Warner Chappell Music merged all its sync licensing operations under Rich Robinson, who already runs global synchronization and media as EVP. Gavin Caroll from the Production Music side will report directly to Robinson instead of working separately, and Robinson also gets oversight of the Audio Asset division that Kailey Tenn manages. Christine Belden leads the US film and TV team, with Faith Adams handling the UK business.
Robinson joined the publisher back in 2018, and he got bumped up to the global sync head role pretty quickly. His crew landed some big placements like that Led Zeppelin track in the Nike Super Bowl ad and worked with estates for Tom Petty and David Bowie. The company built relationships with studios like A24 and...
Charlotte Stahl bounced from TikTok after spending more than five years climbing the ranks at the ByteDance-owned platform. She started managing artist relations for Germany back in 2020, then ran music operations across the DACH region and Central and Eastern Europe before taking over all music partnerships across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Before joining TikTok, she worked at YouTube for three years and had stints at Sony Music, Roba Music Publishing, and Aviator Management.
Stahl said the gig brought her more growth than she expected, and she helped artists and labels figure out how to use the platform when it was becoming a major force for music discovery. TikTok hasn't said who's replacing her. Her exit comes after the...
Meta teamed up with iHeartMedia to drop a free VR concert experience featuring Coldplay's Music of the Spheres tour on Meta Horizon. The thing goes live at the end of December, and people can watch through the mobile app or Quest headsets. They shot it at Wembley Stadium using 15 cameras, and the setlist has all the big hits like Yellow and Viva La Vida.
The tour actually broke records as the highest-attended ever, and it pulled in over a billion dollars. Meta also bundled some other Coldplay stuff with the release. Beat Saber gets a 12-song music pack, and Supernatural is adding three workout sessions with Coldplay tracks. The band said they were happy to bring the hometown show to everyone around the world through VR.
Universal Music Group UK has appointed Rebecca Allen to a brand-new Chief Artist and Strategy Officer position. She'll be connecting teams across UMG UK labels like Island-EMI, Polydor, Capitol UK, and Decca to help musicians at every career stage. Allen continues to run the Audience, Media & Strategy division while taking on artist relations duties.
Allen started as a press assistant back in 1999, and she climbed through director roles at Decca before becoming the first woman to run that label in 90 years. She later led EMI Records, working with Taylor Swift, Elton John, and Olivia Dean before taking over AMS last year.
The company says her quarter-century of experience gives her unique insight into what artists need. She's also a...
Artists in DSP put out Euclyd, a delay plugin that uses Euclidean rhythm math to space out echo taps in geometric patterns instead of just doing regular repeating delays. The company says the thing turns timing divisions into rhythmic structures that sound organic even though they come from precise mathematical spacing.
The plugin lets you mess with steps and taps to control how many divisions and active echoes show up in the pattern, and there are swing and feedback knobs that make the mathematical stuff feel less robotic. You can carve out frequencies with high-cut and low-cut filters, and the diffusion control smears the individual taps into softer spatial textures when you want clouds instead of distinct rhythms.
The software runs...
Steinberg dropped VST Live 3 with video processing built right in, and the software handles multiple camera feeds while letting you automate scene switches to match your audio. The thing connects straight to OBS for streaming shows with multiple angles, and there's a new monitor mixer that handles separate mixes for different band members on stage.
The update added DMX lighting controls in the main mixer interface so you can run your lights from the same spot where you handle audio. There's also a shared modules feature that lets you load plugins once and use them across your whole setlist instead of loading the same reverb 40 times.
Band members can pull up custom displays with either lyrics or chord charts depending on what they...
Sonible pushed out smart:comp 3 with a new compression matrix thing that shows you a bunch of different compressor settings based on whatever audio you feed it instead of just spitting out one preset. The plugin lets you link multiple instances together for group processing across different tracks, and it does spectral compression to spread the gain reduction across frequencies without having to mess with multiband stuff manually.
The update added zero-latency mode for tracking situations where delay screws everything up, and they tweaked the style controls with better attack and release behavior plus different saturation characteristics. The compression scope visualizes what range of settings actually makes sense for your source...
Rhodes Music dropped two custom MK8 electric pianos built in Leeds, and they gave people about a month to order them before shutting down the window. The Glacial version has a see-through hood with some carved frost stuff on it, and everything comes in white with blue accents. The Monolith model got a painted concrete look that makes it seem like weathered stone, and the grey finishes cover most of the body.
Both pianos use the regular MK8 internals with a 73-key keyboard and the company's analog effects setup. The Glacial costs around 16,400 bucks, and the Monolith sits at about 16,000. People who pay upfront get a free stand, and MIDI costs an extra 1,300 pounds if anyone wants it added on.
Zimbabwean Sungura artist Nicholas Zakaria passed away, and his family broke the news through his social media accounts. People knew him as "Senior Lecturer", and he built a serious reputation in the genre over the years as both a vocalist and someone who helped younger musicians coming up.
His relatives put out a statement saying they want some privacy while they figure out the memorial arrangements, and they said details will come later. Social media lit up with tributes from fans and other artists after the announcement dropped, which shows how much he meant to the scene.
