Stream farms and the West African music market: an insider’s viewMdundo’s Regional Music Licensing Lead for West Africa speaks with the team at Byta about how music stream farms in Nigeria affect the entire music ecosystem. from Byta Umeadi Onyekwelu. Continue reading
The post Stream farms and the West African music market: an insider’s view appeared first on Hypebot.

Recording Academy extends Grammys eligibility period after pushbackThe Recording Academy has extended the eligibility period for its 2024 Awards to Sept. 15,2023, two weeks later than the Aug. 31rd date it set just a month ago. “After listening. Continue reading
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Get AudioThing Frostbite 2 For €19 Until April 11th
VSTBuzz offers the Frostbite 2 (€59 value) multi-effect plugin by AudioThing for only €19 for a limited time (68% off the regular price). So now is your chance to get a high-quality, multi-purpose audio manipulation and sound design plugin at an unbelievable discount. The deal expires on Tuesday, April 11th. The regular price for Frostbite [...]
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Mozzaik Audio Mozzaik Dither Demo Mozzaik Dither Demo is a new dithering algorithm developed using knowledge of the DSD sigma delta modulators developed for Mozzaik Upsampler. This plugin is limited to 1 minute of dithering... Read More

Audio Damage Grind Distortion Is Now FREE
Audio Damage announced that its Grind distortion plugin is now discontinued and free to download. Who doesn’t love a good distortion plugin? Distortion is one of my most frequently used effects, and I have an embarrassing amount of plugins dedicated to this task in my folder. If you’re also on the hunt for the perfect [...]
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Sequential Take 5 v2.0 software update The latest software for the Take 5 introduces some new sound design-focused features and doubles the amount of Factory and User memory locations.

Anthropic’s $5B, 4-year plan to take on OpenAIAI research startup Anthropic aims to raise as much as $5 billion over the next two years to take on rival OpenAI and enter over a dozen major industries, according to company documents obtained by TechCrunch.
A pitch deck for Anthropic’s series C fundraising round discloses these and other long-term goals for the company, which was founded in 2020 by former OpenAI researchers.
In the deck, Anthropic says that it plans to build a “frontier model” — tentatively called “Claude-Next” — 10 times more capable than today’s most powerful AI, but that this will require a billion dollars in spending over the next 18 months.
The Information reported in early March that Anthropic was seeking to raise $300 million at $4.1 billion valuation, bringing its total raised to $1.3 billion. The deck confirms that target number, though only half was raised at the time of the document’s creation from a “confidential investor.”
Anthropic describes the frontier model as a “next-gen algorithm for AI self-teaching,” making reference to an AI training technique it developed called “constitutional AI.” At a high level, constitutional AI seeks to provide a way to align AI with human intentions — letting systems respond to questions and perform tasks using a simple set of guiding principles.
Anthropic estimates its frontier model will require on the order of 10^25 FLOPs, or floating point operations — several orders of magnitude larger than even the biggest models today. Of course, how this translates to computation time depends on the speed and scale of the system doing the computation; Anthropic implies (in the deck) it relies on clusters with “tens of thousands of GPUs.”
This frontier model could be used to build virtual assistants that can answer emails, perform research, generate art, books, and more, some of which we have already gotten a taste of with the likes of GPT-4 and other large language models.
“These models could begin to automate large portions of the economy,” the pitch deck reads. “We believe that companies that train the best 2025/26 models will be too far ahead for anyone to catch up in subsequent cycles.”
The frontier model is the successor to Claude, Anthropic’s chatbot that can be instructed to perform a range of tasks including searching across documents, summarizing, writing and coding, and answering questions about particular topics. In these ways, it’s similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. But Anthropic makes the case that Claude is — thanks to constitutional AI — “much less likely to produce harmful outputs,” “easier to converse with” and “more steerable.”
Anthropic released Claude commercially in March following a closed beta late last year, allowing around 15 partners initial access. It counts among its beta users and potential customers the following industries (with the asterisk indicating that a human is in the loop to supervise the model):

Legal document summary and analysis*
Medical patient records and analysis*
Customer service emails and chat
Coding models for consumers and B2B
Productivity-related search, document editing and content generation*
Chatbot for public Q&A and advice
Search employing natural language responses
HR tasks like job descriptions and interview analysis*
Therapy and coaching
Virtual assistants*
Education at all levels*

Dario Amodei, the former VP of research at OpenAI, launched Anthropic in 2021 as a public benefit corporation, taking with him a number of OpenAI employees, including OpenAI’s former policy lead Jack Clark. Amodei split from OpenAI after a disagreement over the company’s direction, namely the startup’s increasingly commercial focus.
Anthropic now competes with OpenAI as well as startups like Cohere and AI21 Labs, all of which are developing and productizing their own text-generating — and in some cases image-generating — AI systems.
“Anthropic has been heavily focused on research for the first year and a half of its existence, but we have been convinced of the necessity of commercialization, which we fully committed to in September [2022],” the pitch deck reads. “We’ve developed a strategy for go-to-market and initial product specialization that fits with our core expertise, brand and where we see adoption occurring over the next 12 months.”
The pitch deck reveals that Alameda Research Ventures, the sister firm of Sam Bankman-Fried’s collapsed cryptocurrency startup FTX, was a “silent investor” in Anthropic with “non-voting” shares — responsible for spearheading Anthropic’s $580 million Series B round. Anthropic expects Alameda’s shares to be disposed of in bankruptcy proceedings within the next few years.
Google is also among Anthropic’s investors, having pledged $300 million in Anthropic for a 10% stake in the startup. Under the terms of the deal, which was first reported by the Financial Times, Anthropic agreed to make Google Cloud its “preferred cloud provider” with the companies “co-develop[ing] AI computing systems.”
Other Anthropic backers include James McClave, Facebook and Asana co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and founding Skype engineer Jaan Tallinn.
Anthropic’s $5B, 4-year plan to take on OpenAI by Kyle Wiggers originally published on TechCrunch

GAMMA Introduces Six New Guitar Effects PedalsFollowing closely on the heels of the launch of the GAMMA G25 and G50 combo guitar amplifiers, Acoustic Control Corporation announces the launch of the GAMMA Guitar Effects Pedal line — six pedals featuring crafted blends of carefully selected components and expertly engineered circuitry for reverb, echo, chorus and dynamic distortions. The range includes the ATLAS Boosted Overdrive Guitar Effects Pedal, BACCHUS Dynamic Driver Guitar Effects Pedal, CUMULUS 3-Way Reverb Guitar Effects Pedal, EROS Clean Chorus Guitar Effects Pedal, HADES Metal Distortion Guitar Effects Pedal, and NARCISSUS Warm Delay Guitar Effects Pedal. All models feature intuitive operation, a stunning metal flake paint finish, heavy-duty full-sized metal chassis with metal knobs, and operation from either a 9-volt battery or 9-volt DC power supply. Each can be used as a sole pedal unit or as a pedal board component. Additionally, all pedals feature mono audio input and output, with buffered bypass for consistent tone in any setup.

The ATLAS Boosted Overdrive allows you to add nuanced, tube amp-style overdrive to your guitar sound. Featuring classic Level, Tone and Drive controls, plus a Boost switch that pushes low frequencies and adds more high-end bite to the drive sound, the ATLAS Boosted Overdrive’s distortion preserves your dynamics and articulation, and is nicely responsive to volume, tone and pickup adjustments you make on your guitar.

The BACCHUS Dynamic Driver is a versatile overdrive with wide-ranging Level, Tone and Drive controls, plus a Fat switch for those times when you want a little more low-frequency push. Go from smooth blues through dynamic crunch to full-bore distortion, while reflecting all the nuance of your individual playing style, guitar choice, and pickup configuration.

The CUMULUS 3-Way Reverb allows you to add inspiring ambience to your guitar sound, with a choice of three classic flavors of reverb with Mix, Tone and Decay controls. In the Studio setting, it emulates a crafted recording studio space, with a well-controlled decay that avoids muddying up your sound. In the Spring setting, it emulates the splash and bounce of the spring reverb hardware of vintage guitar amps. The Plate setting emulates the sound of a classic studio plate reverb, for smooth, mellow ambience.

The EROS Clean Chorus allows you to add bold or gentle modulation to your guitar sound. At low Depth settings, EROS’s classic chorus effect adds subtle richness that’s perfect for thickening up a solo or adding character and bounce to a rhythm guitar tone. High Depth or Speed settings transform your guitar tone into a richly modulated wash of sound. Level, Depth and Speed controls are also provided for sound-sculpting precision.

The HADES Metal Distortion empowers you to add aggressive yet articulate distortion to your guitar sound arsenal, with a particularly wide range of MID cut/boost for great tonal versatility. It’s the ideal choice when it’s time to unleash the “dark arts” of high gain, whether you’re chugging and palm muting, shredding intricate solos, or delivering soaring melody lines. Level and Drive control and three knob EQs allows you to carve your ideal sound — from death-and-doom to hyper-speed shred.

The NARCISSUS Warm Delay allows you to add inspiring echoes to your guitar sound, with a tone quality reminiscent of classic “bucket brigade” delay units of the past. The delay chip at the heart of this pedal provides echoes that get darker with each repeat, helping to ensure that the ambience NARCISSUS creates doesn’t obscure the new notes you are playing, as echoes of previous notes are fading away. And when it’s time to get spacey, cranking up the echoes knob to the max will take you into self-oscillation as your saturated echoes build into a dark and distortion-rich pulse of throbbing sound. Level, Echoes and Time controls are provided for sculpting the perfect sound.

The GAMMA Guitar Effects Pedals are currently available, with pricing as follows:

ATLAS Boosted Overdrive Guitar Effects Pedal: $69.99

BACCHUS Dynamic Driver Guitar Effects Pedal: $69.99

CUMULUS 3-Way Reverb Guitar Effects Pedal: $89.99

EROS Clean Chorus Guitar Effects Pedal: $69.99

HADES Metal Distortion Guitar Effects Pedal: $69.99

NARCISSUS Warm Delay Guitar Effects Pedal: $89.99

For more information on the complete range of Acoustic Control Corporation musical instruments, visit www.AcousticControlCorp.com.

Mastering Music at Home: How to Achieve Professional-Sounding Results
Mastering music at home has become increasingly popular with the rise of accessible digital audio workstations and mastering software. If you read our guide to mixing music, you are probably ready to take the next step forward and learn the secrets of DIY mastering. As a home studio owner, you are an amazingly diverse individual, [...]
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Why the power of AI may hold the key to distributing wealth throughout the music industry (Part 1)This MBW op/ed comes from Ran Geffen, founder of XR connect development agency OMR and CEO of Amusica Song Management in Israel.
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UMG wants to change how streamers pay artists: Here’s howRecent announcements of UMG experiments with music streamers Deezer and Tidal and subsequent interviews offer a glimpse of how the world’s largest music group wants to change how Spotify, Apple. Continue reading
The post UMG wants to change how streamers pay artists: Here’s how appeared first on Hypebot.

Global on-demand music streams surpassed 1 TRILLION in last 3 monthsGlobal on-demand music streams crossed a record one trillion mark on Friday, March 31, 2023, according to Luminate, the data insights company that fuels the Billboard Charts. The stats do. Continue reading
The post Global on-demand music streams surpassed 1 TRILLION in last 3 months appeared first on Hypebot.

What is first-party live event data, and why should it be a priority?Everyone, from ticketing companies to social media platforms, is collecting fan data, and almost no one wants to share it – even with the venues and artists whose patrons and. Continue reading
The post What is first-party live event data, and why should it be a priority? appeared first on Hypebot.

Meta faces competition probe in Italy after pulling music by Italian songwriters from its platformsInvestigation launched over Meta's handling of licensing negotiations with the Italian Society of Authors and Publishers
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Pulsar Audio Smasher Is FREE For A Limited Time
AudioDeluxe offers the Smasher compressor plugin by Pulsar Audio as a FREE download in April. If there was ever a Guinness World Record for the most emulated compressor in software, it would have to be the 1176. If you’ve somehow missed the magic of a good 1176 emulation, look no further than Pulsar’s Smasher, which [...]
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