Spotify stock surges 11.4% as users grow to 619M in profitable Q1 2024Spotify [NYSE: SPOT] stock jumped 14.94% mid-morning Tuesday morning on news that the streamer had turned profitable despite slower-than-expected user growth in Q1 2024.....
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Recording Academy® Producers & Engineers Wing Launches "Mixing for Atmos – What We’ve Learned” WebcastThe Recording Academy® Producers & Engineers Wing® recently hosted the first episode of its new online series dubbed "The Forum," which aims to connect P&E Wing members with exclusive insights on an array of the industry's hottest topics. Titled "Mixing for Atmos® – What We've Learned," the event initially took place on March 28 and attracted more than 180 P&E Wing members who tuned in for the live session, which has now been archived for public viewing and is available here). The two-hour segment, hosted by producer/engineers Glenn Lorbiecki and Jordan Hamlin, was an in-depth exploration with the mixing team of Matt Wallace and Will Kennedy, whose immersive projects include work ranging from Dave Matthews Band, Foreigner and the B-52s to Selena Gomez, Nina Simone, Jason Mraz, and many more. This lauded duo has helped pioneer immersive audio mixing with over 200 Dolby Atmos® projects to their credit. P&E Wing Vice President Maureen Droney introduced the event, welcoming attendees and offering background and info for the session's esteemed hosts.

Discussion began with an overview of the extensive credits garnered by the duo, ranging from classic recordings from their decades-long careers to their adoption of the Atmos mixing ecosystem. "As we made the transition from stereo mixing into Atmos, the learning curve was exponential and much more beyond what we had imagined," recalled Wallace. "And, because there were no kind of rules or guidebooks or guide rails, and no elder statesman we could refer to and say, 'Hey, how do you do this?' We had to make it up as we went along — new software, new technology. I think all of us [the whole industry] were basically thrown in the deep end," he added, noting the invaluable support of the informal "Dolby Atmos Mixers Network" of fellow engineers sharing their own discoveries.

The Recording Academy® Producers & Engineers Wing® recently hosted its first event in the new monthly online series dubbed "The Forum," which aims to connect P&E Wing members with exclusive insights on an array of the industry's hottest topics. The first event, titled "Mixing for Atmos® – What We've Learned," took place on March 28, 2024, and attracted over 180 producers and engineers in attendance. Shown clockwise: Jordan Hamlin, The Forum co-host; Will Kennedy, featured guest; Matt Wallace, featured guest; Maureen Droney, P&E Wing Vice President; and Glenn Lorbiecki, The Forum co-host.

Complete video of this first The Forum series event, "Mixing for Atmos – What We’ve Learned," is available here, with further events to be announced soon.

Tesla profits drop 55%, company says EV sales ‘under pressure’ from hybridsTesla profits fell 55% to $1.13 billion in the first quarter from the same year-ago period as a protracted EV price-cutting strategy and “several unforeseen challenges” cut into the automaker’s bottom line. Tesla reported revenue of $21.3 billion in the first quarter, a 9% drop from the first quarter of 2023. Analysts polled by Yahoo Finance […]
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80s Function Generator is Both Beauty and BeastYou know how the saying goes — they don’t make them like this anymore. It’s arguably true of pretty much any electronic device given the way technology changes over time, though whether or not it’s objectively a bad thing is going to vary from case to case.
As a practical example, take a look at the insides of this 80’s vintage HP 3314A function generator shared on the EEV Blog Forum by [D Straney].
Hinged PCBs allow for easy access
With multiple PCBs stacked on top of each other, it’s hard to imagine that more components could possibly be crammed into it. One board in particular appears to be an entire Motorola 6800 computer, something which today would likely be replaced with a single microcontroller.
Which is actually why [D Straney] shared this with us in the first place. After seeing our recent post about a modern waveform generator that’s basically an empty box thanks to its modern components, they thought this would be a nice example of the opposite extreme.
So, is it a good or a bad thing that test equipment isn’t made this way anymore? Well, it’s hard to argue with the improved capabilities, smaller footprint, and reduced cost of most modern gear. But damn is the inside of this HP 3314A gorgeous. As one of the commenters on the page put it, hardware from this era was really a work of art.

Universal enters strategic partnership with producer Binetou Sylla and Wèrè Wèrè Music to lead Def Jam Africa across French-speaking AfricaThe partnership will see Paris-based Binetou Sylla lead Def Jam Africa within French-speaking markets on the continent
Source

Primary Wave strikes multi-million-dollar music rights deal with Neil Finn of Crowded HouseDeal includes his work with Crowded House, as well as his solo material
Source

Amazon Ends California Drone Deliveries While Expanding to ArizonaThe outgoing MK27 drone used by Amazon today for deliveries. (Credit: Amazon)
When Amazon started its Prime Air drone delivery service in 2022, it had picked College Station (Texas) and Lockeford (California) as its the first areas where the service would be offered. Two years later, Amazon has now announced that it will be expanding to the West Valley of the Phoenix Metro area in Arizona from a new Tolleson center, while casually mentioning buried in the press release that the Lockeford area will no longer be serviced. No reason for this closure was provided, but as a quite experimental service drastic shifts can be expected as Amazon figures out what does and does not work.
Amazon Prime Air features custom drones that can transport packages up to 5 lbs (~2.27 kg) to its destination within an hour, if the item is listed as Prime Air capable for your area. Along with the change in service areas, Amazon is also testing its new MK30 drone (pictured, top), which should be much quieter due to a new propeller design and have twice the range of the old MK27 as well.
Even if flying drone delivery isn’t quite a blow-away success yet, Amazon doesn’t seem to be letting up on investing in it, and it could be argued that for certain items like medication or perishables, it does make a certain sense over traditional delivery and pick-up methods.

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek outlines 3 new ‘core’ opportunities for musicSpotify CEO Daniel Ek discussed three "core trends" for music during the company's Q1 2024 earnings call and said that the streamer is already working on all of them.....
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Leveraging Community-Building Strategies to Cultivate Dedicated Music AudiencesLong before anyone had uttered the term "superfan," smart musicians and their teams understood that a key to sustainable success was building community. Here, we look at how to identify, grow, engage, and service a fan community.....
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OsTIrus Is A FREE Virus Ti Emulator By The Usual Suspects
From the developer Usual Suspects comes their latest release – OsTIrus, a plugin that supports emulation of the Access Virus TI line of synthesizers. Few synthesizers are as famous as the Virus Ti for trance and other dance genres of the early 2000s to today. The good folks at The Usual Suspects have made waves [...]
View post: OsTIrus Is A FREE Virus Ti Emulator By The Usual Suspects

deadmau5 launches “ultra-limited” line of plushie toys – and they’re infused with blockchain technologydeadmau5 is launching an ultra-limited line of toys with TOYMAK3RS, and will debut them at his upcoming retro5pective shows, which celebrate 25 years of his music.

READ MORE: “There’s 800 ways to skin the DJ cat”: deadmau5 on the why DJing is more than just a live performance

The toys take the form of exclusive collectable keychains, with six unique clip-on plush toys which each give access to digital VIP experiences that use “cutting-edge” technology, and they’re set to be available at deadmau5’s shows in Los Angeles on 27 April and New York City on 2 and 3 May as well as online at deadmau5’s shop while stocks last.
Infused with Jellybean technology, each toy comes with a unique QR code that allows you to access a VIP digital experience enabled by the Aptos blockchain to offer an exclusive curated selection of content.
Credit: Deadmau5 / TOYMAK3RS
Wrapped in blind block packaging, there are 5,000 toys in total, with six options available, including Professor Meowingtons, which honours the Canadian DJ’s beloved pet cat who died last year. Meowingtons is the rarest of the lot with just 300 plushies. There are 1,500 classic mau5 plushies, 1,100 mixed mau5, 900 cheese mau5, 700 disco mau5, and 500 pixl mau5.
deadmau5, real name Joel Zimmerman, has been making music since the late 1990s, when he was a teenager, and released his debut album Get Scraped under the moniker in 2005. Since then, he’s become one of the highest-paid DJs in the world, received six Grammy Award nominations, and has seen three albums reach number one on the US Dance Chart.
And now he’ll be performing at the Hollywood Bowl in LA for the first time. Not many electronic musicians have played the venue; those who have include Kraftwerk, The Chemical Brothers, and Rüfüs Du Sol. He’ll then play two nights at the Brooklyn Mirage in Brooklyn, NYC, before two shows at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison, Colorado, on 1 and 2 November.
For more information on the toys and deadmau5’s retro5psective tour, you can head to his website.
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“The other thing about Rick is that I don’t trust him”: Jacob Collier says Rick Rubin is “hypocritical” to say pure art is only made for oneselfJacob Collier has labelled Rick Rubin “hypocritical”, due to his philosophy that art is only pure if made for the artist and not the audience. Collier says a significant portion of Rubin’s catalogue was made with a large commercial audience in mind.

READ MORE: Jacob Collier’s Audience Choir plugin offers access to the multi-instrumentalist’s famous crowd choirs – and it’s completely free

Appearing on the Colin and Samir podcast, on an episode entitled We interviewed the Mozart of Gen Z, Collier says of the record executive and co-founder of Def Jam Recordings, “I don’t trust him, because he started his career making this commercial music, which is beautiful and we all love it, and it’s amazing.”
He continues, addressing Rubin’s idea that art is only pure if you make it for yourself, “I’m sure he has his own opinions of that work, but I think to say art is only pure or meaningful if you make it only for yourself is hypocritical of him. I think that he’s made a lot of, not just popular, but actually beautiful and meaningful work for many people. I think what he may be trying to say is that he wasn’t fulfilled by the work, which is totally valid.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Collier says that he disagrees with Rubin’s philosophy that “the audience comes last,” explaining, “There’s no one way to do anything – you can make work for people; you can make work for an audience; you can conform to the algorithm; you can make an engaging thumbnail. That’s cool.”
It’s clear that Collier has a lot of respect for Rubin, however, which is unsurprising given his influence and legacy. He says, “As someone who solves a lot of problems myself and has my own particular angle… I’m not the ultimate angle. I’m me, I’m Jacob, I see the world of the way I see it.
“But I’d love to sit with Rick at one point and just talk to him and push him. And I would also welcome to be pushed because all of us need to be examined, our opinions need to be examined and squeezed and broken.”
You can see everything Collier has to say in the interview here:

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Harrison unveil Mixbus 10 Harrison's console-style DAW has reached version 10, and now offers Dolby Atmos mixing and rendering along with some new plug-ins and mixer functionalities.

Illegal synthetic opioids have been advertised for sale on SoundCloud and X, investigation findsIllegal synthetic opioids, which have been linked to nearly three UK deaths a week on average, have been advertised on SoundCloud and X, a new investigation by the BBC has revealed. The drugs, known as nitazenes, were found to have been advertised across nearly 3,000 posts on SoundCloud and more than 700 on X.
SoundCloud is used by musicians both new and established to share music. The investigation reveals that these advertisements were often in the form of brief audio clips lasting just a few seconds, with the drug’s name and dealer contact details appearing as the title of the track.

READ MORE: New earbuds by Teenage Engineering-founded firm Nothing feature ChatGPT integration

When the corporation contacted SoundCloud for comment, it said it had been “targeted by bad actors” and promised to do “everything” it can “to tackle this worldwide epidemic”.
SoundCloud also told the BBC that it uses both human moderation and software to identify and remove content that promotes the sale of drugs. It says it “continues to evaluate and invest in best in class technology to aid in this effort”. X reportedly did not respond to its requests for comment.
The posts on SoundCloud have now been removed. According to the outlet, X has also taken down hundreds of listings on its site despite there being no response from the platform.
Professor Vicki Nash, director of the Oxford Internet Institute (a department at the University of Oxford that researches online behaviour), says: “Finding adverts on this scale, hundreds, thousands of adverts, is horrifying with potentially a very significant risk to human life.” She also states that the investigation has uncovered how criminals have been “blatantly misusing” SoundCloud.
Find out more in the BBC documentary, The New Drug Threat, available now on iPlayer.
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Ableton Live 12 dives deep under the hood for its latest milestone Live updateIntro version £69
Standard version £259
Suite version £539
Crossgrade pricing for existing users
ableton.com
When Ableton first released Live in 2001 it offered musicians and DJs a new take on live performance – hence the name – and its developers were early pioneers of beat-matching technology. It’s taken on countless more producer-focused features, but Live 12 in 2024 is still recognisable to those early adopters; its signature one-window grey interface is present and correct, albeit with a lot more going on these days. Even with version 12’s new colour themes and a scalable second window, it still holds closely onto the DNA of Ableton Live version 1 — and is still just as fun

READ MORE: Korg Gadget 3 is a DAW-groovebox hybrid more fun than ever

What is Ableton Live 12?
Live is best described as an all-round DAW system for macOS and Windows with a heavy focus on MIDI clip programming and sequencing, plus audio recording tools that lean extensively on automatic time-stretching and manipulation. As well as supporting third-party instrument and effect plugins, it boasts many stock plugins that are deeply integrated into the system.
The Intro version has a fairly bare-bones setup while the Standard edition has 13 instruments, 16 sound packs and 42 effects, and the full-fat Suite version provides 20 instruments, 33 sound packs and 58 audio effects.
At its heart are two main views: Session, where you can see and play all your clips stacked in Live’s classic fashion, and Arrangement where you can see and edit a more conventional song-based timeline. One of the numerous workflow changes in version 12 is the ability to view the Session mixer in Arrangement view so you no longer have to switch to Session to change levels. Users have been requesting this feature for some time, so perhaps this’ll be one thing to convince them to upgrade to Live 12.
Live 12 Browser
Ableton Live 12 browser and MIDI tools
Another valuable workflow change that will benefit every user is the significant enhancement of Live’s browser.
Now, tags and filters are available for easier searching – for example by creator, key, character or type and you can create your own custom tags. While arguably kind of overdue and not as comprehensive as something like Cubase’s MediaBay, it’s a big step forward for managing our increasingly sprawling collections of sound sources. One new feature that is harder to find in other DAWs is a “similarity search” tool, where your library is analysed and compatible samples, instrument and drum presets are shown with a special icon meaning Live can display others with similar characteristics, and also swap in similar samples to Drum Racks.
MIDI editing gains a ton of new functionality in version 12, starting with new key commands for splitting and chopping notes. A MIDI Note Probability function provides hands-on control of how likely notes or groups of notes are to play back, with randomisation support. There are new MIDI generators to help you make beats and melodies and come up with new ideas quickly and like Live’s other built-in tools they are nicely integrated into the workflow and quick and intuitive to use. There’s Rhythm which generates patterns of notes and velocities, Seed which randomly generates notes, Shape which creates runs of notes based on different curves or ramps, and Stacks which generates chords using sets of rules. All are a lot of fun to use and will be useful for all kinds of electronic music which – generally speaking – Live is especially well suited to.
Live 12 MIDI Note Probability
New Ableton 12 plugins
There are two major new plugins to play with starting with Meld, a synth with two macro oscillator engines and a deep subset of tweakable controls that’s good at creating textures, harmonics, atonal sounds and the like. With a pop-out matrix it’s on the more advanced side but still possible for less experienced users to work with. Then there’s Roar, a dynamic saturation effect for everything from subtle warming to fierce sound mangling that again has expandable windows for more detailed control.
Live 12 now has improved Scale Awareness tools, with the ability to conform individual clips, effects and devices to specific musical scales and elsewhere, pitch and time tools have been split into two sections for more detailed and accurate editing. Of particular note are expanded options for humanising, stretching and quantisation of MIDI and audio, which are very welcome. Live’s MIDI Polyphonic Expression (MPE) support has been expanded too, with the Meld synth in particular able to take advantage of the extra expression generated by compatible controllers.
Aside from the headline new features there have been many smaller but no less important changes, far too many to list but here are some of our favourites, at least a few of which you may be very glad to hear about. Ableton has fixed a longstanding latency issue when recording, with a new Keep Latency option on audio tracks. You can now magnify waveforms in Arrangement view for better legibility as well as editing Return Tracks’ order, reversing MIDI clips and using an expanded set of key commands with “momentary” mode meaning they activate a function only for as long as held. There’s also now a de facto bounce in place available for you to glue down a clip, even if Live doesn’t call it that. When using two screens, each one can be zoomed to different degrees or their zoom levels linked together which is a small but super-useful thing.
Live 12 Meld plugin
Should you switch to Live 12?
If you’re used to a different DAW, switching can be a learning curve and this perhaps applies to Live more so than some competitors, such as Logic Pro, Cubase or Studio One, which offer similar workflows.
Many of those coming to music production afresh may have found their purchase of an audio interface or MIDI controller came with Live Lite – a canny move on Ableton’s part to expand its user base. And the system maturing over the years from a looping tool into a much more fully-fledged production environment has attracted a large number of producers of all levels and in all fields of music. It has its own way of doing things and packs tons of functionality into a remarkably slick and friendly interface.
The developers have pulled off the trick of keeping Live fun and accessible on the surface while providing a great depth of tweakability (much more so now than in the earlier years) and including heavyweight extras like the Max For Live design environment with the Suite edition.
Many users will find that the Standard edition suits their needs perfectly well, since the main thing you gain with the pricier Suite is more instruments and effects – otherwise the functionality is essentially the same.
While some of the updates to 12 are arguably a little overdue they are no less welcome for it and Live remains an excellent music creation platform for all kinds of producers.
Live 12 MIDI Assign
Key features

For Mac and Windows
Up to 76 GB of sound content
Unlimited tracks with up to 192 kHz audio support
Clip-based MIDI and audio stretching and beat-matching
Multiple bundled instruments and audio effects
MIDI generators and processors
Modular, resizable interface
New scale and tuning tools
Deep integration with Push hardware
Max For Live with Suite edition

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