Analogy Instruments MOTHERSHIPVintage Power, Modern Soul. Step aboard MOTHERSHIP, a new virtual instrument from Analogy that delivers authentic analog tone. Built from meticulously multi-sampled waveforms of a classic analog synthesizer, MOTHERSHIP offers over 1GB of richly detailed samples, carefully captured across the keyboard for expressive, natural playability. This isn't just another retro emulation — it's a living library with its own character. With 100 original programs designed for creativity, MOTHERSHIP combines the warmth of vintage hardware with a fresh modern feel, ready to inspire basslines, pads, leads, and textures that cut their own path. MOTHERSHIP Features: True Analog DNA – Multi-sampled directly from classic analog circuits for authentic warmth and punch. 1GB Sound Library – Detailed sampling across the keyboard ensures expressive and natural play. 100 Original Programs – From deep basses to shimmering leads, every preset was crafted for originality. Hands-On Interface – Envelopes, performance controls, and a full suite of built-in effects put powerful sound-shaping tools right at your fingertips. Seamless DAW Integration – Works effortlessly on Mac/PC and supports all major DAWs, including Ableton, Logic, FL Studio, and Reaper. MOTHERSHIP Lite MOTHERSHIP Lite is a free version of MOTHERSHIP, with 12 programs. Read More

iamReverb Audio release iamReverb lite iamReverb's lite edition brings the same proprietary modelling technology to a wider audience, offering the core spatial realism of the full version with a slimmed set of controls.

“At the end of the day, you have to sell tickets and stream well”: Sombr on artists who “don’t think about the numbers”Indie singer-songwriter Sombr has opened up on the juggle of reaching for streams and ticket sales, while also caring for art itself.
The 20-year-old musician currently has over 58 million monthly listeners on Spotify alone, and his hit singles Back To Friends and Undressed have also received millions of streams due to them going viral on TikTok.

READ MORE: “High-end studios are not places I feel comfortable making music”: Why Omar+ is still making hits from his bedroom

With such a huge presence in the world of streaming, Sombr has shared his thoughts on the pressure of achieving successful streaming numbers off the back of his successes so far, while still caring about the music first and foremost.
Speaking to MusicWeek, he explains, “Undressed was the first song I wrote this year. It was just after I’d dropped Back To Friends, which was my most successful song at that point. It was having a lot of success on streaming, and I was feeling really confident because of that, so I just thought, ‘OK, let me make another one,’” he says.
“I feel like so many artists say, ‘Oh, I just make music to make music, I don’t think about the numbers,’ but at the end of the day, if you’re putting yourself out there, doing it as a job and you have an audience, you have to sell tickets and stream well. It’s hard not to feel a sense of pressure at least in the back of your mind – it’s human!”
Despite this, Sombr’s main focus remains his actual music, and says that numbers are not the first thing he thinks of: “I never expected to make a career out of [music]. And with Undressed, we were all just shocked and super excited; it was like, ‘Wow, this is really good shit here.’ We all knew it was special, especially because it had already received such a great response online before we even finished it.”

Another artist who’s spoken about the competition among modern artists is producer Stimming. During an episode of MusicTech’s My Forever Studio podcast, he shared how some artists focus more on showing off rather than focusing on the purpose or passion of making music.
“Being a musician is sometimes more like being a top athlete. [For some artists] it’s not even about the music any more, to be honest,” he said. He went on to add that competitive musicians can often feel like “musician police” rather than supportive peers, and that they tend to release music just to show off their skills, releasing cuts that “nobody wants to listen to” bar “the other 5,000 people on Earth that can also play very good and are astonished by how fast you can play.”
The post “At the end of the day, you have to sell tickets and stream well”: Sombr on artists who “don’t think about the numbers” appeared first on MusicTech.

NUSofting releases Filter4Tongue Free, an experimental filter FX plugin for Windows
NUSofting has released Filter4Tongue Free, a creative filter-based effect plugin available as a free download (with optional donations) for Windows. The developer describes Filter4Tongue as a “Hyper Wah,” “Formant Maker,” and a “Drone Shaper.” It’s definitely aimed to be more of a sound design tool than a filter for basic mixing and tone shaping. Sound [...]
View post: NUSofting releases Filter4Tongue Free, an experimental filter FX plugin for Windows

“Biggie was like, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll just stand here until each one gets in’”: Mark Ronson recalls the time Biggie Smalls rocked up to an NY club event he was DJing in the ‘90s with “50 dudes from Brooklyn”Super producer Mark Ronson has looked back on his days DJing in the New York club scene in the ‘90s, in a conversation with Rick Rubin discussing his new book, Night People.
The book – titled, in full, Night People: How to Be a DJ in ‘90s New York City – arrives 16 September, and charts Ronson’s years as a DJ in the city’s vibrant nightlife scene.

READ MORE: The Great Gig In The Sphere: David Gilmour says he’s “hoping” to watch a Pink Floyd avatar show at the Las Vegas Sphere one day

On his motivation for writing the book, Ronson says: “Far more famous DJs than me have written books, but no one’s really written the book that just talks about what it’s like to be a gigging DJ. Not a superstar DJ, but that shit when you’re just going to work four or five nights a week, playing in bars and clubs and dealing with regular people.
“I don’t want to over-dramatise the emotional highs and lows, but there are these things that are baked into it. You’re the most solitary figure in the most action packed surroundings.”
In one particular memory that stands out, Ronson remembers DJing at a party attended by Biggie Smalls.
“It was obviously a fucking seismic event,” he recalls. “And even the way the club was shaped, this weird angle and corners, I barely saw him. I could feel the energy like, ‘Holy shit’ – Biggie and the crowd ripple, you knew something was going on.
“I remember at the end of the night… his security [and] promoter telling me [about] Biggie rolling up with 50 dudes from Brooklyn. Some of them had guns [and] swords.
“[Security told Biggie:] ‘Yo, I can’t let 50 dudes in right now.’ And Biggie was like, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll just stand here until each one gets in. You just let them in how you can. You balance them with girls, and then I’ll come in when it’s all done.”
Ronson adds that Biggie was “just standing there” with a “wad” of cash, “just giving a bill each time someone [came] in”.
Asked by Rick Rubin what, in his opinion, makes a great club, Ronson says venues which are more rudimentary are often better environments for DJ sets.
“The best ones, some of them were just a fucking corridor with two speakers,” Ronson says. “You know, the crowd is what makes the club great. I think the crowd and the DJ.”
He continues: “For me, my favourite places, 50 percent of them were basements. And I try to get into that in the book, I’m like, why was it a basement? Is there something like going underground where you’re just like, you’re getting a little closer to Satan’s real estate?”
Mark Ronson’s new book, Night People: How to Be a DJ in ‘90s New York City, arrives tomorrow, 16 September. Preorders are available now.

The post “Biggie was like, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll just stand here until each one gets in’”: Mark Ronson recalls the time Biggie Smalls rocked up to an NY club event he was DJing in the ‘90s with “50 dudes from Brooklyn” appeared first on MusicTech.

Imaginando launch VS 2 visual synthesizer Imaginando have announced the release of VS 2, the second version of their visual synthesizer for macOS and Windows.

Full FX Media releases Setekh, a FREE distortion plugin for Windows, macOS, and Linux
Full FX Media has released Setekh, a free distortion plugin with a minimal interface and a useful input/output gain link. There’s nothing groundbreaking here, but Setekh delivers exactly what you want from a compact distortion tool. You get a solid analog-style distortion sound and a clean interface with one cool feature that helps speed up [...]
View post: Full FX Media releases Setekh, a FREE distortion plugin for Windows, macOS, and Linux

The Great Gig In The Sphere: David Gilmour says he’s “hoping” to watch a Pink Floyd avatar show at the Las Vegas Sphere one dayDavid Gilmour is open to the idea of a Pink Floyd avatar show at the Las Vegas Sphere, and says that sitting back and watching himself in digital form is something he’s always wanted to do.
The mighty spherical venue has hosted a number of huge gigs with legendary artists including U2, Dead & Company, and the Eagles – none of which involved avatars, however. Made popular by ABBA with their Voyage concerts, rock band Kiss are also rolling out a new virtual era.

READ MORE: “The idea that money from shows in big venues supports the smaller venues is just common sense”: Sam Fender’s arena tour raises over £100,000 to save UK grassroots venues

Given David Gilmour and Roger Waters’ ongoing rift, and the last time Floyd played live together dating back to 2005, an avatar show could be a way forward to bring the band’s music and their classic lineup to a live setting, albeit in digital form.
During a Q&A at the UK premiere of his Live At The Circus Maximus concert film at London’s BFI IMAX, Gilmour states (via MusicRadar), “The Sphere? Well, you know, I’m hoping one of these days, to go there and sit and watch myself doing it, which is something I’ve always wanted to do. My avatar, you know? So I don’t actually have to get up and do it.”
Interestingly, Gilmour also spoke of the Sphere in an interview with Rolling Stone just a couple of weeks ago, where he suggested he may also be open to doing something solo at the venue, though he admitted he has little idea on how the Sphere actually works: “They have been on and suggested that I might do something there. In the future, who knows. I haven’t got that far. It will be in there amongst the plans that we are to think about.”
Check out the video below to see how the venue looks from inside:

The Las Vegas Sphere hosts the largest LED screen in the world. It opened in 2023, also marking the largest spherical structure ever built, and cost over $2 billion to construct. Its all-encompassing sound is backed by science: “Wave-field synthesis is the magical math behind the best quality sound in the business,” explains the Sphere website.
“The Huygens-Fresnel Principle describes how sound waves propagate and combine into new wave forms. This allows Sphere to optimise for your ears, maintain amplitude over distance, and deliver immersive soundscapes with lifelike precision.”
Learn more about the Las Vegas Sphere, or head over to David Gilmour’s website to find out where you can catch his Live At The Circus Maximus concert film.
The post The Great Gig In The Sphere: David Gilmour says he’s “hoping” to watch a Pink Floyd avatar show at the Las Vegas Sphere one day appeared first on MusicTech.

Bots are flooding Deezer: Nearly a third of music uploaded daily is fully AI-generated, platform revealsDeezer has revealed that nearly a third of music uploaded to its platform is now fully AI-generated – a staggering rise from just 10 percent at the start of the year.
The French streaming service, which rolled out a new AI detection tool in January, says it is now receiving over 30,000 fully AI-generated tracks every day. In June, Deezer also became the first major platform to explicitly tag synthetic music, as the flood of artificially generated content shows no sign of slowing.

READ MORE: Fake artists, real opportunities: Hoaxes and scams are holding back the potential of AI music

According to Deezer, about 70% of plays for these AI songs have been detected as fraudulent and are part of a wave of bot-driven uploads designed to siphon royalties from the platform’s revenue pool.
“Following a massive increase during the year, AI music now makes up a significant part of the daily track delivery to music streaming and we want to lead the way in minimising any negative impact for artists and fans alike,” says Deezer CEO Alexis Lanternier.
Lanternier adds that Deezer has taken steps to quarantine the influx: removing fully AI-generated tracks from algorithmic recommendations, excluding them from editorial playlists, and tightening its fraud-detection systems.
“This way we ensure the impact on the royalty pool remains minimal, while providing a transparent user experience. And most importantly, we continue to fight fraudulent activity, which is the main driver behind uploading fully AI generated content.”
The surge has been dramatic. AI-generated content made up around 10% of uploads in January, jumped to 18% in April, and now stands at a record-breaking 28%.
While Deezer insists the platform isn’t being overrun just yet, the trend raises an uneasy question for the industry: if bots are already gaming streaming services at scale, what happens when AI tools become even faster, cheaper, and harder to detect?
The post Bots are flooding Deezer: Nearly a third of music uploaded daily is fully AI-generated, platform reveals appeared first on MusicTech.

Native Markets officially claims Hyperliquid's USDH stablecoin tickerNative Markets claimed the US dollar-pegged stablecoin ticker following a heated bidding war closely watched by the crypto community.

Retro x86 with 486TangTang FPGA boards are affordable, and [nand2mario] has been trying to get an x86 core running on one for a while. Looks like it finally worked out, as there is an early version of the ao486 design on a Tang FPGA board using a Gowin device. That core’s available on the MiSTer platform, which emulates games using an Altera Cyclone device.
Of course, porting something substantial between FPGA architectures is not trivial. In addition, [nand2mario] made some changes. The original core uses DDR3 memory, but for the Tang and the 486, SDRAM makes more sense. The only problem is that the Tang’s SDRAM is 16 bits wide, which would imply you need two cycles per 32-bit access. To mitigate this, the memory system runs at twice the main clock frequency. Of course, that’s kind of double data rate, but not in the same way as DDR memory.

The MiSTer uses an ARM processor’s high-speed channel to link to the FPGA for disk access. The Tang board lacks a high-speed interface for this, so the disk storage is now on an SD card that the FPGA directly accesses. In addition, the first 128K of the SD card stores configuration settings that the FPGA now reads from that on boot up.
One of the most interesting things about the development was the use of Verilator to simulate the entire system, including things like the VGA card. It was possible to simulate booting to a DOS prompt, although it was slower than being on actual hardware, as you might expect. But, this lets you poke at the entire state of the system in a way that would be difficult on the actual hardware.
Want to give it a try? The Tang boards are cheap. (We have one on a shelf waiting for a future post.) Or, you could go the simulation route.
MiSTer has really put FPGAs on a lot of people’s radar. If you prefer the C64, that’s available on a Tang board, too.

OpenAI board chair Bret Taylor says we’re in an AI bubble (but that’s okay)Like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Bret Taylor thinks we're in an AI bubble — but he doesn't sound too worried about it.

NUSofting Filter4Tongue FreeFilter4Tongue Free (100% free download - optional donation) [VST2/VST3 64-bit for Windows 10/11]**. - Hyper Wah - Acoustic Resonances - Drone Shaper - Formant Maker - Creative Equalizer - FSU FX - Features: BandPass x4 filter bank, two serial pairs in parallel routing. Symmetrical and divergent tuning of the filters. Non linear mode, selectable. Pink noise internal source. Saturation on overdrive. Modulator: envelope follower with loop mode and with four targets. - - - - - - - - - - Planned features for the expanded (paid) version: Precise tuning to tempered notes. Step LFO, with sync to host. Stereo mode. Oversampling. macOS AU/VST3 formats. Many more presets. Tooltips. Video tutorials. Updates and support. Read More

HEARS Perfection from Brainworx Brainworx have announced the release of HEARS Perfection, software which applies personalised EQ correction based on a short listening test.

Tesla board chair calls debate over Elon Musk’s $1T pay package ‘a little bit weird’Tesla's board chair is defending a proposed 10-year, $1 trillion compensation package for CEO Elon Musk.