Linear Solar Chargers for Lithium CapacitorsFor as versatile and inexpensive as switch-mode power supplies are at all kinds of different tasks, they’re not always the ideal choice for every DC-DC circuit. Although they can do almost any job in this arena, they tend to have high parts counts, higher complexity, and higher cost than some alternatives. [Jasper] set out to test some alternative linear chargers called low dropout regulators (LDOs) for small-scale charging of lithium ion capacitors against those more traditional switch-mode options.
The application here is specifically very small solar cells in outdoor applications, which are charging lithium ion capacitors instead of batteries. These capacitors have a number of benefits over batteries including a higher number of discharge-recharge cycles and a greater tolerance of temperature extremes, so they can be better off in outdoor installations like these. [Jasper]’s findings with using these generally hold that it’s a better value to install a slightly larger solar cell and use the LDO regulator rather than using a smaller cell and a more expensive switch-mode regulator. The key, though, is to size the LDO so that the voltage of the input is very close to the voltage of the output, which will minimize losses.
With unlimited time or money, good design can become less of an issue. In this case, however, saving a few percentage points in efficiency may not be worth the added cost and complexity of a slightly more efficient circuit, especially if the application will be scaled up for mass production. If switched mode really is required for some specific application, though, be sure to design one that’s not terribly noisy.

Court shoots down Sarah Silverman’s case against Meta’s AI – but declares using copyrighted works for training is NOT ‘fair use’The latest ruling contradicts another ruling on AI and fair use, issued by a different judge in the same court just two days earlier
Source

Humanizer Midi is a FREE Humanizer Plugin for Windows
Humanizer Midi by Audiowavez is a Windows-only plugin that makes your MIDI tracks less static by subtly changing the velocity and timing of the notes. If you’ve felt like your MIDI-generated melodies, chords, and rhythms sound clunky, hard, and robotic, you’re probably not alone. Think of how a real piano sounds when you play it. [...]
View post: Humanizer Midi is a FREE Humanizer Plugin for Windows

Streaming is both retail and radio. It shouldn’t beIn a brutally simplified view of the past, the recorded music industry had two lanes: retail and radio. Piracy killed retail. Streaming killed piracy, then went on to, if not kill, then seriously maim radio. The two lanes converged into one – reverse bifurcation. 

At first, it was all upside: the consumers that retail had lost began spending on subscriptions, and audiences migrated from lower-paying broadcast radio to higher-paying streaming. However, artists and songwriters then became unhappy with per stream rates, contextualising them against retail rather than radio. Meanwhile, record labels realised they had inadvertently capped the spending of people who in previous generations had been high spending superfans. This is the problem with squeezing two highly distinct models aimed at serving opposite ends of the music aficionado / passive massive spectrum into one space. In the growth phase – when everyone was waiting for the bright future – it felt like a best of worlds. When growth slowed, however, and everyone realised how things are now is how things will always be, it began to look like an unsatisfactory compromise that delivered the best of neither. 

If streaming was only benchmarked against radio, in rightsholder remuneration terms, it would be an undisputed success. However, because rightsholders and creators alike also depend upon it for the income stream retail used to represent, critiques and criticisms have become part of streaming’s narrative. For the majority of mid-tail artists, streaming is in many respects like radio was 15 years ago. It is a badge of success, but you have little idea who listened – or any means of connecting with them. It sets up other income streams (live, sync, merch, etc), generates income (decent, but not enough to live on), and it builds audiences rather than fanbases.

Supremium: Can streaming monetise fandom?

Enter stage left supremium. The concept is logical: tap the latent spend of superfans by delivering them scarce and high value experiences and content from their favourite artists in the app where they do their music listening. The problem is that this might not be the best place to tap fandom. Streaming has made music listening more passive with playlists, stations, and other forms of algorithmic programming. Streaming took the price point from retail but the format from radio.

The risk with fitting a superfan product into streaming is that it commodifies and generalises fandom in the same way it has music. Music might be always on, but except for a small niche of obsessives, fandom is not always on for most people. Most people are fans of multiple artists and do not listen to them all the time. As our superfan report found, many do not even listen regularly to those they consider themselves fans of the most. Social has already done its bit to commodify fandom, compelling creators to become content factories to meet the algorithm’s insatiable appetite and not be forgotten by it. Social is free and so commodification is tolerated. The premise of supremium is premium scarcity – but in an always on, on-demand environment, users will expect something much more frequent than occasional. By making scarcity frequent, it will lose its specialness and, well, scarcity. Sometimes it is better to give people what they need rather than what they want, or in this instance give them less when they think they want more.

Music listening is like breakfast, you eat every day and generally do not put too much store by it. Fandom is like eating out at a fancy restaurant – something you typically do infrequently and make an occasion of. Think about the attention you pay to an artists’ YouTube notification versus their Instagram notification. The former is likely infrequent and so you pay more attention to it, the latter is ‘great, yet another notification’.

The future of music fandom

Digital fandom products can absolutely work (as long as the expectation is to convert superfans, not suddenly turn the passive massive into superfans). In MIDiA’s recent streaming pricing study, in fact, many subscribers showed willingness to convert to a tier unlocking ‘superfan’ features. However, it will be difficult for streaming to design a product that works for those it is intended to serve. It means building a mass-market, one-size offering for a consumer segment that is inherently niche and diverse. It also means that the more consumers who sign up, the less “exclusive” and scarce the subscription becomes – and therefore, success ironically breeds failure. Fandom products may need to be somewhere else to fulfil their potential. That might mean standalone apps, but we have had a good few years of fan apps trying to make 

headway and realising that consumers already have more apps than they want. 

So, the challenge is to work out where fandom products should live (and what they should be, if not the traditional retail offerings). Social platforms would be an even poorer choice. This leaves the Bifurcation go-tos of YouTube, SoundCloud, and Twitch – each of which has respective strengths and weaknesses. 

The hard truth is that there probably is no ideal location for digital fandom products right now, but streaming is probably not the right place either. Artists and labels alike need a successor to retail. This does not necessarily have to actually be retail (e.g., Bandcamp) but it does need to be somewhere where people can be fans as frequently or infrequently as they like, converse with likeminded others, express themselves, and spend on their favourite artists, whether that be actual products or digital items.  Social platforms may enable the former behaviours, but are far less efficient when it comes to the latter (spend), at least for music. Streaming may well have taken the retail part of its equation as far as it can. Now is the time for something else to grab that baton and run with it.

“We are the inventors of electro”: Emmanuel Macron thinks French electronic music should be granted UNESCO cultural heritage statusThe French President, Emmanuel Macron, has boldly claimed that France is the true home of electronic music.
Macron asserted his belief during an appearance with French radio station Fréquence Gaie, marking France’s annual celebration of music, Fête de la Musique.
“We are the inventors of electro,” he asserts [via Mixmag]. “We have that French touch!”

READ MORE: MusicTech’s favourite plugins of 2025 — so far

While some might question Macron’s stance, its undeniable that France has left an indelible mark on the electro scene.
From Daft Punk to Justice to David Guetta, to more recent artists like Gesaffelstein, French artists do seem to have a certain spark to them… a “French touch”, if you will.
The “French touch” has also been recognised as an official genre: French Touch. It’s France’s unique brand of house music, recognised as having its first boom in the ‘90s for its unique mix of Eurodisco, space disco and funk.

Of course, some might be critical of Macron’s assertion that France “invented” electro. While the French genre ‘musique concrète’ dates back to the ‘40s, you could argue the first sign of electronic music was the birth of the theramin in 1920 in Russia. But then, musique concrète saw the first examples of musicians editing together synthetic and industrial sounds.
But even that begs the question: when the first song was released entirely comprised of electronic sounds? That apparently took place in 1953 in Germany, marking the birth of ‘elektronische musik’. Some also argue Kraftwerk were one of the very first electronic bands.
While there are many arguments for where electro originates, many consider the modern version of electro to have formed in the ‘80s. People often pinpoint the first examples emerging in America in the ‘80s, with African American communities across New York, Chicago and Detroit blending together funk, hip-hop and disco.

Regardless, Macron is so proud of the country’s musical heritage that he’s even keen for it to attain a cultural status. Berlin received such an honour last year, being added to the UNESCO list of Intangible Cultural Heritage – and Macron believes France is worthy of being popped onto the list.
“We’re going to do that too,” he insists. “I love Germany – you know how pro-European I am! But we don’t have to take lessons from anyone.”
The UNESCO list aims to support unique forms of art across the globe. Other genres that have received honourary nods includes include Colombian marimba, Cuban rumba, Greek Rebetiko, Jamaican reggae and more.

We did it! #TechnoCulture in Berlin is officially recognized as Intangible Cultural Heritage!Congratulations to…
Posted by Rave The Planet on Wednesday, March 13, 2024

When Berlin’s output of techno was acknowledged by UNESCO last March, the techno world was ecstatic. Rave The Planet, who campaigned for years to see Berlin recognised by the UNESCO list, posted a celebratory post on their Facebook: “Congratulations to all the cultural creators who have shaped and contributed to Berlin’s techno culture,” the post read.
“A big thank you to everyone involved who has been with us on this journey since Hans Cousto’s initial idea in 2011. Special thanks to the Expert Committee on Intangible Cultural Heritage at the German UNESCO Commission!”
“This is a major milestone for the entire culture, and our joy is beyond words.”

Berlin techno culture is recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site!
This another milestone for Berlin techno producers, artists, club operators and event organizers. https://t.co/Bd1EnvJRN4
— clubcommission (@clubcommission) March 13, 2024

The post “We are the inventors of electro”: Emmanuel Macron thinks French electronic music should be granted UNESCO cultural heritage status appeared first on MusicTech.

The Unexpected Rise of Cringe as a Music Marketing StrategyCringe content is no longer a liability — cringe is a music marketing strategy. As audiences crave authenticity over polish, artists who lean into awkward, overly earnest moments are breaking. Continue reading
The post The Unexpected Rise of Cringe as a Music Marketing Strategy appeared first on Hypebot.

NIVA Day 3: Frank Riley, Bandsintown and YouTube’s Ali RiveraThe third day of the NIVA ’25 independent live music conference included actionable insights, a major award and the announcement of NIVA 2026. NIVA Day 3 The National Independent Venue. Continue reading
The post NIVA Day 3: Frank Riley, Bandsintown and YouTube’s Ali Rivera appeared first on Hypebot.

KRK launch Kreate Series monitors Catering to everything from casual listening to professional content creation, KRK’s new Kreate Series monitors promise to deliver astonishing accuracy and clarity at a very modest price. 

ANWIDA Soft Filter is FREE (again) for a limited time
ANWIDA Soft offers its Filter plugin as a free download for June, part of the developer’s ongoing “Free Plugin of the Month” series. If you missed out when ANWIDA Soft offered the Filter for free back in 2022, now’s your chance to grab it again. It’s still the same plugin, though. Nothing has changed since [...]
View post: ANWIDA Soft Filter is FREE (again) for a limited time

“I had the original OP-1 as well, but I barely used it”: Why Michaël Brun swears by the OP-1 Field insteadWhen you’re bouncing between time zones and tracking vocals in hotel rooms, studio gear needs to pull its weight and pack light.
For producer and DJ Michaël Brun, that workhorse is the Teenage Engineering OP-1 Field.
Known for his genre-mixing productions and global collaborations, Brun often sketches song ideas on the go – usually beginning with voice notes on his phone. From there, his portable rig, anchored by a laptop and OP-1 Field, takes over.

READ MORE: Set your own price for a Teenage Engineering OP-1 Field. Why? “Why not?”

“I use the OP-1 Field a lot,” he tells MusicTech.
“The thing that’s so appealing about the Field in particular is — like, I had the original OP-1 as well, but I barely used it; I always felt like I couldn’t integrate it into my setup properly.
But I was really committed! I thought, ‘This thing is so unique, maybe there’s something I’m not understanding.’”
“And I got the Field, and I was blown away. It’s so amazing sonically; it’s so lush. I use it as my keyboard, as a synthesizer, as a drum machine, and as a MIDI controller. I basically use it as an extension of my laptop.”
The OP-1 Field’s size, in particular, is a big part of its appeal (“It’s the size for me,” says Brun). Whether it’s a full session or a spontaneous beat on the road, the Field easily keeps up.
“I use my phone a lot for voice notes as well,” he adds.
“The voice notes help me get the organic side. And then the laptop plus Ableton Live – that’s everything else that you could ever want, right? So it feels like a good combo between those three things.”
Elsewhere in the interview, the producer also shares a simple but powerful philosophy that keeps him grounded both in the studio and on the road.
“Something passive is just accepting that, if I make stuff, some of it’s gonna be bad, some of it’s gonna be good, right? It’s about allowing that to happen,” says Brun.
“I think the ritual of just accepting whatever life is gonna throw at you, even outside of music, is very important, but in the context of music, it’s saying, ‘today I got nothing, but it’s fine. I’m not gonna be hard on myself. There’s always tomorrow, and I’ll try again.’ That allows me to create with a level of passion and in a very consistent way.”
The post “I had the original OP-1 as well, but I barely used it”: Why Michaël Brun swears by the OP-1 Field instead appeared first on MusicTech.

“Spotify’s intent seems clear”: US senators call for FTC probe into Spotify’s subscription bundles – here’s whyTwo US senators are calling on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to launch an investigation into Spotify over claims that it has forced Premium subscribers into higher-priced “bundled subscriptions” without their knowledge or consent.
Last Friday, Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Democratic Senator Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico submitted a formal letter urging the FTC to examine Spotify’s bundling services — specifically, its combination of music streaming and audiobook services under one plan.

READ MORE: Is Spotify’s HiFi lossless streaming actually coming? Leaked code says yes

Under US regulations, digital music providers can pay a lower music royalty rate if their paid music subscription offering is bundled with other legitimate product offerings.
The letter argues that Spotify has “exploited” this rule by reclassifying its Premium Individual, Duo, and Family subscription plans as “bundles” after it began including audiobook access last March.
“Spotify’s intent seems clear – to slash the statutory royalties it pays to songwriters and music publishers. Not only has this harmed our creative community, but this action has also harmed consumers,” it states.
Last year, the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) sued Spotify for allegedly underpaying royalties to songwriters and publishers by tens of millions of dollars.
The tech giant added 15 hours of audiobook access to its Premium tiers, raising the price to $12 for individuals and $20 for families at the time.
In the suit, MLC argued that after adding audiobook access, Spotify “improperly” categorised its service in a way that would significantly reduce the amount of royalties it paid despite there being “no change to the Premium plan and no corresponding reduction to the revenues that Spotify generates.”
The change reportedly caused a $230 million loss for publishers in its first year, according to Danielle Aguirre, executive vice president and general counsel of the National Music Publishers’ Association.
Blackburn and Luján’s letter also notes that while Spotify has quietly relaunched its music-only “Basic Plan” following backlash from its “bundling” move, this plan is “hidden” from most users and only available to certain existing subscribers.
“As of January 2025, only a handful of Spotify’s millions of Premium Plan subscribers switched back to a music-only ‘Basic’ plan,” the letter states.
In a statement to Variety, a Spotify spokesperson defended the company’s practices, saying that users were notified a month in advance of any price increases and that the platform offers “easy cancellations as well as multiple plans for users to consider”.
The post “Spotify’s intent seems clear”: US senators call for FTC probe into Spotify’s subscription bundles – here’s why appeared first on MusicTech.

Pulsar Audio introduce Vocal Studio All-In-One Vocal Plugin (Intro Price)
Pulsar Audio has released Vocal Studio, a powerful all-in-one plugin designed to streamline vocal production. The software is currently available at an introductory price of €89. Pulsar Vocal Studio combines a complete vocal chain into a single, intuitive, and conveniently hands-on interface. Having a preamp, compression, EQ, effects, and more in a single instance helps deliver [...]
View post: Pulsar Audio introduce Vocal Studio All-In-One Vocal Plugin (Intro Price)

Waves V16 now available Along with compatibility with the latest operating systems and DAW versions, the refreshed Waves collection benefits from a number of new features designed to help users work more efficiency and streamline their mixing process.

Sam Altman comes out swinging at The New York TimesFrom the moment OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stepped onstage, it was clear this was not going to be a normal interview. Altman and his chief operating officer, Brad Lightcap, stood awkwardly toward the back of the stage at a jam-packed San Francisco venue that typically hosts jazz concerts. Hundreds of people filled steep theatre-style seating […]

Homebrew Pockels Cell Is Worth the WaitWe haven’t seen any projects from serial experimenter [Les Wright] for quite a while, and honestly, we were getting a little worried about that. Turns out we needn’t have fretted, as [Les] was deep into this exploration of the Pockels Effect, with pretty cool results.
If you’ll recall, [Les]’s last appearance on these pages concerned the automated creation of huge, perfect crystals of KDP, or potassium dihydrogen phosphate. KDP crystals have many interesting properties, but the focus here is on their ability to modulate light when an electrical charge is applied to the crystal. That’s the Pockels Effect, and while there are commercially available Pockels cells available for use mainly as optical switches, where’s the sport in buying when you can build?
As with most of [Les]’s projects, there are hacks galore here, but the hackiest is probably the homemade diamond wire saw. The fragile KDP crystals need to be cut before use, and rather than risk his beauties to a bandsaw or angle grinder, [Les] threw together a rig using a stepper motor and some cheap diamond-encrusted wire. The motor moves the diamond wire up and down while a weight forces the crystal against it on a moving sled. Brilliant!
The cut crystals are then polished before being mounted between conductive ITO glass and connected to a high-voltage supply. The video below shows the beautiful polarization changes induced by the electric field, as well as demonstrating how well the Pockels cell acts as an optical switch. It’s kind of neat to see a clear crystal completely block a laser just by flipping a switch.
Nice work, [Les], and great to have you back.