Theo Brandt
Theo Brandt writes step-by-step tutorials for AI music tools — prompting, stem workflows, and release prep — from a bedroom studio that started with a cracked DAW and a $60 mic.
AI Music Generation Deals: Opt-In Is Only as Strong as Your Contract
Opt-in does not mean you get to decide. For most artists and songwriters, the consent question in AI music generation will be answered by whoever holds the rights on paper — a label, a publisher, an…
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The Spotify AI Music Initiative and the Question Every Artist Actually Asks: Do I Get Paid?
The number to hold onto is two. Every commercial recording carries at least two copyrights. There is the composition — notes and words, controlled by the writers and whoever administers the…
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Text-to-Speech API Platforms and the 300-Millisecond Rule: What I Got Wrong Buying Voice Infrastructure
The call lasted nine seconds. First day of live traffic on a booking agent we had built for a client's service business, and the caller opened with "Hi, yeah, I'm calling about the—" and our agent…
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Free Sample Packs Aren't the Problem With Your 808s. Your Folder Is.
Last Tuesday I dragged 63 free 808 one-shots — four packs I'd hoarded over about two years and never once opened — into a tuner and a spectrum analyzer, and went through them one at a time.
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What the GEMA Ruling Changes About the Suno AI Music Generator — and What It Doesn't
The clause was two sentences long and it held up a Friday invoice for eleven days. A game studio I've scored for since 2021 sent over a revised master services agreement with a new rider.
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What a STEAM Curriculum Gets Wrong About Full-Stack Software Engineering
The message came in at 11:40 on a Tuesday. A friend building a roguelike by himself — netcode, shaders, the signing pipeline that pushes the Steam build — had four days of runway and no music.
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What Music Industry Executive Appointments Actually Tell You — and What They Don't
The alert came in while I was bouncing a ninety-second cue at 48kHz — a detuned Juno pad under a broken 808, the kind of loop that has to sit beneath dialogue without arguing with it.
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Keep It Backstage: The Rule About AI-Generated Content in Games, and Where It Breaks Down
The giveaway is usually the cymbal. Somewhere in the back half of a synthetic trailer cue, a crash decays into a smear instead of a tail, and the low end goes soft in a way no mastering engineer would…
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The Hardware Synthesizer Cult of Knobs Has Exactly One Origin Story, and It's Thinner Than You Think
Somewhere in the last thirty years, "no menu diving" stopped being a description and became a moral position.
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