This Spotify/Liquid Death-branded urn houses your ashes after you die while playing your favourite tunesThere’s a perfect playlist for all of life’s great moments, and now, your journey into the great beyond can have its own soundtrack, too.
Spotify has teamed up with canned water specialist Liquid Death to create an urn outfitted with a Bluetooth speaker, which can house your ashes upon your death while playing your favourite songs for your grieving friends and family.

READ MORE: This one-of-a-kind synth is made almost entirely of e-waste

It’s a pretty out there PR campaign, we agree, but remember this is the same company (Liquid Death), which has sold iced tea previously drunk by Ozzy Osbourne – and therefore infused with his actual DNA – for $450 a pop…
Aiming to “redefine the afterlife experience” the Eternal Playlist Urn boasts a “minimal and respectful” design for the “home. Columbarium or anywhere in between”.
Users can prepare for their journey to the other side by heading to Spotify’s Eternal Playlist Generator, where the platform asks a number of somewhat creepy questions, including “What’s your eternal vibe?” and “What’s your go-to ghost noise”.
Subsequently, based on your answers and Spotify listening history, the platform will generate a personalised mix “fit for a lifetime… and beyond”.

The urn features a Bluetooth speaker built directly into the lid, so a user with any Bluetooth-compatible device can connect.
Of course, you needn’t wait for your death to share your Eternal Playlist with your friends; you can do that right now while the blood is still coursing through your veins.
Credit: Spotify
“The Eternal Playlist Urn is a collector’s item for anyone looking to take their love for music to the next level,” says Spotify. “With a discreet Bluetooth speaker built into the lid, you can connect from any compatible device and enjoy your favorite playlist for all eternity.”
We stress that this is not merely a publicity stunt; this is a genuine product you can buy, albeit only in the US and in limited quantities. So how much is such a home for your ashes worth? Answer: $495 excluding taxes.
Generate your Eternal Playlist at Spotify. Learn more at Liquid Death.
The post This Spotify/Liquid Death-branded urn houses your ashes after you die while playing your favourite tunes appeared first on MusicTech.

Bringing open-back: The Grado headphones making life harder for music makersMusic production used to have some house rules: a room, a pair of monitors, and plenty of artistic disagreements. Now it’s increasingly a solo act built around laptops, late nights, and whatever passes for a ‘quiet’ space that week. Headphones are essential to this modern world, but, strangely, they’re also becoming the driver for crucial mixing decisions.
Some engineers are deliberately choosing headphones that don’t sugarcoat that process. Designs refusing to soften anything, that leak sound everywhere, and unearth uncomfortable truths about the music, whether you’re ready to hear them or not.

READ MORE: Margo XS on producing “pop music as noise music”

Open-back headphones, long treated as recording heresy, let sound escape rather than sealing it in. This makes them impractical around microphones, useless for isolation, and brutally honest in environments most engineers spend their careers trying to control. They feel like the wrong answer to modern production problems, which is precisely why they’re creeping back in.
Take brands like Beyerdynamic, Audeze, Sennheiser, and Focal. All accustomed to producing open-back models priced from the palatable to the seemingly ridiculous in the pursuit of producing a ‘natural’ sound. Heresy for tracking, perhaps, but once the red light is off, they’ve long had their defenders.
Grado Signature HP100 SE. Image: Press
In that group, you’ll also find Grado, where its flagship HP100 SE — hand-built in Brooklyn, New York — can be yours for a Klarna-troubling £2,800. They feature a 52mm dynamic driver deliberately designed to reveal intricate detail and spatial realism to such an extent that it can make the wearer feel uncomfortable.
The company, which deals almost exclusively in open-back headphones, makes no bones about this approach, even if it ruffles feathers in high places — something COO Rich Grado was reminded of after receiving feedback from Grammy- and Emmy-winning producer Giles Martin, son of “fifth Beatle” George.
“Our RS1 headphones got brought into Abbey Road Studios for the recording of one of Sir Paul McCartney’s albums, and the response from Giles was, ‘I heard things using these headphones that I didn’t hear in my original work, and now you’re making me consider going back and readdressing my recordings.’”
Grado Signature HP100 SE. Image: Press
Speaking via video call from Grado’s 7th Avenue headquarters, the archetypal New Yorker with attitude adds, “The HP1 has taken that further. There have been some questions about whether it’s so detailed that it’s unforgiving. It won’t hide some of the… I don’t want to say errors… but inefficiencies in the recording or even the equipment.”
Grado Labs was founded in 1953 by Joseph Grado, an audio hall of famer best known for inventing the moving-coil stereo cartridge and later developing some of the first high-end dynamic headphones. Today, son John is the owner, other son Rich handles product direction, while John’s son Matthew is Vice President of Operations. No investors. No reinvention. No interest in sanding off the edges.
My first interaction with the brand occurred in 2013, involving a pair of DJ headphones fashioned from whiskey barrels and designed in collaboration with The Lord of the Rings actor, Elijah Wood. Turns out it was a pretty good indicator that this family affair trusts its instincts more than market logic.
For all the talk of heresy – leakage and lack of isolation can ruin a clean recording – they’re gold standard for engineers prioritising natural, expansive sound for critical listening. You wouldn’t track a vocal with them on, for example, but Grado says, “Once you’re on the other side of that glass, engineers want to hear things differently.”
Grado Signature HP100 SE. Image: Press
The pandemic then fractured production across bedrooms, kitchens, and temporary setups. Grado adds, “Major studio engineers were already using our headphones. During COVID, as people were recording from different locations, they wanted everybody listening to the same thing, so we sent a lot out to big-name recording artists so they would be on the same page.”
Open-back headphones don’t simulate a perfect studio but instead expose the absence of one. For engineers whose job is to make decisions that translate beyond their own setup, that exposure can be brutal, but crucially, clarifying.
A key reason headphones like the HP100 SE can feel so confrontational is that they have a habit of dragging other signals into the sound. Grado says, “It has created issues when somebody buys the headphone and plugs it into an amp, they start hearing things they feel are a problem with the headphone. We start getting into situations where an amp is creating a distortion some other headphones just aren’t able to display, but ours do.”
So, if you want your headphones to not only expose the flaws in a piece of music, but also in your system, the HP100 SE are just the ticket. Perhaps they should be standard issue for every music critic and hi-fi reviewer – after all, some people just want to see the world burn. Grado is candid about where friction leads, adding, “It’s the chicken or the egg. Everybody blames somebody else.”
The company refuses to endorse third-party gear or recommend a single ‘correct setup’, instead pushing users towards community forums and shared experience. A commendable hands-on stance or a cop out? You decide. But one thing is for certain: the HP100 SE exist to make decisions harder.
Grado Signature HP100 SE. Image: Press
Unlike most flagship studio headphones, it ships with interchangeable ear cushions that materially alter how it sounds. Engineers gravitate towards the G-cushion, which keeps the drivers further from the ear, maximising detail, speed and spatial separation. The B-cushion brings the driver closer, softens the top end slightly and adds weight in the low frequencies. Something easier to live with over long sessions.
Grado believes the split is almost even, adding, “I’m a big proponent of sound being subjective, and I don’t expect to get 100% buy-in on our sound. I think that’s unrealistic. We shouldn’t tell somebody what they like or what they should listen to. We should give them an option to decide for themselves.”
Having lived with the HP100 SE for about a month, including over Christmas, they’re not a pair you instinctively reach for when you want to relax or find comfort in familiarity. They are, however, cans for the curious, when you suspect a song isn’t telling you the whole story, and you want the truth. Whether you can handle the truth is another matter entirely.
To their credit, they encourage a slower, more deliberate way of listening. A throwback to a time when albums were listened to in their entirety and on repeat. I found myself revisiting sections rather than pushing past them to unearth seemingly hidden quirks. No hidden demonic messages summoning the antichrist, but then I haven’t got to the Gesaffelstein yet.
They’re not a pair you’d want to live in all day. The openness that makes them so revealing can become mentally taxing over long stretches, particularly when listening to material that’s already close to the edge. But used as a reference tool that won’t lie like AI, the HP100 SE becomes a trusted companion — if you can handle the relationship.
Grado Labs operates out of the same building that’s been in the family since 1918 and has leaned back into in-person listening events and community-led experiences. Rich Grado talks openly about reconnecting with headphone “meets” and hi-fi bars, particularly in New York, where people bring their own references, their own biases, and their own systems into the room.
In the end, headphones like the HP100 SE aren’t just about hearing what’s wrong with a record. It’s about what happens when people are willing to sit in the same room – literal or otherwise – and argue honestly about music. New Yorkers, for what it’s worth, have never been shy about speaking their mind.
The post Bringing open-back: The Grado headphones making life harder for music makers appeared first on MusicTech.

Artist Managers on Music Videos, Artist Development, Long-term Strategy and True FandomThis week, Ari is joined by Slush Management to explore world-building, artist development, and how true fans grow beyond streams.

Wampler introduce the Golden Jubilee Wampler's latest release is a dual-voice, high-gain distortion pedal that promises to deliver the punch, feel and harmonic richness of classic hot-rodded 1980s high-gain amplifiers.

ETH bounces off $1.8K as multiple Ether price metrics point to prolonged weaknessEther faces a bearish trend as onchain fees and network deposits hit multiyear lows. Until derivatives metrics stabilize, ETH price remains at risk.

Stripe is reportedly eyeing deal to buy some or all of PayPalStripe might be looking to buy PayPal, or parts of it, per early reports.

LingLin.Art CatSynthA physical modeling synthesizer for drums! You can design or randomly generate drumkits and each percussion voice has it's own parameters you can set and configure for your desired sound. Enjoy a 16 pad drum machine that can make anything from long-release ambient/industrial to 8-bit or hip-hop drum sounds, it's up to you! Make this synth meow and put a little hiss into your high-hats with this unique new synthesizer from LingLin.Art. Read More

Peltier Fridges Have Early DeathIf you know about Peltier modules, a solid-state fridge seems like an easy project. Pump 12V into the module, include a heat sink and a fan. Then you are done, right? According to [Peltier Power], this is not the way to design things, but it is common enough to give these units a reputation for failing quickly.
The problem is that while it makes sense that an inefficient Peltier module needs more power to get more cooling. But the reality is in practical applications, many designs push the current up when it should be moving it down. The curve describes a parabola, and you can be on the high side or low side and still get the same result. But obviously, you don’t want to put in more current and get the same cooling that you could get with lower currents.

According to the video, the mistake people make is pushing to a stable point to reach a cool point, then increasing the current until the chamber cools further. However, maintaining the cool doesn’t have to require a higher current. Once cold, you can reduce the current to maintain temperature, so to get colder, you can just lower the current less instead of increasing it. Of course, that’s somewhat of a simplification. You have to account for other thermal design factors, but that’s the general idea.
He has noted this behavior in commercial units, but did find one brand that had the correct logic. He also has some tips on using these types of coolers.
Our favorite use for these modules has to be a cloud chamber. Naturally, we’ve seen a fair number of homebrew fridges.

A Song That Changed My Life: Hawthorne Heights on Saves the DayBand Members: JT Woodruff, vocals and guitar; Matt Ridenour, bass and vocals; Mark McMillon, guitar, backing vocals, and Chris Popadak, drums

The Storyteller: JT Woodruff

The Song: “Shoulder to the Wheel” by Saves the Day

With its earnest, get-in-the-car-and-go sing-along chorus and propulsive, hook-laced rhythm, Saves the Day’s “Shoulder to the Wheel” captured the house-show spirit of the late ‘90s New Brunswick underground. The track — a melodic punk snapshot of believe-in-yourself ambition — awakened bands to an escapist state of mind, pushing them beyond basement parties and onto the open road.

The Background:

Always leaning toward movement, Hawthorne Heights — an anchor of the Midwest emo-core punk scene since the early aughts — have continued to evolve, expanding their harmonious choruses and surges of cathartic screams across seven studio albums with threads of alt-rock textures. That restless evolution of sound, combined with touring, has galvanized the band as one of the defining acts of the hardcore scene.

For frontman JT Woodruff, his aversion to daily norms — coupled with a Jack Kerouac On the Road “nowhere to go but everywhere” mindset — first flickered to life growing up in his hometown of St. Mary’s, West Virginia. He recalls, specifically January 1999, the moment when he first connected with “Shoulder to the Wheel” — its melodic alacrity and rhythmic drive hitting him immediately. Moreover, the song’s believe-in-yourself, hit-the-road chant became a directive: he sought out a copy of BYOFL (Book Your Own F*cking Life) as a manual for his wanderlust. The pairing — song plus DIY guide — established JT’s mantra: seize every opportunity and never hold back; just go.

That early mix of song plus guide set the tone for decades of music and life on the road. Now — as Hawthorne Heights celebrates the 20th anniversary of If Only You Were Lonely with an international Lonely World Tour — the experience has come full circle, a reminder that the open road can still lead anywhere.

The Story:

For JT, the energy of the road and the restless, wandering spirit embedded in “Shoulder to the Wheel” quickly became his compass for navigating the rugged terrain of early indie-rock touring. What began as a dream didn’t stay abstract for long — the song triggered a transformational shift. It wasn’t just about having fun or discovering newfound freedom; it revealed the physical grit and mental fortitude required for emerging acts to survive and thrive in the pre-ultrafast broadband Internet era.

“This song specifically made me want to buy a van, grab my band and friends, and just hit the open road. And that’s what I did.” 

Knowing enthusiasm alone wouldn’t be enough, JT leaned on his fresh hardbound edition of BYOFL, Book Your Own Fucking Life, a DIY touring guide before everything was readily available online. With it, he had both the practical roadmap and the musical conviction to chase something bigger.

By the summer of 1999, JT bought a van and booked an entire tour. Long drives, nights on the road, and a steady flow of local shows forged resilience, cohesion, and deep friendships — the kind that help carry the mental weight of touring. He elaborates, “Saves The Day introduced me to the New Jersey music scene in general. Back then, the bills on shows were so diverse. Through them, I found bands like Lifetime, New Found Glory, and Reggie and The Full Effect. It made me scour the entire Equal Vision roster.”

That dreamy, out-of-the-window state watching the world pass by eventually morphed into more than a touring philosophy — it influenced songwriting. JT moved toward internal, personal themes that reflected Quixotic philosophies. One lyric in particular struck him: "Get us as far as far can be, get us away from tonight.”

During these long stretches of travel, buried dreams often rise under an open sky. JT explains, “The interstate can take you anywhere in the United States, which is why it is so beautiful. I've lost myself out there and found myself at the same time.”  The underlying On the Road “keep rolling under the stars” mindset — restless and expansive — became his motto for both touring and life: “The world is out there to chase your dreams — you have to go after them; they won’t chase you.”

Even now, decades later, JT returns to the song. “A few days ago, I listened to it on a cruise ship with my wife of 20 years. I still feel everything I felt the first time I heard it — which is why it is so magical.”  For JT, dreams rarely come easy; they demand initiative, courage, and persistence — all stemming from within.

He concludes: “Chase every dream you have ever had. It will help you tear down all the walls and set aside excuses. Just get in the van, so to speak. Let it rip — gun it to 70 mph on the interstate.”

Photo credit: Sarai Kelley

The post A Song That Changed My Life: Hawthorne Heights on Saves the Day first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

Lauren Demarte promoted to Chief Operating Officer at GoDigital MusicExec also oversees operations in Colombia
Source

Sync Audio release MegaMod plug-in Sync Audio’s latest release is a plug-in that’s capable of ‘snapping on’ to other plug-ins and kitting them out with a set of powerful modulation features.

This one-of-a-kind synth is made almost entirely of e-wasteAustralian telecommunications company Telstra has teamed up with electronic music group and fellow Aussies The Avalanches to create a fully functional synth from over 80% repurposed e-waste items like mobile phones, games consoles and old electronic cables.
The one-of-a-kind “e-waste” synth – created to raise awareness of the growing problem of e-waste in Australia – will be on display in the window of Telstra’s Melbourne Discovery Store through March and April.

READ MORE: Daft Punk share new music video for 2005 track Human After All

In a blog post on Telstra’s website, the company describes the country’s “mounting” e-waste problem, noting that by 2030, it’s estimated the country will produce 657,000 tonnes of e-waste every year – roughly the weight of 12 Sydney Harbour bridges or 19,000 Melbourne trams.
Put simply, e-waste refers to old electronic items and devices that are no longer used, like broken or outdated mobile phones – and their accessories and chargers.

“Instead of tossing them in the trash, they need special recycling because they’re full of stuff that can harm the environment, but they also contain valuable materials we can reuse,” Telstra says.
The company says Australia’s e-waste problem is significantly worse than the global average, with around 20kg of e-waste produced per person per year, compared to the global average of 7kg.
The new synth comes as part of a wider initiative by Telstra, Second Life Sounds, which centres around its goal to reuse, recycle, repair or donate one smart device for every two devices sold by 2030. 
“We wanted to show that e-waste can be repurposed into something that people can relate to universally,” says Robbie Chater of The Avalanches. “Through music, we have tried to demonstrate the amazing link between sustainability and creativity.”
You can learn more about the new one-of-a-kind “e-waste” synth at Telstra.
The post This one-of-a-kind synth is made almost entirely of e-waste appeared first on MusicTech.

Celebrating 10 years of oeksound Soothe, the plugin Skrillex calls “so simple yet dynamic”oeksound Soothe – a plugin that Skrillex once described as “so simple yet dynamic” – turns 10 this year. In that time, it’s gone from a niche problem-solver posted on Gearspace to a near-ubiquitous fixture in vocal chains, guitar buses and mastering sessions alike.
Originally developed by Finnish engineer and programmer Olli Keskinen, Soothe was born out of a desire to automate the painstaking, syllable-by-syllable EQ moves used by top mixing engineers.

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Drawing on his background in digital signal processing, Keskinen designed Soothe as a dynamic resonance suppressor – similar to a de-esser or dynamic EQ, but far more adaptive in practice. Instead of applying static cuts, the plugin identifies problematic frequencies in real time and reduces them without flattening the surrounding tone, maintaining clarity.
As Keskinen explained in a 2017 interview, “Due to the chaotic radiation patterns of the instruments, and multiplied by the pickup patterns of the microphones, nastiness is likely to be present when sticking a microphone a few inches from a sound source. Soothe is at its best when used as the first line of defence to treat these problematic sound sources, saving the mixing engineer a lot of time and frustration trying to get the stuff to sit in the mix, especially with the lead parts.”
After gaining early traction on Gearspace, Soothe’s momentum accelerated when Grammy-winning producer Greg Wells – whose credits include Timbaland, Adele, and Katy Perry – publicly championed it.
“If the person praising you has clout, many people in our industry will start to believe in the product,” Keskinen later observed. “Wells did exactly what I developed the product for.”
For engineers deep in surgical EQ work, the appeal was obvious. Metal producer Dave Otero puts it bluntly: “I was already tackling this problem before Soothe came out, and spending too long doing these surgical cuts. And it’s just so much harder to do that when that task takes an hour. With Soothe, you can get there in the first one or two minutes.”
The 2020 release of Soothe2 refined the concept further, adding expanded controls while optimising CPU usage and latency. Mastering engineer Heba Kadry calls Soothe2 her “golden solution” because it “attenuates the issues while self-adjusting to whatever else is going on in the same frequency range sounds so natural” – even when working without access to stems or a multitrack.
Today, Soothe sits alongside pitch correction as one of those tools that has quietly embedded itself into modern workflows. And despite its near-ubiquity, oeksound says its focus hasn’t changed.
“Our mission is still the same as it was when oeksound was founded, even if our team is now bigger,” says Atte Karm, Marketing Director at oeksound. “We aim to create tools that solve real problems for audio professionals. Reliably good-sounding algorithms and an intuitive user interface are a must so that pros can work quickly, so they are deeply ingrained in our work.”
The company has since released other plugins including Soothe Live, which adapts the resonance suppression concept for live use; Bloom, an “adaptive tone shaper”; and Spiff, an “adaptive transient processor” that lets you cut or boost transients with great detail.
Learn more at oeksound.
The post Celebrating 10 years of oeksound Soothe, the plugin Skrillex calls “so simple yet dynamic” appeared first on MusicTech.

Inear Display offers its full plugin collection as pay-what-you-want (available for FREE)
Inear Display has made its creative audio tools now available via pay-what-you-want (meaning they can be yours for free). If the Complete Monkwind Effect Bundle and the Aqua Node open-source plugin suite weren’t enough, we’ve got another developer making everything available for free. Inear Display has moved all of its products into the pay-what-you-want category. [...]
View post: Inear Display offers its full plugin collection as pay-what-you-want (available for FREE)

Daft Punk share new music video for 2005 track Human After AllFive years after calling it quits in 2021, Daft Punk have shared a new video for Human After All, the title track from their third album, which landed in 2005.
The video – which has amassed three quarters of a million views in a day (at the time of writing) – features clips from the duo’s 2006 sci-fi film Electroma, edited by their creative director Cédric Hervet.

READ MORE: The Moog Messenger was one of the biggest synth launches of last year – and you can get it right now at $200 off

Premiering at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, Electroma followed the story of two robots who discover a town of robots located in California.
The film itself didn’t feature any Daft Punk music, and instead had a soundtrack comprising music by Curtis Mayfield, Todd Rundgren and Brian Eno.
The release of the new video certainly doesn’t mark an official comeback for the robots – real names Thomas Bangalter and  Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo – but they have remained active in various ways since their disbandment in 2021.
Back in October, Thomas Bangalter made headlines by performing his first DJ set in 16 years alongside Fred again.. at Paris’s Centre Pompidou.
Also last year, the duo lent their likenesses – in robot form, at least – to the massive online game Fortnite, joining a laundry list of musical artists to have done so.
Check out the new video for Human After All below:

The post Daft Punk share new music video for 2005 track Human After All appeared first on MusicTech.