Drooling over this limited-edition black Erica Synths Pērkons HD-01? Too bad – it’s already sold outErica Synths launched a black version of its Pērkons HD-01 drum synth just last week, and they completely sold out almost within an instant.
In the extremely limited drop, just 20 units were made available and sold like hot cakes. It’s clear there’s a huge demand for a full production run of this black edition, but only time will tell whether or not the brand will be offering it a full-time position among its lineup of other gear.

READ MORE: Richie Hawtin and Erica Synths’ Bullfrog can easily help you teach and learn synthesis

The original version of the drum synth landed in 2021, and MusicTech rated it a glowing 9/10 in our review for its generous amount of performative control and excellent build quality.
It seems this limited version packs in all the same features, including four hybrid voices (digital sound engine and analogue multimode filter with overdrive), eight controls per voice, external trigger inputs for each voice, and individual voice outputs.
It also has individual FX sends and returns, a master FX send and return, and modulation LFO with morphing waveforms, with up to eight modulation destinations per voice.

The black version was priced higher than the original (€1800.00 rather than €1700.00), and showcased side panels crafted from hand picked wood, engraved using the Lichtenburg burning method.
“The timelessly black finish of Pērkons HD-01 matches our other instruments and visually complements the dark aesthetic that has become synonymous with Erica Synths modules and desktop instruments all over the world,” the brand states on its website.
“What truly sets these side panels apart is the mesmerising Lichtenburg burning method employed in their creation. This technique, named after the physicist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, involves applying high-voltage electricity to the wood’s surface, resulting in striking patterns reminiscent of lightning strikes.
“The method has gained notoriety due to numerous incidents of death and severe injuries when people have attempted it at home, with at least 33 people having died between 2017 and 2022. Pērkons HD-01 engraved side panels have been hand-made by Sandis Vāgners in the deep woods of Latvia. To prevent his certain death during the engraving process Erica Synths developed a special emergency power cut circuit.”
You can shop the original Pērkons HD-01 now via Erica Synths.
The post Drooling over this limited-edition black Erica Synths Pērkons HD-01? Too bad – it’s already sold out appeared first on MusicTech.

iZotope revive Trash distortion plug-in iZotope's distortion plug-in has returned with desktop and iPad versions, and also offers a Lite mode that can be enjoyed for free on all platforms.

How to maximize a music release’s potential for success [VIDEO]The right planning and preparation can make or break how well a music release does. This guide breaks down the steps needed to put out a successful song.....
The post How to maximize a music release’s potential for success [VIDEO] appeared first on Hypebot.

Alert to users did the impossible and united Congress against TikTokTikTok's attempt to rally users and replicate big tech's Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) protests seems to have backfired, and Congress and President Biden have united against the social video platform.....
The post Alert to users did the impossible and united Congress against TikTok appeared first on Hypebot.

iZotope Releases FREE Trash Lite Distortion Plugin
iZotope released Trash Lite, a freeware distortion plugin based on the new commercial plugin called Trash (€109). Now, if you’ve been around VST plugins for a while, you’re probably already familiar with iZotope Trash. It’s a legendary distortion plugin and one of iZotope’s flagship products before the age of Ozone and other currently popular tools. [...]
View post: iZotope Releases FREE Trash Lite Distortion Plugin

Somerville Sounds Releases FREE Rubber Bridge Guitar Virtual Instrumet
Rubber Bridge Plucks is an acoustic guitar sample-based virtual instrument from Somerville Sounds that can be yours for FREE.  As a longtime guitarist, I will say that I always give virtual guitar instruments a shot. I have friends who do absolute magic using Shreddage and other libraries, so it’s always interesting to see what’s on [...]
View post: Somerville Sounds Releases FREE Rubber Bridge Guitar Virtual Instrumet

“In those situations, you’re not really selected for your technical ability”: Engineer and producer Gloria Kaba says landing jobs with big artists is about personality and temperamentGloria Kaba, an engineer and producer who’s worked with some of the biggest artists in popular culture, believes that personality and temperament can sometimes prevail over your skill set when it comes to landing jobs.
Kaba has been working for roughly a decade in a studio environment, often under the name Redsoul. She’s worked with the likes of Madonna, Beyonce, Phil Ramone, Kanye West, Salaam Remi, Aretha Franklin and Frank Ocean, with A Tribe Called Quest on their final album We Got It From Here… Thank You 4 Your Service, and on Solange’s famous A Seat At The Table. She’s also worked closely with hip-hop artist and producer Q-Tip

READ MORE: The Human League’s Don’t You Want Me was recorded in a toilet with an SM58

In the latest episode of EarthQuaker Devices’ Show Us Your Junk, Kaba provides a tour of New York’s Power Station Studio where she is currently serving as Technical Director. Here, she also teaches classes on engineering. She explains that having good chemistry with an artist is at the core of operating as an engineer/producer.
“In a lot of those situations, you’re not really selected for your technical ability,” she says (via Music Radar). “It’s really about being a good fit for the people around and that artist… I’m sure [Q-Tip] was sizing up my personality, my temperament – because that goes a long way.
“Being able to stay calm in high-pressure situations. Not being distracting in a creative environment. Being likeable and pleasant to be around – that goes a long way,” she adds. “That’s a lot of it.”
In the video, Kaba also explains how she brings both her skills in production and engineering together when working on a project: “To me there’s no real clean distinction between the production and engineering as I approach a project. So I could be producing and I’m thinking about a mix so that factors into my sound selection.”
She adds, “An artist, and I can say that for myself too, gets used to what they’ve been hearing, so I like to be intentional and deliberate about the effects I’m adding in the production process or early on in the engineering process.”
Watch the full studio tour with Kaba below:

The post “In those situations, you’re not really selected for your technical ability”: Engineer and producer Gloria Kaba says landing jobs with big artists is about personality and temperament appeared first on MusicTech.

DJ Laurent Garnier listens to “500 EPs a day” looking for new musicFrench techno DJ and producer Laurent Garnier has claimed he listens to 500 EPs a day, roughly equating, he estimates, to between 1,000 and 1,500 songs daily.

READ MORE: Long live pub raves: How big-name DJs are helping to save British pubs

The huge number was revealed during a keynote with the Man With The Red Face producer at the AVA London conference on Thursday 29 February at the British Library. Hosted by writer Séamas O’Reilly, the conversation covered the art of DJing, his early career at the legendary Manchester club, The Haçienda, and the difference between clubs then and now.
“How many tracks do you say you listen to every day?” Quizzed O’Reilly during the keynote.
“About 500,” Garnier responded.
“Are you skipping them, or are you listening to them all the way through?”
“No! Come on!” Garnier snapped back. “We all skip. That’s a normal thing. I skip through 500 Different EPs a day, which makes it about 1,000, 1,500 tracks. I do, because I want to know what’s going on.
“When we DJ, we should try to play the best music that is out and there is a lot of music – a hell of a lot of music. On Spotify, there are between 100,000 and 200,000 tracks a day. So, listening to 500 records is nothing. I basically know nothing about what’s going on but I’m trying to know a little bit. My job is to search for music.”

Garnier went on to further justify this vast number, highlighting that, of the tracks he downloads in a day, some will be used in live DJ sets, some for a show on PBB radio, and the rest will be used on his [DEEP]Search radio show.
Garnier went on to say how it’s important to search for your own music and not accept whatever an algorithm recommends.
“I believe human curating is still more important than what the machines or the the algorithm is proposing to me,” he said. “I’m not happy with the algorithms, so I have to do it myself. The funny thing is, I do find amazing records every day – really, really good stuff.
“I don’t download too many tracks. But yesterday, travelling here… I had 70 new tracks on my computer in 24 hours. So, it’s quite a lot.”
For more artist news, head to MusicTech.
The post DJ Laurent Garnier listens to “500 EPs a day” looking for new music appeared first on MusicTech.

The music streaming revolution is here, thanks to these new streaming platformsThe current landscape of music discovery is vast, accessible, and can turn your phone into the echo chamber of everything you love about your favourite artists and genres. But is it killing the music industry?
As of 2022, there were almost 400 million people subscribed to any of the three top music streaming giants, according to Statista. To put that into perspective, that’s the entire population of the United States and Italy combined paying up to £11 a month to access over 100 million songs.

READ MORE: Long live pub raves: How big-name DJs are helping to save British pubs

The pay-per-stream model adopted by all three streaming giants works wonders for the Ed Sheerans of the world, who pockets a breezy £ 7.3 million per song on Spotify according to Cosmopolitan. But the approximate 0.007p per stream fails to impact your average musician’s bank account. In fact, because of this model, in addition to a powerful algorithm that works hard to keep consumers interested, listeners find it harder than ever to discover independent music, making it impossible for some artists to grow any revenue at all.
The EU recognises this problem. In January, members of the European Parliament voted for new legislation to address fairer payouts for musicians across revenue distribution in music streaming. Within the EU Parliament bulletin, three major concerns were recognised and flagged: unfair revenue distribution, an imbalance of visibility between popular and emerging artists and a lack of regulation surrounding AI.
Image: Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images
While this step is monumental in protecting artists and their music, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen work to fight against the streaming giants. Smaller streaming services have been working hard to tackle many of the above issues for years — democratising music, protecting the artist and their art, retaining the quality of the record, and ensuring that everybody has a chance to be heard without slipping through the cracks of the algorithm. Such streaming services are the new face of music discovery.
Understandably, there is a glaring problem here: the 400 million users of the giants aren’t going to cancel their subscriptions and move over to smaller services that offer a fraction of the music on offer for a higher price — we saw as much with the launch of Tidal. So, something has to change in our understanding of the relationship between the streamer and the artist, knowing that it can’t continue in its current state. At least, not if we want a flourishing global music industry.
Three up-and-coming streaming services have three different approaches to changing the industry, hoping to impact the artist, the consumer, and everyone in between.
A user using Qobuz on a desktop
The new kid on the block
Finding your way as a new business in any industry is not easy, especially when you’re working in a near-monopolised industry. Co-founder of sonu.stream Laura Jaramillo makes this issue blatantly clear. Jaramillo, alongside revered producer TOKiMONSTA, built the streaming service to help “increase the pie” for everybody involved.
“Right now, the economics of streaming are very broken,” she tells MusicTech. “It’s a tragedy that all these other ways that artists show up for the music industry don’t get reflected in what pays for the passive consumption of music.”
sonu.stream leverages Web3 technology — using a blockchain, it traces who creates and owns a song, ensuring that this data cannot be changed or altered. NFTs are often referred to as digital ‘collectibles’ (and notoriously volatile novelties) but Jaramillo sees them as a way to protect artists.
sonu.stream. Image: sonu.stream
“It allows you to create a strong foundation that decentralises the permission for AI-generated music,” she adds. “This kind of progress is only possible through the blockchain and this kind of tech.”
Tony Lashley, founder of Marine Snow and an ex-Spotify employee, has similarly demonstrated his apathy for streaming services that aren’t putting artists first. He hit headlines a year ago announcing that the platform will pay artists equal to 500,00 Spotify streams upfront.
The platform works by having exclusive streaming rights to a song for 90 days. However, Lashley has recently implemented a new structure, where all artists can pay a subscription — if they choose to pay more they’ll have more ownership of the platform, incentivising artists to care more about the platform.

“You can only help artists as much as you can capture money or attention from consumers. Otherwise, you’re building a very fragile ecosystem,” Lashley explains. “These big streaming services are consumer first and artist second, but I do think you have to focus on why consumers will pay for your product. That’s intertwined with how you help artists, and the best businesses are like that. You have to create new forms of value if you want to succeed.”
Meanwhile, Qobuz — described as a “cool record store version of a streaming service” — offers a human-curated collection of high-resolution music for streaming and purchasing.
“We’ve taken on this mantra of an old-school vinyl shop because everything is racing forward and is so algorithmic,” says managing director of Qobuz Dan Mackta. “The aim [of major streaming platforms] is to keep you listening no matter what. They don’t want you to turn it off, so they want to give you something that will go down easy and not make you stop and think ‘do I want to listen to this?’”
“The goal is to be the choice for the aficionados,” he continues. “We only really need to get to one per cent of the streaming market to be widely profitable at our size.”
“You have to create new forms of value if you want to succeed” – Tony Lashley, founder of Marine Snow
Interestingly, all three services, despite having different intentions, all found an issue in the way that the giants distribute music in such a non-selective way ‘en masse’, despite that being the main appeal of the likes of Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music.
“For an artist to be heard or discovered on some of the major streamers it’s all about being playlisted by the editorial, and that process is so opaque,” explains Jaramillo, “It’s what makes and breaks an artist — as well as maybe a TikTok moment.
“It’s fundamentally a flawed model for a main proposition to be around the volume of the content,” adds Lashley. “That makes it very easy for someone to sign up, but very hard to achieve business success when you’re saying that no song is better than any other and we’re going to give you a lot and hope you find what you want.”
Image: Thiago Prudêncio/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
How to make a good habit stick
It’s a herculean task to encourage listeners to leave a service that is useful, reliable and has every song at your fingertips. But the way these services are supporting the industry and artists has had an impact on the consumers who are making the switch.
“Marine Snow users are honestly tired of the streaming giants,” Lashley says. ”They may still use them but they want alternative solutions. We’re trying to cultivate a small, avid community rather than a large, dispassionate community. So far, we’ve been able to achieve that.
Interestingly, these ‘giants’ aren’t making much money from the subscriptions, instead mainly making revenue from the stock market, with Spotify’s current market valuation sitting at 53.30 billion dollars. Therefore, their apparent lack of care towards creating a committed community is seemingly not an issue. Instead, it feels as though they just want to make a popular company — something that can be achieved when appealing to the masses.
Image: Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
So what would be more beneficial to artists?
“Artists really understand what we’re doing and it’s very much an easy sell for them,” Lashley continues. “Our equity model resonates with them, but decoupling the value of quality versus consumption also resonates with them.
“An artist can think they’ve written a really good song, and it can get 10,000 plays and it’s still a really good song, no matter how many plays it gets.”
“I would rather that the more equitable bedrock is what other streamers can build on top of and share across the different experiences as we get more nuanced with how we enjoy music” – Laura Jaramillo, co-founder 0f sonu.stream
“People are disappointed in these giants and they see sonu.stream as an opportunity for change,” says Jaramillo. “Artists and labels are extremely excited by the opportunity. It’s a chance to make more revenue and single out those people that show up for them.”
However, when it comes to Qobuz, Mackta sees the hesitation that many have moving away from an algorithm towards something that is hand-picked.
“We know that there’s a good fit for a certain kind of music fan, they see it, they get it, and they’re in. Some will write in and say they want more algorithmic, so we’re maybe looking to add an artist radio because people like that. People really dig the human editorial side. They know that there’s someone there listening to the music and writing a review — songs are placed on the front page with intention, and people respond well to that.
“We’re an interesting company at an interesting point in history. We make choices and when people respond positively, it’s the ultimate affirmation that we’re making the right choices and getting great feedback.”
“We don’t exist without the artists that make the music, so they should be getting everything that they deserve” – Dan Mackta, managing director of Qobuz
The future of streaming
The growth in these organisations shows a real mark in how the monopoly of music streaming is shifting. There is a desire for an antidote to the major streamers, and the power that they hold over an artist’s success.
“I’m trying to be the change that I want to see,” says Lashley. “You look at Marine Snow and see the problems in other services. The biggest is that most artists you speak to don’t know how to get others to pay attention to what they’re doing. They just make a song or a TikTok and they pray. That’s really hard and it’s not up to them who gets put on that path to success.
“I want Marine Snow to be one of those first steps in that path, knowing that it will lead to greater success.”
The mood is similar for Mackta, who says that Qobuz “gives a chance to artists that aren’t embraced or featured in mainstream streaming.
“We don’t exist without the artists that make the music, so they should be getting everything that they deserve.”

The core issue with streaming giants is not just how artists are paid, but also who is paid. Given the echo chamber nature of their algorithms, pushing the same or similar artists in the face of listeners to keep them on the app, or the difficulties that many face trawling through the millions of albums and artists to find anything remotely new or niche, these services are lacking the one thing that traditional music shops promote: choice.
It seems diabolical that services brimming with an endless supply of music leave listeners with little to no choice. The lack of transparency over new music and leaving the algorithm to do the work leaves the listener with little control over the outcome.
“I don’t want to live in a world where sonu.stream is the next behemoth streamer,” says Jaramillo. “I would rather that the more equitable bedrock is what other streamers can build on top of and share across the different experiences as we get more nuanced with how we enjoy music.
“Ultimately, it’s about making sure you have the licensing in place for the music that people want to see,” she adds. “That is what will make the user make the switch rather than it just being a ‘better place to be’. We need to give them a reason to keep coming back”.
The power that the streaming giants have in controlling the listening habits of 400 million people should not be understated. There’s a reason why artists, consumers and those who care about the health of the music industry want to act on this power. Maybe it’s time we all start to listen.
The post The music streaming revolution is here, thanks to these new streaming platforms appeared first on MusicTech.

BEWARE: OpenAI Sora text-to-video AI may be the most dangerous threat yet!Attorney Wallace Collins looks at OpenAI's new text-to-video tool and its implications for creators and rightsholders.....
The post BEWARE: OpenAI Sora text-to-video AI may be the most dangerous threat yet! appeared first on Hypebot.

Joe Biden suggests he wants to “ban AI voice impersonation” – a win or loss for musicians?Joe Biden has hinted at the possibility of making AI voice impersonation illegal, which could lead to both positive and negative consequences for music artists as a byproduct.
Per The Verge, the US President briefly brought up the topic during the State of the Union address last week (March 7) but didn’t expand much further on any potential proposals.

READ MORE: Smart Songs: how AI is changing the way we listen

The idea is likely to have a mostly political purpose given that there was recently a spate of robocalls using an AI voice clone of the President attempting to dissuade people in New Hampshire from voting. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) subsequently issued a ban on such calls.
However, a total ban on AI voice impersonation would hold important ramifications for the arts and entertainment world. On one hand, artists could rest easy knowing the likeness of their voice isn’t being used for nefarious purposes, or as a way to earn money without fair compensation, but on the other, it could stifle creativity, and penalise those who use the technology fairly and give credit where it’s due.
Many musicians have been critical of the concept of AI impersonating their voices – Ariana Grande, for example, recently hit out at people attempting to recreate her voice using the technology, branding it “terrifying”.

In contrast, other artists have been more positive about the possibilities AI could bring to music, such as Damon Albarn, who said he was curious about the concept of posthumous AI releases following the success of The Beatles’ final song Now And Then, whose release was only made possible by the technology.
“It’s a question of scale: if enough people are interested, there could be hundreds of my songs released after my death, including songs that I would never have wanted to release,” he told Les Inrockuptibles. 
Grimes is another artist who has expressed particular openness towards the use of AI, saying last year that she thought it was “cool to be fused with a machine” and later launched AI software allowing users to mimic her voice in songs. Despite that, she recently performed a DJ set at an event calling for looser regulations of artificial intelligence, before telling the crowd that she is against “the sentiment of this party”.
Despite this, AI recreations of vocals have been continually doing the rounds on social media in recent years. One notable example was a song created by an artist named Ghostwriter977 called Heart On My Sleeve, featuring vocals which sounded like they were recorded by The Weeknd and Drake.
The post Joe Biden suggests he wants to “ban AI voice impersonation” – a win or loss for musicians? appeared first on MusicTech.

GIK Acoustics announce SlatFusor CT The new SlatFusor CT brings a triangular bass trap unit to GIK Acoustics' range of combined absorption/diffusion acoustic panels. 

Indie Folk Artist Mon Rovîa Talks Hope, Inspiration, and Echinacea TeaAllMusic had the chance to speak with Liberia-born, Chattanooga-based folk musician Mon Rovîa about his most recent single, "Don't Lose a Good Thing," how he holds onto his optimism, and his favorite type of tea.

The loneliness of the robotic humanoidPerhaps a few years from now, the halls of the Georgia World Congress Center will be peppered with humanoid robots the week of Modex. In 2024, however, Digit stands alone at the supply chain show. It’s a testament to Agility’s healthy head start over competitors like Figure, Tesla, 1X and Apptronik. This time last year […]
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Celestion Introduces Truvox 0615 LoudspeakerCelestion, manufacturer of professional audio loudspeakers for sound reinforcement, has introduced the Truvox 0615, a new six-inch mid-bass driver focused on superior quality at an affordable price point across a wide variety of use cases. Applications in which the Truvox 0615 excels include replacing six-inch drivers in fixed P.A. installations, OEM use in new portable or fixed cabinet construction, improvement upon factory car audio speakers, or virtually any situation where a compact, lightweight driver must perform bass-midrange or even primary woofer duties.  The Truvox 0615 is equally at home as the principal woofer in two-way cabinets or as the mid-bass/midrange element in three-way systems. It is also an ideal choice for door placement in cars, as many vehicles share its mounting specifications.

 The Truvox 0615 is the first member of a new product family drawing on Celestion’s long tradition of the company producing high-performing general-purpose speakers as well as the world’s most sought-after drivers for guitar amplification. Truvox was a brand known for its P.A. speakers throughout the mid 20th century, and in 1949, purchased the company then known as Rola Celestion. Thus, the Celestion brand added a broad range of P.A. drivers to its stable. Celestion will expand the Truvox line throughout 2024 to include eight-, ten-, 12-, and 15-inch sizes. True to Celestion’s ethos, each model will combine rigorous research and development with today’s best materials science, manufacturing processes, and quality assurance metrics. Celestion thus aims to make Truvox speakers the obvious choice when end users and installers alike are in search of outstanding value that refuses to sacrifice quality. “This latest incarnation brings the famous Truvox brand back to life in the form of a superior performing sound reinforcement transducer,” says Celestion Head of Marketing Ken Weller. “The Truvox 0615 meets or exceeds competitors’ specifications in all areas, with greater power handling and at a competitive price.” Learn more about the Truvox 0615 on Celestion’s product page here.