Music

While on his “The World’s First World Tour” with plans to play on all seven continents, the vocalist, producer, filmmaker, and professional scooter rider was one of six people killed after two helicopters collided over Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. O Globo reports that after the crash on Sunday, one of the helicopters fell into an electric car dealership’s parking lot, sparking a fire that burned dozens of cars.

Spotify’s bringing its editor commentary from The Drop Weekly to its New Music Friday playlist, so you can hear from the playlist’s curators about why they picked some of their weekly new release highlights. This week they’re spotlighting Olivia Rodrigo, Ayra Starr, ANOTR, Adéla, and Emei.

WMG has agreed to buy Sureel AI — an attribution company that uses “AI DNA” to track how artists’ content is used to train generative AI models — for an undisclosed sum. The startup will continue to operate as a standalone platform.

The audio streaming platform has reportedly approached concert promoters to obtain licensing rights to show live video of music festivals, and has already starting to add some live event videos, including a show Dua Lipa hosted in Mexico City. Last month, Spotify announced new tools for reserving concert tickets.

Yes, and he wasn’t the only deceased figure to make an appearance in the “Tupac & Cast Reveal Trailer,” at last night’s event. It also featured the likeness of Bunta Sugawara, a legendary Japanese actor who died in 2014.

Bjooks has published several coffee-table books exploring musical instrument design, the history of Roland, the world of guitar pedals, and more. Its latest covers the evolution of drum machines from 1959’s Wurlitzer Side Man to modern oddities from Erica Synths. There’s only two days left to back it on Kickstarter, though.

The company just raised $250 million in November against a $2.45 billion valuation — already a staggering jump from its roughly $500 million valuation in 2024. Now it’s more than doubled its valuation to $5.4 billion in just over six months, suggesting that investors haven’t been scared off by looming lawsuits.

The idea of a pedal with swappable, console-style effects cards isn’t new. But they don’t normally use actual video game console carts. There’s even a synth cart that you control with an N64 controller. Sadly, the base unit is currently sold out on the Console Pedals Etsy shop.

Ableton’s custom controller had little precedent when it was first conceived. Designer Jesse Terry says, “I chopped up a bunch of other products and sampled the parts of them that I wanted.” Then, he attached them to a Lego board so he could quickly experiment with various layouts.

Some code spotted in a recent Apple Music beta for Android includes messages referring to “Premium Access” and a “skip limit.” That suggests a free or low-cost plan is in the works. Right now, Apple Music is an all-or-nothing affair after retiring the Voice Plan in 2023.

Ackman, through his Pershing Square hedge fund, had offered in April to take over UMG in a deal valuing the music giant at around €55 billion. But UMG says that the offer “fundamentally and materially undervalues UMG and will not deliver superior value creation.”

Its new Music v2 model can generate songs that can switch from opera to heavy metal mid-track, while handling faster rap delivery and non-musical sound effects, according to ElevenLabs. The new model is available today and is trained “only on licensed data and cleared for commercial use.”

The agency is looking to partner with filmmakers, musicians, writers, poets, and artists to help tell the story behind programs such as the Artemis Moon missions and the Space Reactor-1 Freedom mission to Mars. But get your proposals in ASAP, the window closes on Tuesday, June 30th.

Jared Leto’s band Thirty Seconds to Mars is (for real, this time?) using Sam Altman’s World eye-scanning orb to stop bots, reports The San Francisco Standard:

It’s already available on iOS, and coming to Android soon. Google is also adding granular editing tools for changing portions of an AI-generated song, tweaking beat drops, or rewriting lyrics. It’s also adding the ability to generate “covers” and music videos, so you can countrify that punk song you prompted.

The musician, producer, and long-time Taylor Swift collaborator described people who use generative AI tools as “Godless whores” in a rant on Instagram:

Bobby Prince’s 1993 soundtrack for Doom is one of 25 recordings being inducted into the Library of Congress this year, a lineup that also includes Taylor Swift’s “1989” album and Beyoncé‘s “Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It).”

Managed accounts, which offer a music-only experience with parental controls for the under-13 set, were previously reserved for Premium Family subscribers. Now, free users can also create kids accounts, with their own playlists, suggestions, and wrapped experiences. It’s coming to Argentina, Colombia, Denmark, Italy, New Zealand, and Sweden first.

After being announced in August, 2024, Subvert opened its doors on May 12th, 2026. It’s a music co-op where over 20,000 artist members are the owners. They set the policies, and there are no fees. It’s also one of the few platforms to ban AI content and training. Definitely check it out.

We’re still a ways out from Pokémon Wind and Waves’s release on the Switch 2 some time next year, but The Pokémon Company has just uploaded a video of the NHK Symphony Orchestra recording the games’ main theme to tide us all over.

Spotify initially acknowledged there were “some issues” with the app at 12:49PM ET and gave the all clear at 4:57PM ET.

Charli xcx just invested in Nothing and was announced as the company’s first global brand ambassador. For their first promotion together the startup claims it had the singer wear the Nothing Headphone A for five days straight to test their 135-hour battery life.

Like Roland’s flagship, Polyend Drums combines analog and digital drum synthesis, with samples, powerful sequencing features, and a ton of hands-on controls, including a morphing fader. It’s also expensive as hell at $2,699. But it might be the last drum machine you ever need.