Music

Yes, and he wasn’t the only deceased figure to make an appearance in the “Tupac & Cast Reveal Trailer,” at last night’s event. It also featured the likeness of Bunta Sugawara, a legendary Japanese actor who died in 2014.

Bjooks has published several coffee-table books exploring musical instrument design, the history of Roland, the world of guitar pedals, and more. Its latest covers the evolution of drum machines from 1959’s Wurlitzer Side Man to modern oddities from Erica Synths. There’s only two days left to back it on Kickstarter, though.

The company just raised $250 million in November against a $2.45 billion valuation — already a staggering jump from its roughly $500 million valuation in 2024. Now it’s more than doubled its valuation to $5.4 billion in just over six months, suggesting that investors haven’t been scared off by looming lawsuits.

The idea of a pedal with swappable, console-style effects cards isn’t new. But they don’t normally use actual video game console carts. There’s even a synth cart that you control with an N64 controller. Sadly, the base unit is currently sold out on the Console Pedals Etsy shop.

Ableton’s custom controller had little precedent when it was first conceived. Designer Jesse Terry says, “I chopped up a bunch of other products and sampled the parts of them that I wanted.” Then, he attached them to a Lego board so he could quickly experiment with various layouts.

Some code spotted in a recent Apple Music beta for Android includes messages referring to “Premium Access” and a “skip limit.” That suggests a free or low-cost plan is in the works. Right now, Apple Music is an all-or-nothing affair after retiring the Voice Plan in 2023.

Ackman, through his Pershing Square hedge fund, had offered in April to take over UMG in a deal valuing the music giant at around €55 billion. But UMG says that the offer “fundamentally and materially undervalues UMG and will not deliver superior value creation.”

Its new Music v2 model can generate songs that can switch from opera to heavy metal mid-track, while handling faster rap delivery and non-musical sound effects, according to ElevenLabs. The new model is available today and is trained “only on licensed data and cleared for commercial use.”

The agency is looking to partner with filmmakers, musicians, writers, poets, and artists to help tell the story behind programs such as the Artemis Moon missions and the Space Reactor-1 Freedom mission to Mars. But get your proposals in ASAP, the window closes on Tuesday, June 30th.

Jared Leto’s band Thirty Seconds to Mars is (for real, this time?) using Sam Altman’s World eye-scanning orb to stop bots, reports The San Francisco Standard:

It’s already available on iOS, and coming to Android soon. Google is also adding granular editing tools for changing portions of an AI-generated song, tweaking beat drops, or rewriting lyrics. It’s also adding the ability to generate “covers” and music videos, so you can countrify that punk song you prompted.

The musician, producer, and long-time Taylor Swift collaborator described people who use generative AI tools as “Godless whores” in a rant on Instagram:

Bobby Prince’s 1993 soundtrack for Doom is one of 25 recordings being inducted into the Library of Congress this year, a lineup that also includes Taylor Swift’s “1989” album and Beyoncé‘s “Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It).”

Managed accounts, which offer a music-only experience with parental controls for the under-13 set, were previously reserved for Premium Family subscribers. Now, free users can also create kids accounts, with their own playlists, suggestions, and wrapped experiences. It’s coming to Argentina, Colombia, Denmark, Italy, New Zealand, and Sweden first.

After being announced in August, 2024, Subvert opened its doors on May 12th, 2026. It’s a music co-op where over 20,000 artist members are the owners. They set the policies, and there are no fees. It’s also one of the few platforms to ban AI content and training. Definitely check it out.

We’re still a ways out from Pokémon Wind and Waves’s release on the Switch 2 some time next year, but The Pokémon Company has just uploaded a video of the NHK Symphony Orchestra recording the games’ main theme to tide us all over.

Spotify initially acknowledged there were “some issues” with the app at 12:49PM ET and gave the all clear at 4:57PM ET.

Charli xcx just invested in Nothing and was announced as the company’s first global brand ambassador. For their first promotion together the startup claims it had the singer wear the Nothing Headphone A for five days straight to test their 135-hour battery life.

Like Roland’s flagship, Polyend Drums combines analog and digital drum synthesis, with samples, powerful sequencing features, and a ton of hands-on controls, including a morphing fader. It’s also expensive as hell at $2,699. But it might be the last drum machine you ever need.

The British disco revivalist says the company was using her likeness to sell TVs by including her image on the box. She became aware of it last year and asked Samsung to remove her from the packaging, but according to the complaint, their response was “dismissive and callous.”

Over the last few days, a flood of reports used those words to describe a phenomenon of musicians suddenly canceling big tours, with people speculating that it’s because they couldn’t sell enough tickets, leaving the blue icons visible at venue after venue in Ticketmaster’s seating charts.

If you, like me, played countless hours of Star Fox 64 growing up, then I think you’ll very much enjoy the 10 tracks from the upcoming Switch 2 remake’s soundtrack that Nintendo added to its music app. They’re so dang good.

The $150 Cyma Forma RND is feature-rich, but shockingly minimal. It has eight synthesis engines, four sequencer tracks, five filters, MIDI in and out, four-track audio over USB-C, and reverb. Yet, it has only one button. Every time you push it, everything is randomized with 4,294,967,296 possible combinations.

Inferno, the long-awaited next album from Boards of Canada, doesn’t drop until the end of the month. But you can get a taste for it with this new music video, which I’ve had on loop for the better part of an hour already.