Live music company DEAG plans to re-list on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and raise between €40m to €50m to spend on M&AThe company first went public in 1998 and delisted in January 2021
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TuneCore says that over 80,000 indie artists are enrolled in its ‘TuneCore Accelerator’ marketing programsTuneCore has published its first TuneCore Accelerator Report
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It’s Superfan Week on Hypebot!From major label executives to startup founders and the artists they’re both hoping to monetize, the term “superfan” is everywhere. But what is a superfan? How do you find them,. Continue reading
The post It’s Superfan Week on Hypebot! appeared first on Hypebot.

What is a Superfan & Why do UMG, WMG (and everyone else) care so much?Everyone is talking about the importance of music superfans to propel and monetize an artist’s career. But what is a superfan, and why do the CEOs of UMG and WMG,. Continue reading
The post What is a Superfan & Why do UMG, WMG (and everyone else) care so much? appeared first on Hypebot.

3 ways to find inspiration for your music
Here are three actionable ways you can find inspiration for your music, as well as resources that pair with each.

Korg to reissue PS-3300 synthesizer A reissue of Korg's iconic PS-3300 synthesizer, which saw a run of just 50 units between 1977 and 1981, is set to launch later in 2024.

Behringer is teasing a new synth that looks a lot like the Roland Jupiter-8Behringer has added yet another prototype to its ever-growing list, expanding the Jupiter collection, with the JT-16.

READ MORE: Behringer 2024: Every synth, drum machine and controller Behringer is working on

In a post to Facebook on Saturday (20 January), and later to Instagram, the synth manufacturer announced that a “new prototype is getting ready for assembly”. Upon closer inspection it appears to be a JT-16 analogue polyphonic synthesiser, offering 16 voices and plenty of oscillator choices, such as LFOs, VCOs and VFOs and more.

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The prototype shares a number of visual similarities with the coveted Roland Jupiter-8, with the same orange band spanning the length of its interface. Unlike the Jupiter-8, though, it looks like it doesn’t have keys at this time.
It’s been almost a year since Behringer teased the JT-2 Jupiter Voice in Eurorack format, promising that a “full key version” of the  Jupiter was in the works. While this doesn’t seem to be the Jupiter clone that has been promised, it looks to be a step up from the JT-2, offering 16 voices rather than just two.
Further details surrounding the prototype are few and far between right now, but given the fact it has plenty more voices and oscillator options than the JT-2, we predict its price to be significantly above the JT-2’s $299.
There is also little information about connectivity options, but it is hoped to be better than the JT-2, which only offers a single MIDI in/out and USB, as well as mono audio out.
Fans in the comments sections of Behringer social media posts seem very excited about the new prototype. “Oh wow, a Jupiter 16!” one writes, while another adds: “The Jupiter 8 is coming to life!”
We’ll endeavour to keep you in the loop with more info as we receive it.
To stay in the loop yourself, though, head to Behringer.
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How to sell more music merch using these 8 proven tacticsSelling merch is more than just a revenue stream for music artists – it’s a way to deepen your connection with Superfans. Want to know how? Here are eight super. Continue reading
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Ferguson Hill’s new Jetstream speaker system looks like something out of a sci-fi movieBritish pro-audio maker Ferguson Hill has unveiled what might just be the coolest speaker system you’ve ever laid your eyes on.
Billed as the brand’s “finest-ever design”, the new Jetstream Loudspeaker System spent two decades in the making, building on the iconic transparent design of the original FH001.

READ MORE: NAMM 2024: The hottest rumours and latest announcements from this year’s show

With upgrades introduced to “practically every single component”, the new system comprises a pair of Jetstream Horn Loudspeakers, a pair of Jetstream Bass Speakers, and a Jetstream Bass Amplifier. The system has also been “entirely reworked from the ground up”, according to Ferguson Hill.
“I have incorporated all the changes I have wanted to do since the launch of the FH001 twenty years ago,” said founder and designer Tim Hill of their latest offering.
For one, the horn speakers now feature the company’s own manufactured semi-full range drive unit, created in conjunction with Cube Audio of Poland. Improvements were also made to the interface between the acrylic horn and the metal ring, resulting in a more even sound wave expansion from the circular drive unit diaphragm to the mouth of the horn.
Credit: Ferguson Hill
The Jetstream bass speakers, meanwhile, arrive as a pair of 600mm acrylic spheres, with neodymium-powered 300 mm drive units. They are driven by the Jetstream Bass Amplifier with an internal low pass filter of 140 Hz. The Class D amplifier is capable of a total power output of 400W (2 x 200W) and features a sleek-looking anodised aluminium block construction.
Stunning as they come, just know that it isn’t just the Jetstream’s visuals that are out of this world. The entire system will cost you a stratastrophic £105,200. Individually, the horn speakers are priced at £72,955 a pair, the bass speakers £22,295, and the amplifier an additional £9,950.
Learn more at Ferguson Hill.
The post Ferguson Hill’s new Jetstream speaker system looks like something out of a sci-fi movie appeared first on MusicTech.

TikTok testing generative AI songmaking tool – and so far, it absolutely sucksThe use of artificial intelligence in creative spaces is a touchy subject. From the uproar over Jason M. Allen’s award-winning AI ‘painting’ at the 2022 Colorado State Fair, to the war on AI in the first-of-its-kind copyright infringement case against Stability AI, it seems artists aren’t too happy about AI’s creative streak.
While AI art has been an ongoing discussion topic for the last few years, it seems TikTok is set to spark another controversial debate with its new feature: AI Song.

READ MORE: TikTok’s parent company to shut down Resso music platform in India due to “local market conditions”

The new AI-powered feature is able to generate catchy tunes from text prompts, aided by BLOOM, BigScience’s open multilingual language model. Users will be presented with a choice AI-generated song to use, as well as being able to shift the song’s genre.
The feature was reportedly first spotted last week on the app. While AI Song isn’t available for everyone yet, the prompt to use AI Song is said to pop up when searching to add a sound to your post.
Musician Jonah Manzano showcases the feature in a recent TikTok, taking us through each step as he asks AI Song to generate a track about ‘attending a comedy show.’ The result is an awkward, horrendously out of tune garble of bland pop.

@jonahcruzmanzano
How to create a song using AI on TikTok. Explore the world of AI music on TikTok! Join me in creating catchy Pop, EDM, and HipHop songs using simple prompts and words. Let’s make music together! What is AI Song? AI Song is an experimental feature available on TikTok, utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) to generate songs based on prompts you input. How does AI Song work? The lyric generation in AI Song is driven by Bloom, a robust language model employing machine learning to produce text. It’s important to note that lyrics generated by this model might include errors, and the same lyrics may be generated for multiple users utilizing the feature. For your security, refrain from sharing personal or confidential information while using AI Song #tiktok #tiktoknewfeature #tiktokai #tiktoknews #tiktokupdate
♬ Vibes – ZHRMusic

While it’s clear text-prompted AI songs aren’t going to top the charts any time soon, TikTok has certainly boasted a number of successful AI sounds recently. From Kanye crooning along to Lana Del Ray, to Ariana Grande covering K-Pop, AI generated covers have taken TikTok by storm. User Ghostwriter977 has had perhaps the most success of the bunch, with his AI-generted ‘Heart on My Sleeve’ track, emulating vocals by Drake and The Weeknd.
The Verge has reportedly reached out to TikTok for comment on the new AI Song feature, with no word yet.
Elsewhere, it’s clear that AI is certainly intriguing artists themselves. Techno star Reinier Zonneveld has recently developed R², an AI clone of his musical brain. Trained on over 2000 hours of his music, Zonneveld has stated that the technology will be able to intuitively “create music on the spot.”
The post TikTok testing generative AI songmaking tool – and so far, it absolutely sucks appeared first on MusicTech.

ParametricOD Is A FREE Distortion Plugin Based On Neural Amp Modeler
Steve Ack, the developer behind Neural Amp Modeler, released ParametricOD, a freeware guitar distortion pedal plugin for Windows and macOS. Neural Amp Modeler has proven to be a popular piece of software with guitarists. I’ve seen all manner of gear, from boutique amps to studio outboard processors, captured. One of the dreams, so to speak, [...]
View post: ParametricOD Is A FREE Distortion Plugin Based On Neural Amp Modeler

Slate Digital announce MetaPitch plug-in MetaPitch offers independent pitch and formant controls, built-in saturation and stereo width effects, and a Robot Mode capabling of creating vocoder-style melodies.

Over one million “manipulated” tracks on streaming services are “diverting revenue away” from artists, recent study showsA recent study by digital rights tech firm Pex has spotlighted over one million “manipulated” tracks on streaming services that are “diverting revenue away” from creators.

READ MORE: NAMM 2024: The hottest rumours and latest announcements from this year’s show

According to data from November 2023, there are more than a million of what Pex calls “modified audio tracks” – tracks that have been sped up, slowed down, or otherwise “manipulated”, and then uploaded as a new recording on sites such as Spotify, Apple Music and TIDAL.
Examples cited include a sped-up version of Halsey’s Without Me, with nearly 6 million streams on Spotify, as well as a modified version of Something Just Like This by The Chainsmokers and Coldplay that’s earned over 12 million plays on the platform.
The issue, says Pex, is that most of these modified songs haven’t licensed the original tracks, but are earning royalties from DSP streams – a move that could very well be “taking millions from the rightful copyright owners.”
Speaking with Music Business World, Pex CEO Rasty Turek explains: “From our research, at least 1% of all music has some kind of modified audio, and the existing systems are not catching that up. So that means at least 1% of all music is misattributed and misappropriated in that sense. And… this means a lot of artists are essentially mis-paid [given how much] they are played.”
He adds: “There is [a] huge following of people trying to essentially enjoy content like this. Nightcore mixes, and so on. And I do think that there is a legitimate seed to the movement. If people enjoy this kind of music, they should absolutely have access to it.”
“But at the same time, proper attribution should be required. And this is much more up to the platforms and services than it is up to the artist to essentially go and fish out.”
In the meantime, Spotify recently announced some major changes to its royalty payout model in a bid to combat “drains on the royalty pool” and direct more money to working artists.
The post Over one million “manipulated” tracks on streaming services are “diverting revenue away” from artists, recent study shows appeared first on MusicTech.

Why are so many producers praising Imaginando BAM?€149, imaginando.pt
BAM’s developer, Imaginando, refers to its latest creation as a “beat maker and music maker”. This is a perfectly accurate description, but one that doesn’t shed much light on what you can expect for your €149. So let’s take a closer look and find out exactly why BAM is garnering so many strong user reviews.

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What is Imaginando BAM?
At its heart, BAM is a 16-track DAW built around a non-linear arranger that is driven by per-track step sequencers. There are no conventional linear tracks here, so the app is focused entirely on creating and combining patterns.

Each track in BAM features a series of modules. A Trigger module defines the default pitch and velocity values for notes added to the track’s patterns and provides retriggering, probability and time offset controls for the notes playing through the track. This is followed by two modulator slots, each of which can load either an envelope generator or an LFO and can be assigned to drive other parameters.
Next up is the most important module, the track’s sound generation engine, which is followed by a pair of effects slots. The audio chain concludes with an output mixer that can host two additional global send effects.
BAM Mixer view
Choice of engines
The app comes with a healthy choice of sound engines. For fans of old-school drum sounds there’s a generic Drum Synth module that combines oscillator, noise and filter to synthesise a wide range of analogue-style drums. There’s also a collection of ‘08’ engines that are inspired by drum hits of a Roland TR-808.
Also useful for drum sounds is the Sampler engine into which you can load your preferred kick, snare, or whatever samples. This engine includes a capable, subtractive-style synthesis stage with a multimode filter and a pair of flexible envelope generators (one for the amplifier and one for the filter), so it’s as useful for pitched and polyphonic parts as it is for drum sounds.
The app comes with a large collection of samples – both drum and pitched – and you can of course import your own samples, but the process of assigning a sample to the engine is a bit long-winded: use the integrated browser to locate a sample, import this to the project’s Pool where it is assigned an index number, then finally select this index number in the Sampler engine.
BAM Automations view
The ability to choose and combine these different voices is like having a fully customisable drum machine, but it also brings us to BAM’s biggest shortcoming: external keyboard or pad controllers can only trigger one voice at a time, because the other voices are on different tracks. This means you can’t play your custom drum machines as though they were a full drum kit.
But this isn’t an issue when it comes to pitched sounds, something BAM is equally capable of producing. The Oscillator engine provides a very capable two-oscillator subtractive synth that benefits from the same flexible filters and envelopes as the Sampler engine. And complementing the various 808-style engines is the Hofmann synth, a recreation of the classic MC-303 in all of its dirty, squelchy glory.
Driving external synths – either hardware or standalone software – is possible thanks to the MIDI Out engine, while the Audio In engine allows that synth’s sound (or indeed any other sound) to be fed back into BAM for processing and mixing.
Finally, the iPadOS version boasts AUv3 support so that any compatible instrument can be loaded as a sound engine, and any AUv3 effect can be loaded into the various effect slots. A similar update for the desktop version is on its way too, bringing AU, VST and VST3 support.

Sequencing, patterns & polyrhythms
BAM’s main screen, the Matrix, is conceptually similar to the non-linear arrangers found in Ableton Live and Bitwig Studio. The columns of the Matrix grid represent BAM’s tracks, and Patterns occupy the individual cells of the matrix.
Patterns can be triggered individually or as part of a scene (all patterns within the same Matrix row are considered part of the same “scene”) making it easy to jam and experiment with combining the patterns you have created. When you are ready to create a more tightly defined arrangement, you can set how many bars and beats the scene will play for and what happens when that time has elapsed – moving to the next scene, for example.
Where things get really interesting is with the patterns themselves. These can be recorded manually, although we expect many will use the groovebox-style step input methodology that BAM is geared towards.
BAM Matrix view
Two of the three pattern editing views are devoted to this step input approach: Timeline allows you to edit within a single view all patterns of the currently active scene, although only gate information is shown.
Automations view focuses on a single track, allowing automation lanes to be added and sequenced for any track parameter.
Finally, Composer view presents a pattern in a traditional piano roll editor, allowing full control over note pitch and length.
Patterns are 16 steps long by default but can range from one to 256 steps. Step length/resolution is handled slightly oddly, though, being presented as a multiplier that’s applied to the default 1/16th note length. Additionally, each pattern has its own independent time signature, looping behaviour and groove. This all adds up to some deep and extensive polyrhythmic potential.
BAM Timeline view
Device versus desktop
Currently, the best experience with BAM is with iPadOS – the design and workflow are perfectly matched to touch interactions. The desktop version is practically identical, and so lacks certain interactions that people expect in a desktop app: tool tips to help decipher the various buttons and icons, or clicking-and-dragging to adjust numeric values, for example.
Imaginando is not resting on its laurels, though, and has many plans for the ongoing development of BAM, with the initial focus on making the desktop version feel more like a traditional desktop app.
The absence of linear recording won’t pose problems for producers who like to work exclusively with loops, but others will surely find BAM’s ability to easily jam with patterns and arrangements a powerful and fun way to develop original parts, bedding and backing to add to their projects.
BAM Composer view
Key features

Standalone beat and pattern maker
For iPadOS, macOS or Windows
16-track non-linear sequencer
Pattern sequencing and arranging
Polyrhythmic patterns and probabilistic triggering
Assignable sound engines
Can use hardware and software synths
Two insert effects per track
Master mixer with two global send effects
Capture external audio and easy resampling of app’s output

The post Why are so many producers praising Imaginando BAM? appeared first on MusicTech.

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