GEAR + TECH
A Track Sung By an AI Voice Has Eclipsed 100 Million Streams
While artists work hard to produce new music for fans and increase their streaming numbers, an A.I. has effortlessly recorded a song that eclipsed 100 million streams. According to a report by Music Business Worldwide, Chinese streaming giant Tencent Music Entertainment (TME) has recorded and released over 1,000 new songs that feature AI-generated vocals mimicking the human voice. One track in particular, titled “Today,” has become the first song with an AI voice to surpass the nine-digit milestone. That led to just under $350,000 in streaming revenue, per MBW. The songs use TME’s “patented voice synthesis technology,” Lingyin Engine, which is said to be able to replicate the voices of real-life singers to produce original songs throughout any genre and language. The company also repo...
All the Best Gadgets to Give a DJ for the Holidays
‘Tis the season and—love it or hate it—that time of year distinguished by the celebratory buying and exchanging of gifts is closing in fast. For many, shopping for a gift is relatively straightforward. But for others, it never gets easier. Take the DJ of the family, for instance. Most of us don’t have Santa’s eerily on-target ESP so what’s a loved one to get them? Apart from a deep dive into the weird world that makes them the wonderful person they are, it can be almost impossible. Fortunately, EDM.com has your back. Over the course of the last month, we spent more than 40 hours turning knobs and pushing buttons on all the best gadgets we could get our hands on. We went to stores, factories and corporate offices hundreds of miles apart to test out the newest headphones, speakers and ...
World’s First Car-Powered DJ Set to Be Fueled Entirely From Electric Vehicle Battery
Luxury automaker Genesis Motor is jumpstarting the DJ booth for a night powered completely by the battery of their electric SUV, the GV60. Genesis is pulling up to power the global livestream set, which will be free to all viewers. The Korean automaker is teaming up with Grammy-nominated DJ and dance music producer Jayda G to soundtrack the night. She’ll be supported by Korean artist Didi Han. While the idea to create a full-fledged nightlife experience powered entirely by a car battery would ordinarily seem unlikely to succeed, Genesis’ GV60 is well-equipped for the effort. The vehicle’s proprietary vehicle-to-load technology allows the car to channel its energy towards powering outside devices. The car will be doing some heavy lifting, but for perspectiv...
AI-Powered Stem Creation Company AudioShake Wins Big at 2022 Music Tectonics Conference
Lose contact with your mix engineer? AudioShake’s got you covered. Picture this: you get hit up by a music supervisor at Netflix. They want to use your track, but they need the stems in six hours. You recorded it three years ago and don’t have a way of contacting the engineer who has the stems. So you have to pass on the opportunity, costing you tens of thousands of dollars in sync licensing fees and future performance royalties. That’s where AudioShake comes in. Powered by artificial intelligence, the AudioShake platform gives musicians the ability to create stems out of a single audio file in a number of formats, like MP3, WAV or FLAC. The program then works its magic to produce high-quality stems of the song’s various elements, like guitar, vocals, syn...
Teenage Engineering Unveils Intricate Choir of Wooden Vocalizing “Doll” Synths
Teenage Engineering is bringing the vocal range of a full choir to your home studio. The Swedish hardware company has always been forward-thinking when it comes to production functionality and design, like their portable pocket synth series and Record Factory, the company’s at-home solution for allowing musicians to print their own 5″ vinyl records. Now, the developer has returned with a new studio weapon, the Teenage Engineering Choir. The choir consists of an eight-piece set of crafted wooden “dolls,” each equipped to “sing” with its own unique vocal pattern. Each doll was created with the influence of a specific musical culture in mind and when placed together, they are capable of recognizing each other in the space. They can then deliver harmonized performances. Scroll to Continue Reco...
Watch This Innovative Record Player Create Music From Plastic Waste
What’s the legacy humans are leaving behind? It was precisely that profound question which the design team of Ujoo + Limheeyoung began to consider when crafting “Song From Plastic,” a device capable of playing back makeshift records inscribed into discarded pieces of plastic. “After tens of thousands of years have passed, the sound of an extinct existence comes from plastic fossils discovered by future intelligent life,” the duo writes. Though it’s an unsettling, big picture view of humanity’s legacy, “Song From Plastic” is also a reminder of what makes humanity special. In contrast to the shallow plastic “fossils” we are leaving behind, the artists sought to outfit the discarded waste with ordinary everyday sounds and...
This Innovative Music Production Tool Turns Your Voice Into MIDI In Real Time
Having the right tools and processes that allow for frictionless output of creative ideas is paramount to any musician’s workflow. This notion is a key pillar of London-based Vochlea Music, an audio company empowering creatives with Dubler 2. The advanced voice-to-MIDI desktop application uses the most intuitive instrument of all, the human voice, to effortlessly print musical ideas into MIDI. Dubler 2 is a standalone app which connects to any DAW. It comes with a game-changing “MIDI Capture” AU/VST plugin, which musicians can utilize to produce and manipulate vocal-driven beats without even touching a keyboard. It’s important to note that Dubler 2 is compatible only with dynamic microphones. After you’ve connected your mic (the same way you would an external ...
David Guetta and MORTEN Team Up With Web3 Company to Develop “Future Rave” Metaverse
The future rave movement is formally planting its stake in the music industry’s next digital frontier. The genre’s foremost faces, David Guetta and MORTEN, recently formalized their new Future Rave record label before dropping its inaugural single, “Element.” As it turns out, the duo had even more up their sleeves when it comes to world-building around their collaborative endeavors. Crypto Blockchain Industries (CBI) has announced that Guetta and MORTEN will be teaming up with the Parisian Web3 company to bring the future rave genre to the metaverse. The forthcoming experience will become a part of CBI’s AlphaVerse, according to a press release. Scroll to Continue Recommended Articles In just a few short years, the future rave genre has blossomed from hum...
SoundCloud’s New Bot Allows Discord Users to Access Its 320 Million Tracks
SoundCloud is launching their very own Discord bot. The new integration will allow Discord server owners to add the bot so its users can more easily discover music within the instant messaging social platform. Discord users will be able to listen to recent tracks they’ve liked on SoundCloud, stream music from artists they follow on the platform and discover new music through its discovery algorithm based on tags, genres and moods. Once added, members will be able to search SoundCloud’s vast library of more than 320 million tracks—over three times more than Apple Music’s current catalog—without having to leave Discord. It’s worth noting that anybody can upload music and audio to SoundCloud, so there aren’t many barriers beyond its auto...
Innovative Music Tech Companies Receive €100K After Winning ADE Startup Competition
Last Spring, the Amsterdam Dance Event and venture capital firm Antler asked the industry for their forward-thinking ideas in music tech. This week, two winning concepts were crowned, with each receiving six figures of investment. The ADE & Antler Startup Competition received more than 100 entries, but after a rigorous interview and pitch process, the pool was ultimately narrowed to just a handful of finalists who made their final pitch at Felix Meritis during ADE. Un:hurd is an artist-facing platform which helps creators better leverage their data and promotional insights through the help of artificial intelligence. The company was founded in 2019 by Alex Brees. The second winner, SYNKii, developed a clear use case as a result of the pandemic. Calling itself “the profession...
Ableton’s Mobile App, Note, Has Arrived
Digital audio workstation Ableton has launched Note, a brand new mobile application on iOS. It’s available now for $5.99. According to Ableton’s website, “Note is a place to start ideas, experiment with sounds, and find direction. As part of your regular music-making routine, it can help you hone the skill of starting or ease into a creative headspace at the start of a session.” Note comes built-in with drum kits, melodic instruments and a variety of synths, but users are also able to record their own sounds in to craft their own library. While it’s significantly cheaper than the desktop version of Ableton, it’s also not a replacement. Ableton’s full suite is built into the desktop software. Scroll to Continue Recommended A...
Slice Up Drums With This Pizza-Inspired Beatmaking Plugin
Software is the lifeblood of today’s music creator economy, and the new Beat Scholar plugin is innovating drum sequencing for a new generation of producers. The plugin incorporates a unique system of pizza-like buttons, which allow users to more granularly and flexibly program their drum hits than ever before. The plugin allows users to create their own unique sequences with varied denominations between one and 42. With the simple click and hold of the mouse, users can “split pizzas” and drag sounds into their workspace. The program includes a sampler and a master effects area for good measure. At more advanced levels of the tool, the unique layering of tracks additionally allows producers to combine two different time signatures within the scope of a single ar...
