GEAR + TECH
Win a Pair of Pioneer DJ’s Sleek, Ergonomic HDJ-CX Headphones
If you can count on Pioneer DJ for one thing, it’s innovation. The leading DJ equipment and music production tools company has now launched the HDJ-CX, a brand new pair of headphones engineered for agile performance mixing. The on-ear headphones were built to deliver comfort, a high level of sound insulation and, perhaps most of all, durability. But how strong are they really? The HDJ-CX model passed the U.S. Military’s MIL-STD-810H, a shock testing standard used to evaluate any given piece of equipment’s lifecycle and response to environmental stress. Scroll to Continue Recommended Articles Durability aside, the model was conceptualized with comfort in mind. According to Pioneer DJ, the HDJ-CX can be worn for hours “with artists hardly feeling the headpho...
A Pioneering Nightlife Brand Wants to Turn Ibiza Into “The NFT Island”
They say money can’t buy happiness—but it can buy an NFT with exclusive access to Ibiza’s top nightclubs. According to a press release shared with EDM.com, pioneering nightlife brand The Night League has plans to turn Ibiza into “The NFT Island” amid its longest clubbing season in history. They’ve partnered with the Party Degenerates NFT collective on the ambitious venture, which aims to “paint Ibiza’s streets and venues with the finest in digital art.” Starting May 7th, holders of Party Degenerates NFTs will have unprecedented access to all events throughout the season at Ushuaïa and Hï Ibiza, two of the world’s most iconic nightlife destinations. The NFT’s utilities enable owners to unlock special experiences at the clubs, which will ...
Splice’s New AI-Powered Musical Sketch Pad Could Upend the Sound Discovery Process
Discovering sounds on Splice will never be the same. Splice’s new AI-powered technology, CoSo, is completely changing how music producers and sound designers discover and harness audio. Designed to provide creatives with a simple, effective way to discover new sounds for their work, the intelligent surface for music creation was developed by Splice’s in-house ML&Audio Science Innovation Team. CoSo is straightforward to use. Since it pairs Complementary Sounds technology with Splice’s massive sounds catalog, there are billions of possible tonal combinations for producers to discover. To get started, users can choose a “style” before CoSo spits out a unique “stack” of loops. Similarly to Tinder, users can swipe right for a new sound, left t...
Innovative Music Performance Allows Audience to See Real-Time Brain Activity of Dancers
There’s a perennial sense of fascination with what goes through the mind of a gifted performer. At professor Anthony Brandt’s innovative dance show “LiveWire,” attendees needed not wonder. That’s because in this particular show, the performers wore EEG caps, which monitored their brain waves throughout the performance and even incorporated their neural activity into the visual elements of the show. Presented by Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music, the show, which the university has called the first of its kind, took place at the 2022 International Workshop on the Neural and Social Bases of the Creative Movement. The performers danced to music written by Brandt as part of the “creative experiment.” Anthony Brandt’s LiveWire answer...
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...
