead to this incredibly bloated music,” he says.
Higgs jumps in, “It’s easy to just pack a load of bollocks on more bollocks. Just layer everything up and have 80 guitars, 50 voices and loads of ideas. That’s the easy way out.”
But, ultimately, they all have their defined role in the band, and this is why they’re still going strong over a decade and a half down the line. “We’re very good at what we do individually, and everything that people do individually is different,” he says.
For Higgs, “There’s not much stepping on each other’s toes, which is the type of thing that causes bands to resent each other. And everything we make goes four ways – I think [inequality] destroys bands as well. We’ve always been open about that and stuck to that because it fucks groups up. And I think that’s one of the keys to our longevity. One of them.”
Mountainhead is out now
The post Everything Everything: “You’ve got to keep pushing” appeared first on MusicTech.

Outdated HP Microserver Gets a New BrainWhat to do if you have a really cool old HP MicroServer that just can’t keep up with the demands of today? [jacksonliam] decided to restomod it by installing a mini PC into the drive bay.
The HP N54L MicroServer was still running, but its soldered CPU and non-standard motherboard made a simple upgrade impossible. Evaluating the different options, [jacksonliam] decided to save the case and PSU by transplanting an Intel Alder Lake mini PC into the drive bay with 3D printed brackets and heat set inserts.
Selecting a fanless “router” model to increase reliability, he was able to find an M.2 to mini-SAS adapter to attach the four drive cage to the NVME slot on the new PC. Power is supplied via the 12 V line on the ATX power supply and one of the mini PC’s Ethernet lines was broken out to a 3D printed PCI slot cover.
Looking for more ways to rejuvenate an old computer? How about putting a Mac mini inside an old iMac or a Raspberry Pi inside an Apple ][?

Waymo scores a critical robotaxi permit, Fisker cuts more workers and Apple car fades awayTechCrunch Mobility is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click TechCrunch Mobility — to receive the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. Subscribe for free. Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. I was in Los Angeles earlier this […]
© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Bring Linux To CH32V003 Through, Yes, RISC-V EmulationLike playing around with Linux on low-power devices? You’d be hard pressed to find a better example than the [tvlad1234]’s linux-ch32v003 project. It’s not just a one-off — it’s something you could build right now, since it requires hardly any extra parts.
With help of a 8 MB PSRAM chip for RAM supplementation purposes and an SD card, plus some careful tailoring of the Linux .config parameters, you get Linux on a chip never meant to even come close to handling this much power. The five minutes it takes to boot up to a prompt is part of the experience.
As usual with [tvlad1234]’s projects, there’s a fun twist to it! Running Linux on this chip is only possible thanks to [chlohr]’s mini-rv32ima project, which, as you might remember, is a RISC-V emulator. Yes, this runs Linux by running a RISC-V emulator on a RISC-V chip. The main reason for that is because the MCU can’t map the PSRAM chip into RAM, but if you use an emulator, memory mapping is only a matter of software. Having applied a fair amount of elbow grease, [tvlad1234] brings us buildroot and mainline Linux kernel configs you can compile to play with this — as well as a single-layer-ready KiCad board project on GitHub. Yep, you could literally etch a PCB for this project from single-sided copper-clad FR4 with a bit of FeCl3.
While the CH32V003 is undoubtedly a more impressive target for Linux, the RP2040 Linux project might be more approachable in terms of having most of the parts in your parts box. At least, up until we start valuing the CH32V003 for all the cool stuff it can do!

Fracture Sounds Releases Blueprint: Textural Violin, A FREE Kontakt Player Library
Blueprint: Textural Violin is A FREE Kontakt Player Library that has just been released by the developer Fracture Sounds. Fracture Sounds hasn’t quite finished spoiling us when it comes to free libraries for Kontakt Player. Now, this isn’t your usual string library, but Blueprint: Textural Violin certainly has some intrigue behind it. Like the rest [...]
View post: Fracture Sounds Releases Blueprint: Textural Violin, A FREE Kontakt Player Library

FireSonic & United Plugins announce FireEQ FireSonic's new EQ plug-in offers some useful Mid-Side functionality and a simple one-knob control that makes quick work of adjusting the overall tonal balance of its output.

Apple cancels its car, Google’s AI goes awry and Bumble stumblesHello, folks, welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s newsletter covering noteworthy happenings in the tech industry. This week, investment firm KKR announced that it would acquire VMware’s end-user computing business from Broadcom for $4 billion. As Ron explains, that business included VMware Workspace One and VMware Horizon — two remote desktop apps that had […]
© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

It’s a CoCo! No, it’s an Apple II!Original retrocomputing hardware is now decades old and showing its age, so the chances are it’s more common in 2024 to experience a machine from the 1970s or 1980s by way of an emulator on a modern machine than it is on the real hardware. There’s another more limited emulation scene as similar 8-bit machines emulate each other, for example when the very similar Dragon 32 and Tandy CoCo have a go at each other’s software. Rarest of them all though is when one classic machine emulates another with a different architecture, but that’s exactly what’s happened with [DragonBytes], who has persuaded a Tandy CoCo to emulate an Apple II.
The two machines have significant hardware differences, but we’re guessing that the project is helped a little by the Motorola 6809 in the CoCo and the MOS 6502 in the Apple having both in a sense been different visions of a successor to the Motorola 6800. Thus their architectures while different, are not diametrically opposed. The other hardware is certainly not so similar though, with Moto’s 6847 display chip in the Tandy being far more conventional than Steve Wozniak’s clever NTSC hacks to achieve a color display for minimal cost on the Apple.
The project is written in assembler, and doesn’t by any means claim to support all Apple modes, or be cycle accurate. But it’s a hugely impressive achievement nevertheless.
The CoCo has an enthusiastic following, and has appeared here a few times in the past. We particularly like this video player.

this is it https://www.instagram.com/p/C3qhjbrOlvD/ Lady Gaga at #Fortnite #MusicTechnology #Music #Games

DIY Geophone Build Performs WellIf you want to know what’s going on with the ground, geologically speaking, a geophone is a great tool to have. It lets you listen in on the rumbles and grumbles beneath your feet, and can give you great insight into matters of seismic importance. [mircemk] has designed a very capable geophone that’s simple enough for you to build at home.
The geophone relies on a mass suspended upon a spring inside a chamber, which as you might imagine, will move when shaken by seismic vibrations. The mass is in fact a plastic rod, fitted with an iron nut and a magnet on the end.
This is mounted above a coil, which is fixed to the base of the chamber. Thus, when the chamber is shaken by seismic activity, the mass moves relative to the coil, with the coil picking up the varying magnetic field as it dances around.
The YouTube video does a great job of explaining the concepts involved and how to practically build the device. [mircemk] has also had some other great projects featured on Hackaday before, too.