Day: 20 April 2020

The trailer for a documentary about iconic Birmingham techno venue Que Club, called In The Que, has landed. You can watch it below.

Released in May, the documentary charts the Que Club’s thirty-year history, from when it first opened its doors in 1989.

The project, headed up by researcher Jez Collins of Birmingham Music Archive C.I.C., is happening through a National Lottery Heritage Fund grant of £42,000.

The Que Club saw Daft Punk, Underworld, and Massive Attack perform on its stage, as well as Carl Cox, Sven Vath, and Paul Oakenfield record BBC Radio One Essential Mixes in the club.

Through its 30 years it also hosted night from The Bubble Club, Flashback, Atomic Jam, Spacehopper, and more.

Speaking about the documentary, Collins said, “The Que Club was home to many different communities irrespective of colour, gender or sexuality and this was reflected in the mix of artists and club nights that performed there. Its labyrinth of corridors and rooms allowed for innovation, exploration and experimentation for DJs, MCs, promoters and clubbers whilst the incredible main hall, with its raked seating and imposing organ, offered the perfect space and backdrop for large-scale events and superstar DJs.

“In The Que is not only about the music. It’s also concerned with what The Que Club tells us about the social, cultural and political history of the city and club and youth culture.

“It’s hard to imagine now, but rave and dance culture were subject to government legislation, police crackdowns and hysterical tabloid headlines. To those who went there, the Que Club was somewhere they could call their own, where they could listen and dance to music, meet new friends and express themselves.”

Watch the trailer for In The Que below.

David Guetta’s live streamed DJ set for COVID-19 relief on Saturday night, 18th April, raised over $700,000. 

The two-hour DJ set, which was streamed from Miami, set out to raise funds for the World Health Organisation, Feeding South Florida, Feeding America, and the French Fondation Hôpitaux de Paris. As well as covering the production costs for the stream, Guetta pledged to match every dollar donated during the show itself. At the time of writing, over $700,000 has been raised. You can still donate via Guetta’s website here. 

“I’m still buzzing from what was an incredible night shared with many,” Guetta shared in an official statement. “Thank you to everyone who joined and to those who were able to donate. Although this is a very unusual time, it was magical to connect with you all through music last night. Most importantly, we’ve raised money that will help those who need it most.”

Various guests made appearances throughout the stream, including Bob Sinclair, Oliver Heldens, Alok and a number of football players, including Ludovic Giuly, Olivier Giroud and Robert Pires. 

You can re-watch Guetta’s set below. 

Read our recent interview with Guetta here, where he discusses his Jack Back house alias, moving on from EDM, creative freedom, and working with the world’s biggest pop stars.

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Newly released figures reveal just how many plays your tracks would need to have on streaming platforms in order to make the equivalent of the UK minimum wage. 

With data acquired from The Trichordist, PRS For Music’s Tom Gray shared the breakdown of major streaming platforms’ average payments per play. The chart shows how many streams an artist would need to rack up to earn £1, and how many they would need in order to make one hour of minimum wage pay in the UK (£8.72).

Across the board, the figures are shocking. For instance, it would take 357 streams on Spotify for an artist to earn £1, while it would take 3,114 streams to earn an hour’s minimum wage pay. The stats aren’t much better on platforms like Google Play and Apple Music, while Amazon’s music platform comes out on top, with 111 streams required to earn £1.  You can see the full breakdown of the figures below. 

What’s more, Gray notes that these figures are based on the assumption that the artist owns 100% of the rights to their music, which is very rarely the case. “On a major label the artist earns 20% of this (after debt repayment),” he says. “And the songwriter (if she writes 100%), at best, 8-15% of each rate.”

Terrifying. The most up-to-date streaming rates adapted for £ and for UK minimum wage. Data from the excellent
@thetrichordist. #BrokenRecord pic.twitter.com/XOoZ3IGisT

— Tom Gray (@MrTomGray) April 18, 2020

Streaming continues to dominate the ways we listen to music in 2020, with the market surpassing £1 billion in the UK and accounting for 80% of recording revenues in the U.S. in 2019.

Check out our feature on how producers are losing millions in royalties, and what can be done to solve it, here. 

Learn more about how to navigate the world of streaming, and how to make money from it as an artist, here. 

Three orchestras in Berlin had a concert that was the victim of social distancing. Artist Lucas Gutierrez was able to give them a new, virtual home together – and it’s Pastoral gone pastel, in 360 degrees.

Lucas has done some extraordinary 3D work in the past, including an ongoing collaboration with Robert Lippok (raster media). For this project, he had to work extremely fast, but the results are dazzling – sort of what looks like would happen if Lisa Frank did new color consulting for the planet Krypton.* (Uh, see bottom of the article…)

The project is produced in the real-time 3D platform Unity, as you can see from the screen grabs.

It’s yet another example of how augmented and virtual reality can be a more compelling form of delivery of live music, when being there in person isn’t possible. If the economics can be solved, this does seem the sort of thing that could endure post-virus.

More on the rest of Lucas’ work soon, since this is an example of how he works fast.

Credits:

Konstantin – Chef der jungen norddeutsche philharmonie
Lea – Musikvermittlerin des DSO Berlin

Juri – Künstlerische Leitung des Stegreif.orchester

Wanja – Sound Engineer // Ton
Lucas – Digital Artist // Animation
Marcel – Cutter // Schnitt

Musiker*innen
www.junge-norddeutsche.de
www.stegreif-orchester.de
www.dso-berlin.de

www.trikestra.de

https://lucasgutierrez.com/trikestra_360

https://lucasgutierrez.com/

See also iheartberlin.de [ENG + DE]

I mean, Superman II was dealing with this notion of people on a two-dimensional surface which you rotate inside a three-dimensional environment. Amiright?

If you miss the classic MPC – or never owned one and want to experience it for yourself – this is the nearest thing to having the hardware in front of you, for free.

Hey, lots of people are posting vintage photos of themselves and turning back the clock in other ways, so why not take a break from staring at Zoom conference calls and stare at a surprisingly authentic MPC2000XL instead?

Let’s party like it’s 1999. No, literally.

It’s all there – the old workflow, the buttons. There are even some of the sonic characteristics emulated, more or less. (The author is quick to point out that you don’t get the same signal path, but “an approximation” of the digital filter and file compatibility seems okay.) It’s beautiful. It’s beige.

There is potentially a practical purpose here. You can load a lot of the files the actual hardware could – APS, ALL, PGM, SND, MID, WAV.

But mostly, it’s the fun of seeing the hardware and using the old workflow, without needing, you know, the actual hardware. Or money.

You can bounce to WAV, you’ve got some MIDI in and out, and it runs as a plug-in (VST2,VST3, AU). There are builds for every OS. So there’s nothing stopping you from making music with this thing. And why not?

Mac, Windows (32-/64-bit), Linux:

vMPC2000XL – An MPC2000XL emulator

http://www.izmar.nl/index.php/downloads

Via beat.de [German]

No, this is not authorized by Akai.

Addendum:

A very much less useful implementation of this ran VR-style in Unity3D game engine, but that seems to be abandonware and I couldn’t locate a working download. If that sounds like a terrible idea, don’t worry – it is. It’s kind of spectacular to behold, though, like some kind of cross between Lawnmower Man and NAMM.

http://www.izmar.nl/index.php/vrmpc