GEAR + TECH
Snap and Live Nation to Launch Augmented Reality Experiences at EDC Las Vegas
Snapchat and Live Nation have teamed up to create a series of custom concert experiences in the world of augmented reality, starting with EDC Las Vegas later this month. After inking the high-profile partnership, Snap and Live Nation will work together on AR content for over a dozen music festivals in 2022, including Austin City Limits, Beyond Wonderland, Bonnaroo, Day Trip, Lollapalooza, Rolling Loud, Governors Ball and more. At the recent Snap Partner Summit, the company declared that augmented reality has the potential to become a new creative medium. “We can leverage this huge user base we have in a way that will make augmented reality the next phase of visual expression for artists,” said Snap’s Senior VP of Content and Partnerships, Ben Schwerin. In a statement, Schw...
3LAU Explains How NFTs Are Shaping the Music Collections of the Future
3LAU‘s NFT marketplace Royal is on a mission to revolutionize the nostalgic pastime of collecting music. After launching in the second half of 2021, the platform quickly amassed a $55 million war chest in a funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz. Since then, Royal has facilitated attention-grabbing NFT collections, including offerings from Diplo and Nas. Last month, Darya Pourshasb, former Director of Premium Content Strategy at Spotify, made the leap to join Royal’s leadership team with an eagerness to continue growing the brand’s partnerships within the artist community. While the industry at-large appears to be lining up behind Royal, 3LAU remains laser-focused on illuminating the emotional and intrinsic value of music NFTs for consumers. Speaking on T...
Discover Candy Cult, a Festival-Focused NFT Collection Supporting Women In Music
Candy Cult is a Web3 community with a cause. In music industry professions across the board, women and marginalized groups continue to be underrepresented. With the proliferation of NFT technology, Candy Cult’s cofounders, Brooke and Nick, identified an opportunity to help move the needle. Candy Cult is a collection of 6,666 digital collectibles, randomly generated using a library of over 100 unique characteristics. The animated avatars are fashionably ready for festival season and not totally unlike the fans you’d find in the desert of Coachella, or the urban park grounds of Lollapalooza. Candy Cult is an acknowledgement that few things are sweeter than festival season. Following the public sale, Candy Cult is committed to supporting charitable organizations focused on the emp...
deadmau5’s 720Mau5 Venture Fund Joins $10.4 Million Raise to Support Future of LimeWire
The music industry and major cryptocurrency institutions are getting behind LimeWire‘s quest to forge a new path. LimeWire, the company synonymous with online piracy, closed up shop a dozen years ago, but under new management, the brand has returned to embark on a new initiative that may just right the wrongs of its past. Limewire’s new mission statement is to “bring digital collectibles to everyone, no matter the budget or the tech-savviness,” the company writes. The advent of Web3 and NFT technology has given LimeWire a new lease on life and—this time around—a means to get artists their fair share of the metaphorical pie. A new funding round led by Arrington Capital, Kraken Ventures, and GSR Ventures has provided the LimeWire team with over $10 million to ex...
Kygo and Ryan Tedder Unite As Animated NFT Band, Bored Brothers
As electronic music artists continue to adopt NFTs to offer fans unique experiences, industry heavyweights and Bored Ape owners Kygo and Ryan Tedder are now making a collaborative foray into the Web3 space. Kygo and the OneRepublic frontman are longtime creative collaborators, writing on a number of tracks and even performing together on Coachella’s main stage in 2018. They’ve now joined forces to launch Bored Brothers, an animated NFT band featuring their Bored Ape likenesses. For those unfamiliar, the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) is the world’s preeminent collection of digital collectibles, currently selling for over $300,000 each. The NFT collection counts Madonna, Mark Cuban, Steve Aoki, Justin Bieber and Paris Hilton—among many others—as token holders and ...
Artist Plugs Mushrooms Into a Synthesizer and Makes Blissful Electronic Music
Mushrooms aren’t always used for their hallucinogenic effects. They are used to create music, too. Artist and composer Tarun Nayar, who creates and performs music under the moniker Modern Biology, plugged mushrooms into a synthesizer and wrote music with the electrical waves the fungi produce. To achieve this sound, he places electrodes into the mushrooms and wires them up to his soundboard, allowing electrical signals to flow through the plants and trigger a synthesizer before turning them into sounds that humans can hear. Nayar has also written music with watermelon, cacao, mango, and cactus. His raving mushrooms don’t have a method to their madness, as to be expected with nature. This unique ability to transform electrical waves from mushrooms and other objects has given Nay...
Swedish House Mafia Are Performing the First-Ever Real-Time DJ Set On Spotify
What a week it’s been for Swedish House Mafia. After last night’s release of their long-awaited debut album, Paradise Again, the legendary electronic music trio have another first in the works: the first-ever real-time DJ set hosted on Spotify. The streaming giant is reportedly hosting an exclusive Coachella event tonight, April 15th, live from the Indio desert. Fans will be able to tune into a live DJ set by Swedish House Mafia directly on the band’s Spotify artist page. “We’re excited to partner with Spotify for a special album release celebration with our fans on Friday, April 15, as we release Paradise Again and return to the stage after so long this weekend,” Swedish House Mafia said in a joint statement, per Digital Music News. “It’...
Dirtybird Launches Metaverse Nightclub, Birdhain
Dance music tastemaker Dirtybird is opening the doors to its very own Web3 nightclub, Birdhain, in its own metaverse, Birdyverse. A nod to the famous Berlin nightclub Berghain, it’s 24-7-365 virtual nightclub with DJ sets running every day and night, all year-round. Dirtybird cofounder Claude VonStroke will launch the venue today, April 13th, and will feature DJ sets from the Dirtybird roster, including Nikki Nair, Justin Jay, Mz Worthy and Catz ‘n Dogz, among others. The Birdyverse at large is open to anyone with a cryptocurrency wallet, like MetaMask, but you must hold a Dirtybird Flight Club NFT to enter Birdhain. Once connected, users will be able to roam, chat, explore and interact with the mysterious island, which is shaped like a cracked egg. Dirtybird cofounder Claude V...
How Madeon and a Team of Architects Designed the Hallucinatory “Good Faith” Experience—And Blew Everyone’s Mind
They say ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind—and Madeon has four of them. The French electronic music virtuoso, whose real name is Hugo Leclercq, is currently on his “Good Faith Forever” tour, where he’s been baffling ravers with a new, pupil-popping stage production. But just like any groundbreaking show, there’s more to it than meets the eye. Four visual artists, Shinichiro Fujita, OSEAN, Mollie Tarlow and Mike Kluge, function as the brainstem of “Good Faith Forever” as well as its illusory encore, which finds Madeon lifted atop a giant cylindrical structure as his silhouette morphs into the tour’s phantasmagoric imagery. Their cerebral work, Leclercq says, has shaped not only the tour, but also his own cre...
Absolut Vodka Teams Up With Swedish House Mafia to Create Album-Themed Cocktail
It’s time to pour it up for the return of Swedish House Mafia. In anticipation of the iconic dance music trio’s upcoming closing performance on Sunday night of Coachella 2022, Absolut Vodka is assisting fans with finding paradise. Absolut’s new “Paradise (Again) Paloma” blends the brand’s refreshing grapefruit vodka with a tangy dash of lime juice, soda water, and a sweet Swedish Fish garnish to top it all off. The summertime citrus beverage is being sold as a pre-packaged craft cocktail blend for easy mixing. Even better, with the release of Swedish House Mafia’s debut album Paradise Again looming just around the corner on April 15th, those not attending Coachella will still have the opportunity to join in the conversation. Absolut VodkaR...
A Sound Artist Translated Air Pollution Data Into Music
Researchers from the University of Birmingham are thinking creatively about how to highlight the often imperceptible impacts of air pollution. A subsection of the university’s “The Air We Breathe” exhibition, the project, titled “Sounding Out Pollution,” transforms air quality data into music. The offering includes three unique sonic interpretations of pollution, each leveraging air quality data from locations throughout the U.K. The pieces each explore a unique creative concept, including one that captures the subtle changes in pollution by the hour across the West Midlands and another which juxtaposes pollution data between the countryside and major cities throughout the country. Take a listen to the sonifications below. Scroll to Continue Recommended Articl...
New VR Experience Beams You Into an Illegal 1989 Acid House Rave
A new virtual reality experience allows you to go back to 1989 and rave to acid house music in Coventry. “In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats” opened to the public on March 29th and is directed by Darren Emerson. The VR experience transports users back in time to when thousands of people would attend illegal raves in warehouses, woodlands, and fields around England. Viewers are dropped into the shoes of the era’s rave culture progenitors, and will be able to explore music poster-filled bedrooms, pirate radio stations, police headquarters, and secret warehouses. Scroll to Continue Recommended Articles “With ‘In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats’ I want to take audiences back to the thrill of one night in 1989, to use this immersive experience to re-examine...
