MusicTech Rewinder - Issue #57

Hey there,

thanks again for subscribing to my weekly digest. A few things before we enter the music tech news section of this week.

********

Every music fan knows the roster of iconic artists who died young, particularly those who passed around age 27, and gained unfortunate membership in what some have deemed the “27 Club.”

When the cause is preventable, such as suicide or addiction, the tragedy can be all the more painful. With such prevention as a goal, the Canadian nonprofit Over the Bridge was created by a team of music veterans and health experts to raise awareness about mental illness in the industry and to provide resources for those struggling with it. Last month, the organization partnered with Google’s Magenta, an A.I. program that analyzes an artist’s past works and learns how to compose new tracks in a similar style, to create the Lost Tapes of the 27 Club, a series of songs meant to sound like posthumous releases by late rock legends including Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, and Amy Winehouse. The algorithm studied around two dozen tracks by each artist in order to identify the traits and tendencies exhibited in guitar solos, bass lines, drum patterns, and lyrics.

******

AMAZING NEWS! Clubs are now cultural institutions here in Germany.

Over a year of campaigning has led to a milestone moment for German clubs. According to the Live Musik Kommission, an almost unanimous vote yesterday was in favor of a recommendation to change clubs and live venues from entertainment sites to cultural sites. Tomorrow, Friday, May 7th, it will be presented to the federal government for final consent. The vote follows over a year of work from the multi-party Parliamentary Forum For Club Culture & Nightlife. They proposed that the law is changed so that building regulations deem clubs and live venues, with demonstrable value, as cultural sites. They also propose a clause about noise limits.

******

Read this great story about Andrew Hall, a fan who followed the legendary German band Can around in the 1970s with a Sony cassette recorder hidden in his trousers. Only through his fandom and illicit actions, a series of concert albums by the influential band were made possible. Big up to all bootleggers and music pirates out there.

Enjoy reading and have a fantastic weekend.

Cheers,

Matt

I've spent a lot of my time over this past pandemic year improving my skills with Digital Audio Workshop software. I also feel like I tend to have a pretty keen eye for identifying issues around colonialism. Yet somehow, I never considered the relationship between the two until I read this Pitchfork article about Khyam…

Performing rights organizations turned 170 years old on Feb. 28 this year. I forgot to get them something, but they pocket billions of dollars of songwriters' royalties each year, so let's call it even.

Sony launched the Digital Audio Tape in 1987 which enabled a new wave of homegrown music production..

Home of CTM – Festival for Adventurous Music and Art, Berlin.

Services like Spotify and Apple Music pulled the business back from the brink. But artists say they can’t make a living. And their complaints are getting louder.

Instrumental spots hidden gems before they go big. But is it ruining music?

The metaverse, along with things like the seemingly all-pervasive NFTs, is one of those buzzy ideas that feels like the future but can be hard to grasp.

Analysis by Julie Knibbe – Research and findings led by Parth Sinha and Pavel Telica Music is a major cultural aspect of society. The inter-relationship between music, technology, society and…

Swiss medical audio giant Sonova has purchased Sennheiser’s consumer business of headphones, earbuds, and soundbars. Sennheiser said it was looking for a buyer for the division in February. The purchase price is €200 million ($241 million).

The pandemic-defined 2020 was an outlier year across digital entertainment, with the extra 12% of time consumers spent with entertainment boosting everything, including music. One of the effects was that streaming grew more than it would have otherwise, delaying the inevitable slowdown in streaming revenue growth. This artificial 2020 boost meant that the slowdown impact was felt…