Music news. Beyond the headlines.
Writer
Julian Park can get distracted by a drum sound for an unreasonable amount of time. A strange synthesizer patch or a clever bit of sampling can send him down a rabbit hole that lasts most of an afternoon.
His tastes lean heavily toward house, techno, synth-pop, ambient, and experimental electronic music. He's fascinated by the relationship between technology and creativity, particularly the ways producers find new uses for equipment that wasn't necessarily designed to do what they're asking of it.
He's also surprisingly fond of restraint. A sparse arrangement with three perfectly chosen sounds interests him more than a production packed with layers that have nowhere to go. Julian enjoys pulling recordings apart in his head, figuring out what makes them tick, and occasionally realizing that the simplest explanation was the right one all along.
Apple Music is becoming a physical place in London. Apple has opened Apple Music Hall, a purpose-built 600-capacity live venue inside Battersea Power Station that combines an intimate concert room with Spatial Audio recording, multicamera video production and global livestreaming infrastructure. The venue includes a configurable 38-foot-wide stage and a…
The company behind the UK’s official music charts has launched a professional analytics platform that opens far more of the sales and streaming data sitting underneath the weekly rankings. Official Charts PRO went live September 21st for UK and Irish music data, giving record labels, managers, distributors, publishers, artists and…
Ed Sheeran walked into Lincoln Financial Field on September 19th with no billed opening acts, a reshaped backing lineup and a week of controversy hanging over his Loop Tour. More than three hours later, he called the Philadelphia concert the best show he had ever played. The performance was Sheeran’s…
Chad Gilbert, the founding New Found Glory guitarist and songwriter who helped connect pop-punk hooks with hardcore weight, died Sunday, September 20th. He was 45. Gilbert died peacefully in his sleep surrounded by friends and family, with his wife, Lisa Cimorelli, and his mother, Jackie, beside him. New Found Glory…
Kareen Lomax has spent years writing songs that ended up in other artists’ catalogs and lending her voice to records by Diplo and others. On NAJI, released September 18th, she gives that accumulated experience the scale of a full album built entirely around her own story. The 13-track debut arrives…
Migu Music and Huawei Software have won an IDC China Artificial Intelligence Innovation Award for an AI operations system already running inside the Chinese streaming platform’s production environment, putting artificial intelligence to work far below the layer listeners normally see. The companies received the Best Agent Practice Award for their…
Tone Capone, the Bay Area producer who turned Luniz’s “I Got 5 On It” into one of the most recognizable records in West Coast hip-hop, has died at 59. Capone, born Anthony Douglas Gilmour, died Saturday, September 12th. Close family members shared news of his death the following day, according…
Spotify is bringing independent labels into its upcoming fan-made covers and remixes product through a new licensing agreement with Merlin, expanding a generative AI project that had initially been announced with Universal Music Group. The agreement, announced August 4th, gives artists on labels covered by Merlin’s Spotify deal the option…
Notes.fm has raised $5 million as the music-fintech startup expands from finding missing artist royalties into distributing new releases itself. The move puts Notes earlier in the life of a song, before incomplete credits, registrations or ownership information have a chance to turn into missing money. Zach Bryan, Benny Blanco…
Universal Music Group is suing digital music distributor DistroKid, accusing the company of enabling copyright infringement and distributing large volumes of AI-generated material that UMG says competes with legitimate artists for listeners and royalties. UMG Recordings, Capitol Records and Capitol CMG filed the lawsuit September 15 in the U.S. District…