Abra, CEO Barhydt settle with 25 US states over licensing violationsOther states can join in the settlement, which will see up to $82.1 million returned to customers.

Denis Ladegaillerie has Believe back in his arms – and he’s eyeing a huge acquisitionFrench entrepreneur explains why he's trying to find the perfect acquisition opportunities to explode Believe's business
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YouTube in talks with Sony, Universal, Warner to license music for AI tools (report)YouTube wants to offer cash upfront in lump-sum payments to gain the rights to specific artists’ music – with the permission of the artists themselves
Source

Decoding Meshtastic with GNU RadioMeshtastic is a way to build mesh networks using LoRa that is independent of cell towers, hot spots or traditional repeaters. It stands to reason that with an SDR and GNU Radio, you could send and receive Meshtastic messages. That’s exactly what [Josh Conway] built, and you can see a video about the project, Meshtastic_SDR, below. The video is from [cemaxecuter], who puts the library through its paces.
For hardware, the video uses a Canary I as well as the WarDragon software-defined radio kit which is an Airspy R2 and a mini PC running Dragon OS — a Linux distribution aimed at SDR work —  in a rugged case. GNU Radio, of course, uses flows which are really just Python modules strung together with a GUI.

The GNU blocks send and receive data via TCP port, so using the radio as a data connection is simple enough. The flow graph itself for the receiver looks daunting, but we have a feeling you won’t change the default very much.
If you’ve wanted to dip your toe into Meshtastic or you want a meaty example of using GNU Radio, this would be a fun project to duplicate and extend. While Meshtastic is generally a mesh protocol, you can set up a node to act as a repeater. You never know when decentralized communications might save the day.

RECORDING ACADEMY INVITES MUSIC CREATORS AND INDUSTRY PROFESSIONALS TO JOINToday the Recording Academy® extended membership invitations to more than 3,900 established music professionals spanning diverse backgrounds, genres and disciplines, underscoring the Academy's commitment to inclusivity and representation within the music industry. This year's 2024 class of invitees is 45% women, 57% people of color and 47% under the age of 40. With this year's new member invitees, the Recording Academy is on track to achieve its goal of adding 2,500 women Voting Members by 2025 this year, one year ahead of schedule.

Invitations must be formally accepted by July 31 for recipients to become Recording Academy members and participate in the Online Entry Process (OEP) for the upcoming GRAMMY Awards®. Through OEP, members can submit recordings, music videos and other eligible content for GRAMMY® Award consideration. Individuals invited as Voting Members who accept their invitations are eligible to vote for the GRAMMY Awards, with the first voting ballot opening on Oct. 4 and closing on Oct. 15. The 67th GRAMMY Awards® will take place on Feb. 2, 2025, at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles.

"There's no better way to kick off GRAMMY season than by inviting thousands of diverse and talented music creators and professionals to join our Recording Academy family," said Harvey Mason jr., CEO of the Recording Academy. "Our members are the heart of the Academy, driving our mission to make lasting, positive impacts on the music community and shape music history. We are hopeful that all 3,900+ invitees join us in serving, celebrating and championing the voices of music creators year-round."

The invitations extended today offer each potential new member an opportunity to power the Recording Academy's mission of cultivating the well-being of the music community, celebrating artistic excellence in the recording arts, advocating for human creators' rights, investing in music's future through the GRAMMY Museum®, and supporting music people in times of need through MusiCares®. Recording Academy Voting Members — made up of artists, songwriters, producers, and engineers active in the music industry — are eligible to vote for the GRAMMY Awards, ultimately determining the outcomes on Music's Biggest Night® and shaping music history.

Among the invitees celebrating this career milestone today are Tanner Adell, Ashnikko, Grupo Frontera, and Teddy Swims, who expressed their excitement:

Tanner Adell: "So excited to say I am in the Recording Academy/GRAMMYs 2024 New Member Class. This year has been full of checking things off my bucket list, and this is definitely one of them! Couldn't be more honored to join this incredible roster and advocate for music and my fellow creators."

Ashnikko: "It is an honor to become a member of the Recording Academy. I am so grateful to be a musician in such an exciting era of music. It is an incredibly inspiring time. To be able to have a hand in nominating some of my favorite artists that are shaping culture right now feels very special."

Grupo Frontera: "We are excited to join the Recording Academy as new members this year. We have been so blessed to be accepted into the music industry with open arms in the short time that we have had and joining this community filled with the best of the best music has to offer is an honor."

Teddy Swims: "I am truly humbled to be invited into the Recording Academy. It is an honor to be a part of something that so many of my heroes have belonged to."  

 See here for additional invitee quotes.

The Recording Academy's membership invitation process is community-driven and peer-reviewed annually, focusing on two types of membership: Voting Membership for music creators and Professional Membership for music business professionals^. Each year, interested musicians and professionals must apply for membership by March 1. Their submissions are reviewed in the spring by a peer review panel composed of existing Recording Academy members active in the music industry. If approved, candidates are invited to join the Recording Academy. For more information on the Academy's membership requirements, visit here.

A comprehensive report on the Academy's 2024 New Member Class, along with a detailed breakdown of the overall membership demographics and crafts, will be released later this year following the deadline for 2024 invitees to join the Academy. To see the 2023 New Member Class and overall membership update, visit here.

^GRAMMY U® is the third type of Academy membership and follows a distinct application process. Visit here for more info.The post RECORDING ACADEMY INVITES MUSIC CREATORS AND INDUSTRY PROFESSIONALS TO JOIN first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

As Cheap As Chips: The MiFare Ultra Light Gets A Closer LookIf you take public transport in many of the world’s cities, your ticket will be an NFC card which you scan to gain access to the train or bus. These cards are disposable, so whatever technology they use must be astonishingly cheap. It’s one of these which [Ken Shirriff] has turned his microscope upon, a Montreal Métro ticket, and his examination of the MiFare Ultra Light it contains is well worth a read.
The cardboard surface can be stripped away from the card to reveal a plastic layer with a foil tuned circuit antenna. The chip itself is a barely-discernible dot in one corner. For those who like folksy measurements, smaller than a grain of salt. On it is an EEPROM to store its payload data, but perhaps the most interest lies in the support circuitry. As an NFC chip this has a lot of RF circuitry, as well as a charge pump to generate the extra voltages to charge the EEPROM. In both cases the use of switched capacitors plays a part in their construction, in the RF section to vary the load on the reader in order to transmit data.
He does a calculation on the cost of each chip, these are sold by the wafer with each wafer having around 100000 chips, and comes up with a cost-per-chip of about nine cents. Truly cheap as chips!
If NFC technology interests you, we’ve taken a deep dive into their antennas in the past.

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.”
The post 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” appeared first on MusicTech.

“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.”
The post “You have to have this psychotic belief – an unreasonable belief, truly – that you will write songs that matter”: St. Vincent gives advice to budding artists appeared first on MusicTech.

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
The post Underoath is fighting scalpers by making resale tickets worthless appeared first on Hypebot.

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
The post Bandcamp expands PRO with Private Streaming appeared first on Hypebot.

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.
The post Amazon Prime Day 2024: dates and what music technology deals to expect appeared first on MusicTech.

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
The post SXSW opens Showcase and Panel applications for 2025 appeared first on Hypebot.

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.
The post Stuck in a loop? Splice’s Create will now match compatible samples to musical ideas you’ve created appeared first on MusicTech.

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.