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Terrence O'Brien
Terrence O'Brien
The Dude abides AI slop, apparently.

Jeff Bridges is best known as an actor. But he’s also a reasonably accomplished musician who’s put out records on Blue Note and worked with T Bone Burnett. Which makes it all the more depressing when he fired up Suno on This Past Weekend with Theo Von.

Terrence O'Brien
Terrence O'Brien
Please actually give us a Freddie Gibbs remix of the Daybreak ringtone.

Flying Lotus composed two ringtones for iOS 13. He was recently asked by Almanac of Rap host Donwill who he would put on the track if Daybreak were a song and not a ringtone. He said Freddie Gibbs and now I can’t stop thinking about the possibilities.

Terrence O'Brien
Terrence O'Brien
SZA says musicians who support AI are “disgusting.”

“I hope u have the life u deserve,” is just vicious.

According to Variety, she posted a story dismissing AI-supporting musicians after taking to Instagram earlier to claim that 238 of her songs appeared in AI training data, likely referring to the searchable database posted by Atlantic.

Musician and YouTuber Hainbach on ‘Breath of the Wild’ and Swiss Army Knives

The experimental composer has a new album, a new plugin, and strong feelings about mattresses.

Terrence O'Brien
Terrence O'Brien
Terrence O'Brien
Akai quadruples the processing power of its cheapest full-featured MPC.

The $799 MPC One G2 has an 8-core processor with 4GB RAM, and 64GB of internal storage. That means you can run 32 plugin instances and 16 audio tracks simultaneously, up from eight of each in the previous model, and polyphony is now 256 notes, up from 64.

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Spotify is launching its concert ticket presale program for superfans of certain artists.

The first artist partner for Spotify Reserved is Role Model, who is also announcing a tour today. More tours that are part of the program will be announced this week.

A screenshot of Spotify Reserved’s digital concert ticket reservation.
Image: Spotify
Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
Musician Oliver Tree has died at 32 in a helicopter collision.

While on his “The World’s First World Tour” with plans to play on all seven continents, the vocalist, producer, filmmaker, and professional scooter rider was one of six people killed after two helicopters collided over Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. O Globo reports that after the crash on Sunday, one of the helicopters fell into an electric car dealership’s parking lot, sparking a fire that burned dozens of cars.

Photos by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
Stevie Bonifield
Stevie Bonifield
Spotify’s first editor videos for New Music Friday are here.

Spotify’s bringing its editor commentary from The Drop Weekly to its New Music Friday playlist, so you can hear from the playlist’s curators about why they picked some of their weekly new release highlights. This week they’re spotlighting Olivia Rodrigo, Ayra Starr, ANOTR, Adéla, and Emei.

Screenshots of Spotify editor clips in its New Music Friday playlist
Image: Spotify
I’ve found the Goldilocks of portable MIDI controllers

8

Verge Score

The Arturia MiniLab 37 balances size, price, and playability.

Terrence O'Brien
Jess Weatherbed
Jess Weatherbed
Warner Music acquires AI startup that fights unauthorized AI.

WMG has agreed to buy Sureel AI — an attribution company that uses “AI DNA” to track how artists’ content is used to train generative AI models — for an undisclosed sum. The startup will continue to operate as a standalone platform.

Jess Weatherbed
Jess Weatherbed
Spotify wants to stream concert videos.

The audio streaming platform has reportedly approached concert promoters to obtain licensing rights to show live video of music festivals, and has already starting to add some live event videos, including a show Dua Lipa hosted in Mexico City. Last month, Spotify announced new tools for reserving concert tickets.

Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
Wait, Tupac was in a Summer Game Fest Live trailer? In 2026?

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.

Stranger Than Heaven, from Yakuza developer RGG Studio, highlighted Snoop Dogg as a cast member in a trailer last month, and there’s plenty of time for more reveals before its scheduled release in 2027.

Screenshot from the Stranger Than Heaven trailer showing Tupac Shakur rendered ingame
1/5Image: Sega
Benn Jordan longs for the days of tech that didn’t spy on you

The YouTube star has gone from reviewing synths to taking on the surveillance state.

Terrence O'Brien
Terrence O'Brien
Terrence O'Brien
Beat Gems is a big beautiful book of drum machines.

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.

Terrence O'Brien
Terrence O'Brien
Investors plow another $400 million into Suno’s AI muzak.

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.

Terrence O'Brien
Terrence O'Brien
Console Pedals turns N64 carts into swappable guitar effects.

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.

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AI is blowing up music. How should the Grammys handle it?

Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. on human creativity in the age of AI

Nilay Patel
Terrence O'Brien
Terrence O'Brien
Check out this Lego prototype of the Ableton Push ‘sampled’ from other music gear.

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.

Terrence O'Brien
Terrence O'Brien
Apple Music could be adding a free or low-cost tier.

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.

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
UMG rejects Bill Ackman’s takeover offer.

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.”

Emma Roth
Emma Roth
ElevenLabs says its updated AI music generator can create genre-switching songs.

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.”

Terrence O'Brien
Terrence O'Brien
NASA wants your art project proposals.

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.

The man behind the legendary MPC, Roger Linn, stays focused with a single browser tab

His advice: Deep breaths, keep it simple, and maybe play a little VR mini golf.

Terrence O'Brien
Adi Robertson
Adi Robertson
It’s orbin’ time.

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:

So does Leto have a World ID?

“That’s a really good question. I actually don’t know,” Sada said.

Spotify says its AI remix tool is for superfans, but I’m not convinced

Why would you disrespect your favorite artist with an AI remix?

Terrence O'Brien