Fictional K-pop groups from Netflix’s ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ dominate streaming chartsThe film's two virtual bands collectively attracted over 25 million monthly listeners on Spotify.
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BioSig, Streamex target gold tokenization with $1.1B financingWith eyes on tokenized gold, the companies plan to merge and launch a gold-backed treasury business.

Platinum Producer Johhny G taps KRK GoAuxArtist and producer Johhny G started, "one of TikTok’s biggest dance trends of 2020 and the viral Chinese New Year Remix #vibechallenge," according to a statement on Tuesday. "Known for his genre-defying style and catchy hits, Johnny G is turning heads with his new KRK GoAux 4 Portable Studio Monitor setup, which is as dynamic as his sound.""Best known for working with iconic talent like YG Marley on songs like 'Praise Jah in the Moonlight,' Johhny G’s production toolkit just got a powerful upgrade," they said. "A long-time user of KRK’s ROKIT 10-3 Powered Studio Monitors, Johnny G has now also embraced the ultra-portable GoAux, and he’s not looking back. 'I like the GoAux because they are compact and convenient,' he says. 'The carrying case makes it super easy to travel and transport where I need to go, and the sound is great as well.'""From impromptu beat-making sessions to vibing out with mixes, Johhny G appreciates the flexibility and uncompromised audio quality that KRK brings to his creative workflow," they added. “I use the GoAux mainly for home mixing sessions,” he explains. “I will set the monitors up and make beats from anywhere — the kitchen, balcony, you name it.”“My KRKs have good, clear sound and have helped me in my creative process,” he adds. “At the end of the day, I want everything to sound good, whether that’s through headphones or in the car, and these monitors help make sure of that.”“I enjoy the aesthetics of KRK in general,” Johhny G adds. “The look of the monitors is cool, and the bright yellow cones really stands out.”“KRK was the first pair of speakers I ever owned,” Johhny G reflects. “I grew up using them, and they really helped me find my sound.”"Whether it’s through his viral hits or high-energy TikTok dance challenges, Johhny G continues to push musical boundaries," they said. "His upcoming single, 'Human,' is set to drop on July 11, and you can bet it’s been fine-tuned on a pair of KRKs.""Johhny G has had a passion for music since he was a child, learning various instruments, singing in the school choir, and making beats in his college dorm room, which is where he discovered his love for mixing," they added. "Music has also been a way for him to bond with his dad, who he says, 'worked a lot of Saturday nights and would be off playing music for hours. Music has always kept us connected.'""As someone with a passion for both creating and producing music, Johhny G is a unique artist with a strong ear for quality sound and diverse musical interests. Instead of trying to box himself into a certain category, Johhny G leaves it up to his music and creates based on feeling, regardless of what label it suits," they said. "With his KRKs by his side, Johhny G continues to create with endless possibilities for what comes next."Check out more of what Johhny G is up to on his social channels @JohhnyG__.Credit @ShottbyjdThe post Platinum Producer Johhny G taps KRK GoAux first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

Apple COO Jeff Williams to step down later this monthJeff Williams, Apple’s chief operating officer, is stepping down from his role later this month.

At MIT, musicians make new tools for new tunesThe MIT Music Technology Program carves out a space to explore new sounds, tunes, and experiences. From the classroom to the community, students in music tech grapple with developing both creative technology and their creative selves.In the course 21M.080 (Intro to Music Technology), it dawned on Thelonious Cooper ’25 that he had the skills to create his own instruments. “I can literally make a new instrument. I don’t think most people consider that as an option. But it totally is,” Cooper says.Similar to how the development of photography contributed to a radical shift in the priorities of painting, Cooper identifies the potential of new music tools to “[pave] the way to find new forms of creative expression.” Cooper develops digital instruments and music software.For Matthew Caren ’25, his parallel interests in computer science, mathematics, and jazz performance found an intersection in design. Caren explains, “the process of creating music doesn’t actually start when you, for instance, sit at a piano. It really starts when someone goes out and designs that piano and lays out the parameters for how the creation process is going to go.” When it is the tool that defines the parameters for creating art, Caren reasons, “You can tell your story only as well as the technology allows you to.”What purposes can music technology serve? In holding both technical and artistic questions simultaneously, makers of music technology uncover new ways to approach engineering problems alongside human notions of community and beauty.Building the bridge between music and techTaught by professor of the practice Eran Egozy, class 21M.385 (Interactive Music Systems, or IMS) focuses on the creation of musical experiences that include some element of human-computer interaction (HCI) through software or a hardware interface.In their first assignment, students program a digital synthesizer, a piece of software to generate and manipulate pitches with desired qualities. While building this foundation of the application of hard technical skills to music, students contemplate their budding aesthetic and creative interests.“How can you use it creatively? How can you make it make music in a way that’s not just a bunch of random sounds, but actually has some intention? Can you use the thing you just made to perform a little song?” prompts Egozy.In the spirit of MIT’s motto, “mens et manus” (“mind and hand”), students of IMS propose, design, implement, play-test, and present a creative musical system of their own during the last stretch of the semester. Students develop novel music games, tools, and instruments alongside an understanding of the principles of user interface, user experience (UI/UX), and HCI.Once students implement their ideas, they can evaluate their design. Egozy stresses it is important to develop a “working prototype” quickly. “As soon as it works, you can test it. As soon as you test it, you find out whether it's working or not, then you can adjust your design and your implementation,” he explains.Although students receive feedback at multiple milestones, a day of play-testing is the “most focused and concentrated amount of learning [students] get in the entire class.” Students might find their design choices affirmed or their assumptions broken as peers test the limits of their creations. “It’s a very entertaining experience,” Egozy says.Immersed in music tech since his graduate studies at the MIT Media Lab and as co-founder of Harmonix, the original developers of popular music game titles “Guitar Hero” and “Rock Band,” Egozy aims to empower more people to engage with music more deeply by creating “delightful music experiences.”By the same token, developers of music technology deepen their understanding of music and technical skills. For Cooper, understanding the “causal factors” behind changes in sounds has helped him to “better curate and sculpt the sounds [he uses] when making music with much finer detail.”Designing for possibilityMusic technologies mark milestones in history — from the earliest acoustic instruments to the electrified realm of synthesizers and digital audio workstations, design decisions reverberate throughout the ages.“When we create the tools that we use to make art, we design into them our understanding and our ideas about the things that we’re interested to explore,” says Ian Hattwick, lecturer in music technology.Hattwick brings his experience as a professional musician and creative technologist as the instructor of Intro to Music Technology and class 21M.370 (Digital Instrument Design).For Hattwick, identifying creative interests, expressing those interests by creating a tool, using the tool to create art, and then developing a new creative understanding is a generative and powerful feedback loop for an artist. But even if a tool is carefully designed for one purpose, creative users can use them unexpectedly, generating new and cascading creative possibilities on a cultural scale.In cases of many important music hardware technologies, “the impact of the decisions didn’t play out for a decade or two,” says Hattwick. Over time, he notes, people shift their understanding of what is possible with the available instruments, pushing their expectations of technology and what music can sound like. One novel example is the relationship between drummers and drum machines — human drummers took inspiration from programmatic drum beats to learn unique, challenging rhythms.Although designers may feel an impulse for originality, Hattwick stresses that design happens “within a context of culture.” Designers extend, transform, and are influenced by existing ideas. On the flip side, if a design is too unfamiliar, the ideas expressed risk limited impact and propagation. The current understanding of what sounds are even considered musical is in tension with the ways new tools can manipulate and generate them.This tension leads Hattwick to put tools and the thoughtful choices of their human designers back in focus. He says, “when you use tools that other people have designed, you’re also adopting the way that they think about things. There’s nothing wrong with that. But you can make a different choice.”Grounding his interests in the physical hardware that has backed much of music history, electrical engineering and computer science undergraduate Evan Ingoldsby builds guitar pedals and audio circuits that manipulate signals through electronic components. “A lot of modern music tech is based off of taking hardware for other purposes, like signal filters and saturators and such, and putting music and sounds through them and seeing how [they] change,” says Ingoldsby.For Cooper, learning from history and the existing body of knowledge, both artistically and technically, unlocks more creativity. “Adding more tools to your toolbox should never stop you from building something that you want to. It can only make it easier,” he says.Ingoldsby finds the unexpected, emergent effects of pushing hardware tools such as modular synthesizers to their limits most inspiring. “It increases in complexity, but it also increases in freedom.”Collaboration and communityMusic has always been a collective endeavor, fostering connection, ritual, and communal experiences. Advancements in music technology can both expand creative possibilities for live performers and foster new ways for musicians to gather and create.Cooper makes a direct link between his research in high-performance, low-latency computing to his work developing real-time music tools. Many music tools can only function well “offline,” Cooper poses. “For example, you’ll record something into your digital audio workstation on your computer, and then you’ll hit a button, and it will change the way it sounds. That’s super cool. But I think it’s even cooler if you can make that real-time. Can you change what the sound is coming out as you’re playing?” asks Cooper.The problem of speeding up the processing of sound, such that the time difference in input and output — latency — is imperceptible to human hearing, is a technical one. Cooper takes an interest in real-time timbre transfer that could, for example, change the sound coming from a saxophone as if it were coming from a cello. The problem intersects with common techniques in artificial intelligence research, he notes. Cooper’s work to improve the speed and efficiency of music software tools could provide new effects for digital music performers to manipulate audio in a live setting.With the rise of personal computing in the 2010s, Hattwick recounts, an appeal for “laptop ensembles” emerged to contemplate new questions about live music performance in a digitizing era. “What does it mean to perform music with a laptop? Why is that fun? Is a laptop an instrument?” he poses.In the Fabulous MIT Laptop Ensemble (FaMLE), directed by Hattwick, MIT students pursue music performance in a “living laboratory.” Driven by the interests of its members, FaMLE explores digital music, web audio, and live coding, an improvisational practice exposing the process of writing code to generate music. A member of FaMLE, Ingoldsby has found a place to situate his practice of sound design in a broader context.When emerging digital technologies interface with art, challenging questions arise regarding human creativity. Communities made of multidisciplinary people allow for the exchange of ideas to generate novel approaches to complex problems. “Engineers have a lot to offer performers,” says Cooper. “As technology progresses, I think it’s important we use that to further develop our abilities for creative practice, instead of substituting it.”Hattwick emphasizes, “The best way to explore this is together.”

Better Solid State Heat Pumps Through ScienceIf you need to cool something, the gold standard is using a gas compressor arrangement. Of course, there are definite downsides to that, like weight, power consumption, and vibrations. There are solid-state heat pumps — the kind you see in portable coolers, for example. But, they are not terribly efficient and have limited performance.
However, researchers at Johns Hopkins, working with Samsung, have developed a new thin-film thermoelectric heat pump, which they claim is easy to fabricate, scalable, and significantly more efficient. You can see a video about the new research below.
Manufacturing requires similar processes to solar cells, and the technology can make tiny heat pumps or — in theory — coolers that could provide air conditioning for large buildings. You can read the full paper in Nature.
CHESS stands for Controlled Hierarchically Engineered Superlattice Structures. These are nano-engineered thin-film superlattices (around 25 μm thick). The design optimizes their performance in this application.
The new devices claim to be 100% more efficient at room temperature than traditional devices. In practical devices, thermoelectric devices and the systems using them have improved by around 70% to 75%. The material can also harvest power from heat differences, such as body heat. The potential small size of devices made with this technology would make them practical for wearables.
We’ve looked at the traditional modules many times. They sometimes show up in cloud chambers.

Blue Cat Audio Miaow WahOriginally available only as a built-in plug-in inside the Axiom guitar software, Miaow Wah is capable of a wide range of filtering and modulation effects in addition to traditional Wah pedals simulations. The plug-in includes a wide variety of predefined Wah models inspired by legendary pedals, which can be controlled manually with an expression pedal, or can be triggered automatically with a built-in envelope follower (auto Wah) or an LFO that can be synced to your DAW. The plug-ins makes it easy to create your own Wah pedals or filtering effects from factory presets with the built-in Tone Maps browser or the Wah editor. Miaow Wah Plug-In Main Features: Augmented Wah pedal simulator. Use one of the 29 predefined classic Wah models or build your own. Control the filter with an expression pedal, the signal envelope (auto) or an LFO. Built-in Wah editor to create custom filters. Capable of flangy tones, univibes, phasing effects, filtered tremolos and more. Find new tones easily with the Tone Maps explorer. Sync the LFO with the host application. Includes more than 200 presets with many types of effects. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpaMho_JMyU&list=PLbLfuefKkpR3F_k8SQAJ2jbfZhblVawfZ Read More

Arturia introduce the MicroBrute UFO The latest Arturia instrument to arrive sporting a fresh lick of paint is the MicroBrute UFO, a refreshed version of the company’s ever-popular compact analogue monosynth. 

NIVA calls on DoJ, FTC to break Live Nation into four companiesThe National Independent Venue Association (NIVA) is calling on the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Department of Justice (DOJ) to break Live Nation and Ticketmaster into four separate companies.
The post NIVA calls on DoJ, FTC to break Live Nation into four companies appeared first on Hypebot.

“By the time it’s done the damage I’ll be retired – but ultimately, I believe it will be the end of mankind”: Gary Numan on the future of AIAI remains a hotly debated topic across most industries. In the music world, while some tout the technology’s potential to speed up creativity and production workflows, others have expressed concern that the data on which models are trained hasn’t been properly licensed.
The potential of artificial intelligence to outperform humans in various fields is a real concern for many, including Gary Numan, who – while he acknowledges he’s reaching retirement age – has pessimistic predictions for what the future holds.

READ MORE: Thomann Music Days 2025: Save BIG (up to 65%) on synths, controllers and plugins

When asked about the future of the technology in a new interview with MusicRadar, Numan admits that “there’s so many different ways of looking at AI”.
“I’m too old to fear it because by the time it’s done the damage it will do I’ll probably be retired… Ultimately, I believe it will be the end of mankind, but from an artistic point of view it will do amazing things.
“It will create amazing images and music and there will be avatar pop stars that look every bit like the real thing. You’ll probably go to gigs to watch them, just like you do with the ABBA Voyage show, which looks unbelievable and that’s only going to get better.
He goes on: “There will be a vast amount of AI bands that will all look beautiful and I’m sure they’ll have amazing artwork that probably moves and you’ll go to a gig and it’ll look as if they’re actually there, so we’re as replaceable as a fucking cotton bud.”
The music world was shown recently that AI artists can garner a following, when it was revealed that the Velvet Sundown, a “group” that had amassed nearly half a million Spotify monthly listeners, was the work of AI music generator Suno.
Despite his somewhat pessimistic outlook on the future of creativity, Numan acknowledges that AI “will do a lot of good as well”.
“It’s going to make amazing advances in technology, healthcare and diagnostics and so on, but it’s a pivotal moment in our history as far as the hierarchy of people making the decisions, and who’s ruining the planet.”
And what about AI’s potential to reinvigorate the brands of aging artists?
“If you’re a 17-year-old girl, who would you rather come and see, some 75-year-old bloke doddering around the stage with grey hair, which is what I’m going to be soon, or a young version of me that looks absolutely like he’s there, all young and pretty?” Numan says.
“Once you’ve got used to the fact that you’re looking at virtual people that will be the future. If we survive long enough, at some point it might go full circle and people will want to listen to somebody that suffered the way they suffered, rather than somebody doing an interpretation of somebody that suffered. How pessimistic is that? [Laughs]”
The post “By the time it’s done the damage I’ll be retired – but ultimately, I believe it will be the end of mankind”: Gary Numan on the future of AI appeared first on MusicTech.

FKFX Audio releases FREE Obvious Filter 2 Lite Morphing Filter Plugin
FKFX Audio has released Obvious Filter 2 Lite (OF2 Lite), a free filter plugin for macOS and Windows. OF2 Lite is the streamlined version of Obvious Filter 2, the follow-up to the original Obvious Filter, which we previously covered in 2021. Despite being a freebie, OF2 Lite packs in a surprising amount of functionality and creative power. At [...]
View post: FKFX Audio releases FREE Obvious Filter 2 Lite Morphing Filter Plugin

Indie Artist’s Ultimate Guide to Music MarketingMusic marketing is no longer about chasing trends or posting nonstop. This guide to music marketing reveals how independent artists can build lasting fan relationships using a clear strategy, authentic content, and the right tools.
The post Indie Artist’s Ultimate Guide to Music Marketing appeared first on Hypebot.

Flechtwerk is a FREE retro-inspired synth plugin by Ternär Music Technology
Ternär Music Technology has released Flechtwerk, a free synthesizer plugin for Windows, macOS, and Linux in VST3 and CLAP formats. Flechtwerk is based on the Mutable Instruments Plaits module and its latest 1.2 firmware. I haven’t used the Eurorack module, but it appears that Ternär Music Technology has managed to cram all of its functionality [...]
View post: Flechtwerk is a FREE retro-inspired synth plugin by Ternär Music Technology

The Crow Hill Company relaunch Vaults The Crow Hill Company have announced that their series of free sample libraries and virtual instruments has returned to their website. 

My Forever Studio: Howard Benson says tech can’t save bad songsWith a career spanning nearly 40 years, Grammy-nominated producer Howard Benson has shaped the sound of artists such as Less Than Jake, My Chemical Romance, Bon Jovi, and Kelly Clarkson.
On this episode of My Forever Studio, brought to you in partnership with Audient, the studio legend shares his fiercely pragmatic view on the most important aspects of music production, confessions about the impossibly rare synths he yearns for, and reveals the secret behind monitoring through a humble pair of $79 speakers.
Along the way, discover his thoughts on AI’s musical future, why “demo-itis” is every producer’s enemy, and which ultra-luxe item he’d demand for his Forever Studio setup.

The My Forever Studio podcast – created in partnership with Audient – sees artists, producers, and engineers create their dream fantasy Forever Studio, wherever they want in the universe. However, hosts Chris Barker and Will Betts impose some strict rules in the Forever Studio. Our guests are permitted a limited number of items in their creative space, so they must choose carefully. There will be nostalgia. There will be anecdotes. There may be gags. But there will be no bundles!
In our last episode, British multi-instrumentalist and producer Emma-Jean Thackray joined us at TYX Studios following the release of her album, Weirdo. In the episode, she discusses how she got into jazz by accident, her early arrangement experiments with her brass band, and we explore building her analogue-heavy studio with an older version of Logic Pro.

Subscribe to My Forever Studio on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and check out all episodes so far via MusicTech.
The post My Forever Studio: Howard Benson says tech can’t save bad songs appeared first on MusicTech.