Fans are Customers, and how you treat them mattersFans are customers, and how we serve them matters. Michael Branvold and Jay Gilbert dive into this important topic and how to improve the fan experience on a new Music. Continue reading
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No shit at masterchain 😎

Avenged Sevenfold launch Fortnite-style Season Pass – allowing devoted fans to rack up points and earn rewardsFor whatever reason, music and gaming seem inextricably linked – especially in 2024. Just look at Fortnite – which has artists from J Balvin to Travis Scott as playable characters – or Call of Duty: Warzone – which recently began allowing players to drop into the battlefield as Nicki Minaj.
It shouldn’t be that surprising, then, that bands are beginning to take a leaf out of the gaming playbook in turn.

READ MORE: No, Daniel Ek, the music industry isn’t like professional football

Case in point: Huntington Beach metal titans Avenged Sevenfold have just introduced Season Pass – a direct-to-fan loyalty platform which offers the band’s most devoted fans certain perks. How does it work? Just think of the Battle Passes in Fortnite and Call of Duty
Not a gamer? The idea is that by “participating” in the band’s ecosystem – via attending concerts, streaming music and buying merch, for example – fans are rewarded with points that can be used to unlock tiered rewards including collectibles, merchandise, unreleased music and real-life experiences.
Credit: Avenged Sevenfold
And to take it a step further – in a web3-style approach – once fans unlock these rewards, they fully own them, meaning they are free to trade, sell or redeem them as they wish. In terms of how this could work in practice, if a fan earns the chance to attend a meet and greet with the band but can’t attend, they can sell that opportunity to someone who can.
There are 25 levels of rewards in the programme, with everything from digital collectibles in the lower tiers to free tickets, meet and greets and even the chance to  hear unreleased music in the higher tiers. Points earned add up as fans advance through the levels.
Credit: Avenged Sevenfold
Season Pass launches tomorrow (6 March) – as Avenged Sevenfold begin the second leg of their Life Is But A Dream… tour, and fans can begin earning points via NFC chips included in merch packages, and Ticketmaster digital stubs.
To sign up, download any digital wallet (Metamask, Coinbase, for example), and connect the wallet and opt in at avengedsevenfold.io. From here, you can begin collecting points.
This is the next big move by Avenged Sevenfold in using the blockchain to nurture a stronger bond between the band and its fanbase. Back in 2021, they launched the Deathbats Club, an NFT-based community where digital collectible holders can access real-world utility, like free tickets, meet and greets and more.
In other news, the band recently launched Looking Inside, a VR concert experience powered by AmazeVR for Apple Vision Pro and Meta Quest. Placing fans directly in the room with the band, the 26-minute virtual reality concert features some of the band’s biggest hits, Hail to the King and Nightmare, as well as cuts from their new record, Nobody, (D)eath, and Mattel.
​​“We’re giving Avenged Sevenfold fans a perfect moment frozen in time,” says Steve Lee, AmazeVR CEO and Co-Founder. “Our technology allows app goers to preserve and experience the highest quality and detailed performance over and over again. We knew that Avenged Sevenfold was the perfect choice to debut our rock genre, they are constantly challenging the norm, experimenting with new technology, all to prioritise connecting with their fans.”
“Being able to combine the best aspects of what a live show and technology offers is what excites us the most about our VR concert, and what we’ve created with the two is pretty compelling,” adds M. Shadows of Avenged Sevenfold. “Lots of our fans already know the intricacies of our performances, but I think they’re going to be blown away when they can get closer than ever before.”
Check out the trailer for Looking Inside below:

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What are music royalties?Every musician planning to release music should have a basic knowledge of royalties. This basic guide will get you on the road to monetizing your music.
The post What are music royalties? appeared first on Hypebot.

#1 Free News Source for the New Music Business, Music Tech & Indie MusiciansBillboard, Music Business Worldwide, Variety, Music Ally, Digital Music News, and other outlets covering the music business, music marketing, and music tech are increasingly putting some or all of their content behind a paywall.....
The post #1 Free News Source for the New Music Business, Music Tech & Indie Musicians appeared first on Hypebot.

Pittsburgh Modular unveil Taiga Keyboard The new keyboard version of Taiga kits the popular synthesizer out with additional modulation capabilities, MIDI I/O and a 24HP Eurorack expansion bay. 

“When you first start, you’re like, ‘I don’t know if I want another artist to see all the shit I have on my master chain’”: Rezz on approaching collaborationsFrom deadmau5 to NGHTMRE to Subtronics, 28-year-old dark bass maestro Rezz is no stranger to collaborations.
However, even she gets “insecure” when first starting out, as she reveals in a new interview with MusicTech.

READ MORE: “When someone doesn’t have the sauce anymore, they go elsewhere to shock”: Jack Antonoff criticises Kanye West

“When you first start, you think there are things that you’re potentially doing wrong, and you’re insecure about that,” Rezz says. “You’re like, ‘Oh, I don’t know if I want another artist to see all the shit that I have on my master chain’. But the thing is, when you’ve produced music for a long time, you realise that there actually are no rules.”
“Some people’s project files are absolutely insane. Some people’s mixdowns aren’t the best, from a technical standpoint. But it doesn’t matter at all. Because the song idea still came across.”
That said, going into sessions with a “blank canvas” is a big no-no for the producer-DJ, who admits she isn’t “comfortable” with “going into the studio from scratch with someone”
Recounting the making of 2021’s Hypnocurrency with her mentor and close friend deadmau5, Rezz explains: “With Hypnocurrency, I started it by myself in my house then took the track’s skeleton to Joel’s [deadmau5], then Joel left his touch, finished mixing and mastering it and made it sound tighter. So when I was actually in Joel’s studio, it wasn’t like I was going in and turning the billions of knobs on his studio synths.”
The same goes for the musician’s recent collaboration with Virtual Riot: “I worked in Joel’s studio recently with Virtual Riot. We were working on a song in his studio but, really, all we did was plug our laptop into Joel’s sound system. So once again, it’s not like we’re going in, using Joel’s millions of dollars worth of analogue gear,” says Rezz.
She adds: “I don’t want to go into a studio with someone with a blank canvas. That kind of freaks me out. Virtual Riot had sent me an idea, so we already had a direction. And I was like, ‘Oh, that’s easy, because I already know what I’m going to do.’”

The post “When you first start, you’re like, ‘I don’t know if I want another artist to see all the shit I have on my master chain’”: Rezz on approaching collaborations appeared first on MusicTech.

Variety Of Sound Releases FREE TesslaPro Mk IV For Windows
Variety of Sound unveils FREE TesslaPro Mk IV analog coloration plugin for Windows The new TesslaPro Mk IV is available in VST and VST3 formats, and the developer describes its sound as  “all the analog goodness in subtle doses”. The TesslaPro was originally released in 2009. It was designed as a successor to the TesslaSE [...]
View post: Variety Of Sound Releases FREE TesslaPro Mk IV For Windows

SoliderSound release S Doubler Available as a free download, S Doubler generates four additional voices based on its input and offers a range of stereo placement options.

This weekend, trailblazing UK producer James Blake addressed this, too: “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.”
“And by the way,” Blake continued, “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.” #MusicIndustry #MusicBusiness #Spotify #majorlabels

Sampling tips and tricks for your next beat
Veteran producer and beat maker Isaac Duarte shares tips, techniques, and resources for leveling up your sampling chops.

Streamer Deezer cheers Apple antitrust fine but calls tech giant’s DMA response ‘deceptive’Streaming music service Deezer is joining Spotify in cheering the European Union’s €1.84 billion fine imposed on Apple for breaking antitrust rules in the streaming music market. However, the company urges the EU Commission to assess Apple’s response to the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which it says is “deceptive” and “an attempt to bypass European […]
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Hipgnosis Songs Fund’s assets are now valued at $690 million less than they were before. Blackstone must be licking its lips.JP Morgan analyst says the likelihood of a Blackstone takeover just increased, thanks to Shot Tower's re-valuation of HSF
Source

Arjun Pulijal exits role as President of Capitol Music GroupThe news follows the departure of Michelle Jubelirer as Chair & CEO of Capitol Music Group at the beginning of February
Source

Optical Guitar Pickup Works With Nylon StringsElectric guitar pickups rely on steel strings interfering with a magnetic field, the changes in which are picked up with coils of wire. That doesn’t work with nylon strings, because they don’t tend to perturb magnetic fields nearly as much, beyond some infinitesimal level that some quantum physicist could explain. So what do you do? You follow [Simon]’s example, and build an optical pickup instead.
The concept is simple. You place an LED and a phototransistor in a U-shaped channel, and place it so that the string runs through it. You repeat this for each string. Thus, as a string vibrates, it interrupts the light travelling from the LED to the phototransistor. This generates a voltage that varies with the frequency of the string’s vibration. Funnily enough, this type of pickup will work just fine on both nylon and steel strings, if you were so inclined to try it.
[Simon] designed a nifty PCB with six LED-phototransistor pairs (using off-the-shelf interruptor sensors) for use with a nylon-stringed guitar. He reports that sound from the strings comes through clearly, but that there is some noise that is evident in the pickup’s output, too. Listening to the demo, it seems to capture the sound of the nylon strings well, it’s just a shame that the noise floor is so high.
If you prefer your guitar pickups to be the regular magnetic kind, you can always wind your own from scrap. Demo after the break.

https://codeberg.org/Luno/KlimperLux/raw/branch/main/media/demo1.0.flac