Between his music, acting, podcast, activism, and businesses, Vic Mensa wears a lot of hats.
The music streaming platform is reportedly aiming to release the feature, which would allow users to prompt AI-generated remixes and covers of participating songs, in the first quarter of 2027. This is expected to be a paid add-on for Premium subscribers, with Spotify considering charging an additional $4 to $5 a month.
[Financial Times]
The world has plenty of guitar amps, but amps designed for synths are much rarer. Moog’s new Model 210 ($999) and Model 112 ($799) are full-range, flat-response (FRFR) cabs designed especially for synths, keyboards, drum machines, and other electronic music instruments. There are no tubes here, but they do have a fully analog signal path.
Wintory, the composer for Journey, some songs in Hades II, and many other games, shared tracks he had recorded with a full orchestra as part of “conversations” to potentially be part of the now-canceled next game in the Mass Effect franchise.
After hearing this music and seeing the game’s leaked trailer, I think I’ll always wonder what could have been.
Walker’s 2006 album is unsettling, bizarre, and the perfect way to kill a party.
Some Kind of Animal, the latest record from Fielded, jumps from slinky R&B, to neo-soul, to industrial funk.
The keys were always the worst part of the MPK lineup, so the “upgraded keybed” is good news, even though it’s clearing a pretty low bar. But Akai’s pads remain the best in the biz, and the second-gen MPK Mini Plus adds polyphonic aftertouch. Plus, it’s got a full-color display and more hands-on controls than the original.
LLMs have led to an explosion of custom firmware and hacks for synths, samplers, and grooveboxes.
Dinosaur Jr.’s frontman finally addresses the AI video for ‘Old Friends.’
In January 2024, the label announced a major cost-cutting initiative that is expected to run through 2027. As another round of layoffs is expected, several executives are leaving, including Tunji Balogun, Chairman and CEO of Def Jam Recordings; Nicole Wyskoarko and Sam Riback of Interscope Geffen A&M; Ben Mortimer, President of Polydor Label Group; Rebecca Allen, Chief Artist and Strategy Officer at Universal Music Group UK; and Mark Crossingham, Managing Director of UMG Ireland.
The new on/off toggle, arriving by the end of the year, lets you exclude “AI-generated tracks, albums, and the related artists” from search results. Deezer also launched an AI music detection tool earlier this year, after a surge in AI song uploads on its platform.
Nearly 20 years into her music career Wonder Girls’ Sunmi is staying humble, but persistent.
Mayor Emmanuel Grégoire announced the decision to honor the French-Tunisian music producer on Friday. In a post on Instagram, he said, “By naming a square in Paris after him, we pay tribute to a truly great artist. But we also affirm that rap, electronic music, and popular culture are integral to our shared heritage.”
The band’s latest album, Marrow Deep, is getting a limited-edition vinyl pressing that has actual ground-up mastodon teeth in it. The band was given a bag of the fossils 20 years ago. They weren’t display quality, so they decided to do something special with them. Only 170 are available, and they’re being sold via raffle.
If you’re tired of the Spotify desktop app gobbling up a big chunk of your computer’s RAM, Spotifast for Linux, macOS, and Windows takes a leaner approach and typically needs just 100 to 250MB. A Spotify Premium account is required to actually stream music instead of just browsing, and if you need another reason to switch, Spotifast includes a Mini Player that supports Winamp 2 skins.
Michael Smith, who pleaded guilty earlier this year, was also ordered to pay over $8 million. According to the DOJ, that’s the amount he earned in royalties from using bots to stream hundreds of thousands of AI-generated songs from 2017 to 2024.
[U.S. Attorney's Office, Southern District of New York]
It took only about a week for someone to take the source code from the adorable but discontinued sampler and turn it into a free virtual instrument called NIBBI. You can download it and play it as a standalone app, open it in your DAW, or just tinker with it in your browser.
[Temecula DSP]
The feature is rolling out to Spotify Premium subscribers, presenting you with questions about music trivia, album cover art, and audio track previews. You can find a music quiz by scrolling down on the “Now Playing” view of a participating artist’s song.
Spotify is launching the feature in 11 countries, including the US, UK, Canada, Ireland, and Australia, with more than 2,000 supported artists.
According to the Financial Times, that’s nearly double the 135,000 takedown requests Sony Music had previously sent for AI tracks imitating its artists, like Harry Styles, Adele, and Britney Spears. Over the past year, Sony has also filed lawsuits against AI music platforms like Suno and Udio over copyright infringement.
[Financial Times]
Are you streaming only? Have you dug out your old iPod? Have a massive vinyl collection? I want to know which music formats you listen to most and why. I’ve been buying more on Bandcamp, ripped all my CDs, and started carrying around an iPod again. But I haven’t been able to ditch streaming completely.
If Trent Reznor studied musical theater instead of computer engineering NIN might have sounded like Prick.
As head of Splice, CEO Kakul Srivastava has tried to carefully thread the line on AI music tools.
Ok, let’s be honest, it’s not much of a competition. The AI songs suck, and it’s pretty easy to tell which is human and which is AI when compared side by side. But the diary-style detailing of the songwriting process for both illustrates just how low-effort AI music is.
You know the deal: every dollar you spend today goes straight to the artist. I’ve got a handful of albums I’ve been eyeing for a while but haven’t picked up yet, like Sophie Birch’s latest. But my priority today is the new Gilla Band record, Pugnello, which absolutely rips.
