Abletunes Analog Drums is a FREE Virtual Drum Rack for Ableton Live
Abletunes released Analog Drums, a free virtual drum rack for Ableton Live.  Analog Drums is an Ableton Live native release compatible with all editions of Ableton Live 11 or newer, including Intro, Standard and Suite. Abletunes states, “Analog Drums sets a new standard for drum racks, delivering a complete analog-style drum machine experience right inside [...]
View post: Abletunes Analog Drums is a FREE Virtual Drum Rack for Ableton Live

76% of aspiring artists say a career in music is unsustainableA new study has shown that 76% of new artists feel their career in music is unsustainable. The findings come after a series of comments by Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, in which he compared the music industry to professional football – saying only a few will be able to turn it into a career.
Part of Toolroom Academy’s report From Mix to Mainstage – The Blueprint for Emerging Electronic Artists [via Mixmag], the study aims to “identify and understand the barriers that emerging artists face and provide actionable strategies for overcoming these challenges, ultimately paving the way for sustainable careers in the industry”.

READ MORE: Serato promises “versatility and creativity” with new upgrades for DJ Pro 3.2.0

The study saw 250 up-and-coming artists surveyed, and interviewed more established artists, too.
These subjects were asked about what they felt were their personal, professional and financial barriers to success within the music industry. Key takeaways included that 50% of artists struggle with self-confidence, and 82% said they rely on jobs outside of the music industry to sustain themselves. Of these 56% work in said job in a full-time capacity, and 26% part-time.
The report concludes that “there is a significant gap between talent and recognition”, and Toolroom Academy subsequently announced the launch of its new Artist Development Masterclass, a 12-month programme which will help artists “create a complete business plan”, spanning topics including music law and networking.
In another blow to aspiring career musicians, Daniel Ek earlier this week said the cost of creating content in 2024 is “close to zero”, prompting swift and widespread outrage from the internet.
You can view the full report or find out more about the Artist Development Masterclass at Toolroom Academy.
The post 76% of aspiring artists say a career in music is unsustainable appeared first on MusicTech.

Are SONOS’ Ace headphones better than AirPods Max? It’s a close call£449, sonos.com
To sum up SONOS in a sentence, the long-running company pairs high-quality audio with convenience. Through a wide range of home speaker setups and soundbars, it brought competent wireless audio to loft apartments everywhere when AirPlay was still a glint in Apple’s eye. The California brand’s reputation for excellent-sounding speakers and a closed wire-free ecosystem that ‘just works’ (most of the time), has made them a staple sound solution for homes and businesses everywhere. Its users, though, have long been looking for a solution to take their beloved SONOS sound and services with them on the road and, after a series of leaks and teasers, SONOS’s first headphones have arrived. Meet the Ace.

READ MORE: DALI IO-12 are incredible headphones that serve a hyper-niche audience

Headphone tech has evolved rapidly over the past decade after being fairly static for the previous three. Reliable Bluetooth audio gave way to a new range of consumer cans, with both Beats and the subsequent AirPods becoming ubiquitous accessories almost overnight. Throw in high-quality ANC, the ongoing development of spatial audio and the shift in consumer expectation of what good headphones sound, look and feel like meant that SONOS had to wait to get it right. As a result, despite them being its “most requested product” the Ace headphones arrive 19 years after the first SONOS product launched. But are they worth the wait?
SONOS Ace in black colourway. Image: Press
The Ace shows up in a fairly unremarkable case, but for a reason – SONOS has built the Ace with a focus on sustainability, with the case being made from recycled materials. Inside, you’ll find the headphones, USB-C charging cable and USB-C-to-3.5mm cable in a handy pouch. The headphones look great – they’re available in a black or white colourway, and our matte black pair looks very sleek and feels lighter than their 312g would suggest. They’re supremely comfortable, the memory foam earcups providing a satisfyingly enclosed feel without being too claustrophobic. They feel light on your head while still gripping on solidly: a strong start.
SONOS Ace in black colourway with accessories. Image: Press
Once you begin to connect your Ace to your device of choice, the first surprise kicks in: the Ace doesn’t connect to the SONOS ecosystem. It can’t be added as an output in the app, and you can’t switch from your speaker setup to the headphones as you walk out the door or move the soundtrack of your commute to your flat once you get home, something that we feel is an obvious use case.
These are Bluetooth headphones, and although they do have a Wi-Fi chip it’s not used to make them an extension of any existing speaker setups you might have. SONOS explains the technical reason behind this on its Subreddit, which is worth a read if you’re a long-term SONOS speaker user. Long story short, they’d be too big, the battery wouldn’t last long and they’d get too hot if the Linux computer that runs SONOS speakers was integrated into their headphones. The Wi-Fi chip instead is used for a feature called TV Audio Swap which we’ll get to later.
SONOS Ace in use. Image: Press
Wi-Fi aside, once the Bluetooth 5.4 chip is connected, the Ace sounds fantastic. SONOS has managed to avoid the temptation of an EQ curve that hypes key frequencies to impress on the first listen but ultimately leads to fatigue. They’re not flat like studio headphones, but more subtle in their sound stage, bringing highs to life without sizzle, and emphasising lows without oomph. Ultimately, they’re an enjoyable listen and when directly compared with one of their most suitable competitors – the Apple AirPods Max – they’re a lot less tiring over long listening sessions.
But, as they’re Bluetooth and lossless isn’t supported on iOS, you’ll have to reach for the USB-C cable on your phone and laptop to experience them in all their glory. And when you do, the difference is striking. Using TIDAL lossless over USB-C, the sound shines further, and although it goes against the wireless ethos of the SONOS brand, it’s the best way to experience the Ace. However, the mics don’t work over USB-C-to-3.5mm cable, which might be frustrating for gamers.
We wouldn’t recommend using these headphones for mixing but they are a lot of fun for producing and creating. The USB-C cable also does away with most of the dreaded Bluetooth latency — they don’t work in passive mode over 3.5mm, though, they always have to be on and charged. There is a two-band EQ in the SONOS app if you want to tweak further, although, once you are connected, they no longer appear in the SONOS app, presumably because Bluetooth is switched off. That needs to be fixed. The cable will also charge them as you work so you’ll be fully charged once you do set off again.
Speaking of battery, SONOS claim an impressive 30 hours even with ANC on. In testing, they last even longer. True to the sustainability mission, the battery is replaceable, as are the earcups, reassuring for the longer-term commitment the price would suggest. SONOS makes a big deal of the quality of the ANC and it is excellent. Tested against the AirPod Max, they don’t remove the outside world to the same extent, but it’s more consistent as you turn your head and move around. Aware mode allows you to let the outside world in, where required.
SONOS Ace in white colourway. Image: Press
Outside of music, one of the truly unique selling points of the Ace is TV Audio Swap, its ability to hot-swap between SONOS soundbars and headphones. This is the only way it truly integrates with existing SONOS setups and to be fair, it is very cool and very useful.
If you’re watching a movie, for example, and someone goes to bed, press and hold the control switch on the Ace and the audio will magically move to your headphones you can continue to listen in full Atmos glory.
The headphones support Spatial Audio and Head Tracking away from the soundbar, but it’s less relevant for music listening. It comes to life for TV, film and gaming though, and you can turn it on separately for each mode, which is handy. It was a little buggy before a firmware update solved our issues. This only works with Sonos’ flagship Arc soundbar so far, but support for the Beam and Ray is forthcoming.
Another fancy feature is TrueCinema. It allows you to mirror the soundbar’s Trueplay room acoustics tuning, to make the switch from room to headphones more realistic. It takes the acoustic profile of the room, tuned using sine sweeps from the soundbar, and reapplies that profile to your headphone audio to make it seem like you’re still sitting on your sofa listening from the speakers. Innovative, cool, maybe a bit odd, but also not ready at testing. SONOS say it’s coming later this year.
SONOS Ace earcups. Image: Press
SONOS’ Aces are not cheap headphones, at all. They don’t integrate with the existing SONOS ecosystem beyond hot-swapping from a soundbar, and it requires a cable to hear it at its best lossless quality (same as most Bluetooth headphones, to be fair). But they’re still a resounding success.
The sound is addictive — we find ourselves re-listening to albums to hear them on the Ace, not because there are new details or elements we didn’t spot before, but because they are so enjoyable to wear and to experience. They’re the most comfortable over-ears we’ve tried over long periods and, for this new world of remote work and endless Zooms, that’s as important as anything else in a headphone this expensive. It should be an all-rounder, and it is.
For producers, DJs and music makers, the TV Audio Swap may be more novelty than necessity but it is fun and useful if you own a SONOS soundbar. Fundamentally these are stellar-sounding headphones, with excellent battery life and travel-friendly ANC that can also double up as beatmaking cans once cabled in – unless you’re happy programming drums with Bluetooth latency, in which case we salute you.
Key Features

TV Audio Swap lets you hot-swap between headphones and soundbar
That warm, balanced SONOS sound
30 hours of listening time, charged via USB-C
Lossless and spatial audio capabilities with head tracking and Dolby Atmos
Bluetooth 5.4
Adjustable EQ
Custom-designed 40 mm dynamic drivers

The post Are SONOS’ Ace headphones better than AirPods Max? It’s a close call appeared first on MusicTech.

Mic preamps from Sabria Audio Sabria Audio are a pro-audio manufacturer based in Spain whose range currently consists of a trio of high-quality mic preamps, and will soon be extended to include a selection of 500‑series modules and more.

Album Review of "Set the Tone (Guns & Roses)" by Ghostface Killah (9/10)Mass Appeal

Producer: Various

Set the Tone is Wu-Tang’s very own Ghostface Killah’s 12th album, released on fellow emcee/friend from New York, Nas’ record label. Shy of one hour’s worth of solid, flavorful music, GFK is in true Ironman form.

“6 Minutes” features an intro from Jim Jones (Dipset), who “sets the tone” for the album, reflecting on drug dealing days listening to Raekwon’s Only Built 4 Cuban Linx, which features Ghostface Killah. Songs like “Pair of Hammers,” “Scar Tissue,” and “Shots” carry this top-tier installment in GFK’s catalog.The post Album Review of "Set the Tone (Guns & Roses)" by Ghostface Killah (9/10) first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

Bybit opens registration to Chinese nationals overseasData suggested that more than ten million Chinese nationals lived outside the country, giving Bybit access to a larger pool of crypto users.

Boeing’s Starliner overcomes leaks and engine trouble to dock with ‘the big city in the sky’Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft has successfully delivered two astronauts to the International Space Station, a key milestone in the aerospace giant’s quest to certify the capsule for regular crewed missions.  Starliner safely docked at 10:34 AM Pacific Time. After taking some time to equalize pressure between Starliner and the station, the hatch opened at around 12:46 […]
© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Erica Synths and Richie Hawtin’s Bullfrog Drums will “teach you drum programming and sampling”Meet Bullfrog Drums, a new drum machine developed by Erica Synths in partnership with esteemed producer Richie Hawtin.
The yet-to-be-released machine expands the Bullfrog range, which offers educational music production tools to encourage aspiring producers of the future.

READ MORE: Rob Papen unveils “minimalist” one-knob plugin, UniMagic – but what does it do?

Bullfrog Drums is designed to teach drum programming and the basics of sampling. Its user interface is inspired by classic drum machines, and hosts everything you’ll need for building advanced drum patterns using sampled drum sounds.
The synth features seven sample-based drum voices, each with hands-on sample manipulation, including tuning, start point, sample length, attack, decay, overdrive and stereo panning.
Currently, the Bullfrog ecosystem consists of two other products – the Bullfrog and the Bullfrog XL (designed for teachers to use in front of a classroom)– which creatives will be able to combine with Bullfrog Drums to create a complete electronic music production and performance setup. Bullfrog Drums will contain an easy-to-programme CV/Gate sequencer for this.

Little detail on when it’s set to arrive is yet available, but it’s currently expected to land at retailers before the end of 2024. The Latvia-based brand also says that the product is a “logical and consistent step” in its combined efforts to inspire the next generation and make electronic music technology more accessible along with Hawtin.
“As a producer who’s created many percussion-only tracks under my Plastikman moniker, it only makes sense to add a drum machine to our developing Bullfrog ecosystem,” says Hawtin. “This exciting development will allow both novices and pros a new way to learn drum programming and enjoy some fun new capabilities that we plan to feature on our new machine!”
Check back on MusicTech for more information on Bullfrog Drums as we get it. You can also view more from Erica Synths in the meantime.
The post Erica Synths and Richie Hawtin’s Bullfrog Drums will “teach you drum programming and sampling” appeared first on MusicTech.

What does Suno AI mean for music producers and the music industry?Sharooz is an electronic music producer, studio owner and entrepreneur. He’s also known as Principleasure and is the founder of Wavetick.
Whether a producer or songwriter, it’s impossible not to feel some emotion around the hyped generative music startup Suno. Especially in light of its recent $125 million funding — the biggest music tech equity investment in over three years.
How we create music and the potential to earn revenue from our skills may be about to change forever.
If you haven’t already played with it, Suno is fun and powerful. Like a ChatGPT for music, it creates unique songs based on a simple text prompt – and does so with impressive, albeit generic, accuracy. Vocals sound realistic, even guitar solos and string sections are spliced together with a nuance rarely seen before in generative AI music. In just a few years, AI has advanced from dodgy, artifact-riddled soundalikes to a personalised jukebox capable of spitting out songs that could probably sit unnoticed in the Billboard Top 100.
READ MORE: Learn how to create custom voice and instrument audio stems with AI
The potential to damage virtually every aspect of the music industry is obvious. While virtuosic composers and experimental curators of their craft may have little to worry about, Suno could conceivably chisel away at the stock music industry, sound designers, foley creators, lyricists and the work of songwriters in virtually every genre. This could be particularly true for those who practice more traditional arrangements and chord structures, like those commonly seen in charting pop songs.
I’d like to think that organic human emotion and the poetry of heartfelt lyricism will transcend anything a machine can offer. But it’s not inconceivable that, in the space of a few years, AI output may be indistinguishable from human endeavour, especially to the untrained ear. After all, Suno is a mere glimpse at what may be possible in the near future.

Suno’s public message offers utopian promises of “moving the bar” of music creation. It’s clear the Massachusetts-based company has plans to disrupt, with the online discourse opining that the wider mission is to fully remove the barrier between music creation and casual listening — imagine personalised playlists made up of fully unique AI-generated songs, fuelled by user prompts.
If these services are creating a future where the music creator and listener become one, this gives real potential to disrupt DSPs, labels, aggregators and everything in between. At the time of writing, Suno recently announced it plans to pay the platform’s most popular “creators” $1 million in “prize money” during June 2024.
To grasp Suno’s impact, one needs to understand how their output has become so much more polished than anything else that’s come before. AI is traditionally fed on real recorded music — human-created intellectual property (IP) with complex copyright restrictions. In theory, the more ‘data’ the network can train on, the more realistic the resulting output can sound.
Nobody is quite sure of the data Suno is trained on, but keen listeners have already identified scrambled elements of distinguishable works in their creations.
Public details on training data are scant, with many suggesting there could be lawsuits from major publishers and labels in the offing. Sony Music recently sent 700 letters to leading generative AI firms warning them not to infringe their copyrights. But if the current landscape of the music industry has taught us anything, it’s that there’s no guarantee disruptive technologies will favour human creator rights or livelihoods.
The dominance of digital streaming platforms (DSPs) has only diluted existing songwriter and performer revenue further. There’s an ongoing conversation on the unfair economics of streaming, with commercial law slow to catch up on AI’s impact on existing copyrights and publishing rights.
It’s not inconceivable labels may soon license our recordings and songs into Suno by the truckload. When those deals are done, they may net you less than any DSP currently does: fractions of cents. Will the majority of subscription revenue Suno generates line the pockets of its investors and the major labels that could one day own a share in it, if or when it goes public? After all, the investors in it will be keenly expecting a return, such is the nature of venture capitalism.
To create this technology is an awesome feat. Suno sounds remarkable. It’s fun, powerful and easy to use. To embark on this journey by going a step further, disclosing training sources and collecting metrics, directly compensating dataset contributors would be a welcome play…But I don’t suppose that pays investors well.
We all want to make technology more accessible, but we won’t get there by powering our product on the work of writers who have yet to even be acknowledged, let alone compensated. Creators may be in real danger of being squeezed out of operating altogether.
Brand trust begins with responsible practice. High-profile artists will likely boycott and vilify Suno — we saw something similar with the SAG/AFTRA strikes in 2023. Suno’s millions could aid its legal challenges but could set an uneasy precedent — steal now, seek permission later [producer BT told MusicTech a similar anecdote].
Will future legislation render AI music services a gimmick unfit for public broadcast or distribution?
User terms for most generative AI services are also unacceptably vague. We see “Use at your own risk” through to “your creation is uniquely your copyright”, with little comfort for pro/broadcast use or publishing to a DSP. Licensing a bona fide, human-created sample or track may be far more beneficial than hours spent prompting an AI-generated output that’s legally unfit for purpose.
Is there an exaggeration of AI’s impact on the music industry? If Suno are to be believed, we may evolve into an entirely new class of creators, further democratising music making. After all, why settle for spoon-fed major label playlists when you can just roll your own bespoke experience? But the real threat to professional creator livelihoods seems a long way off.
The winners in this space will likely be the well-researched, steady adopters who subtly integrate AI-assisted features to aid their existing creative processes. They’ll meaningfully democratise access for tomorrow’s creators without stealing from humans, whose work has been an endeavour of learned skill, political upheaval, emotional intelligence and the very meaning of what it is to be human. They’ll translate their authentic experiences through music.
Read more music technology features. 
The post What does Suno AI mean for music producers and the music industry? appeared first on MusicTech.

2024 Business Card Challenge: Tiny MIDI KeyboardThe progress for electronics over the past seven decades or so has always trended towards smaller or more dense components. Moore’s Law is the famous example of this, but even when we’re not talking about transistors specifically, technology tends to get either more power efficient or smaller. This MIDI keyboard, for example, is small enough that it will fit in the space of a standard business card which would have been an impossibility with the technology available when MIDI first became standardized, and as such is the latest entry in our Business Card Challenge.
[Alana] originally built this tiny musical instrument to always have a keyboard available on the go, and the amount of features packed into this tiny board definitely fits that design goal. It has 18 keys with additional buttons to change the octave and volume, and has additional support for sustain and modulation as well. The buttons and diodes are multiplexed in order to fit the IO for the microcontroller, a Seeed Studio Xiao SAMD21, and it also meets the USB-C standards so it will work with essentially any modern computer available including most smartphones and tablets so [Alana] can easily interface it with Finale, a popular music notation software.
Additionally, the project’s GitHub page has much more detail including all of the Arduino code needed to build a MIDI controller like this one. This particular project has perhaps the best size-to-usefulness ratio we’ve seen for compact MIDI controllers thanks to the USB-C and extremely small components used on the PCB, although the Starshine controller or these high-resolution controllers are also worth investigating if you’re in the market for compact MIDI devices like this one.

LVRN invests in Afro-Caribbean cultural platform Jerk X JollofThe investment 'underscores our commitment to empowering communities through music and culture,' LVRN says
Source

Foosbar: The World’s Best* Foosball Robot From Scratch[Xander Naumenko] is back with another bonkers project. This is the same creator that built a working 32-bit computer inside a Terraria world. This time it’s a bit more physical of a creation: a self-playing foosball table.
We’re not sure of the impetus for this idea, but we’re delighted to see the engineering it took to make it work. It sounds so simple. It’s just servos mounted on linear actuators, right? Oh, and some computer vision to determine where the ball actually is on the table. And the software to actually control the motors, pass the ball around, and play offense and defense. So maybe not so simple. All the code and some other resources are available under the MIT license.
As to while the claim of “best” foosball robot has an asterisk? That’s because, although we’ve seen a few potential competitors over the years, there isn’t yet a world foosball competition. We’re hoping that changes, as a tournament of robots playing foosball sounds like a sports event we’d show up for!

Sony Music Publishing wins Publisher of the Year at 2024 BMI Pop AwardsMiley Cyrus’ 'Flowers' was named Song of the Year.
Source

Playfair Audio: Dynamic Grading plug-in gets major update With the launch of v1.3, Dynamic Grading has gained a whole host of new features and improvements based on user feedback. 

UNIIQU3 on the art of sampling and the sonic identity of Jersey club
UNIIQU3 and fellow New Jersey icons Just Blaze and Rah Digga dive deep into the evolution of Jersey club, the art of sampling, and more.