// Tutorials Writer · 36 signals

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.

Streaming A young female singer-songwriter alone on a dimly lit indie stage, seated on a…
Streaming · 5 min

Hanroro and the K-Pop Streaming Charts: Why the Obvious Winner Lost

The received wisdom about the K-pop streaming charts in South Korea goes like this: whoever has the biggest fandom, the largest label machine, and the most coordinated release strategy wins.

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Licensing A sleek modern corporate boardroom photographed at golden hour, low afternoon sunlight streaming through…
Licensing · 10 min

Music Industry News You Should Read Sideways: How Talent Firms Signal a Move Into Music

A talent management company announces a "Music Division." There's a named executive at the top, a paragraph of prior affiliations — a major label here, a management shop there, a Grammy mention if…

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Music History A dramatic low-angle photograph of a mid-century modernist pavilion with a sweeping hyperbolic-paraboloid concrete…
Music History · 9 min

Dutch Electronic Music History Is the Archive Everyone Says You Can Skip. Here's Why That Advice Breaks Down.

The advice you'll hear, over and over, from professors and forum threads and the back matter of every "history of synthesis" book, goes like this: if you want to understand where electronic music came…

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Policy A professional documentary photograph of a dimly lit industry conference room, a speaker in…
Policy · 11 min

Ticket Pricing Transparency Won't Kill the Box Office Job — But the Story Everyone Tells About It Might

There is a line you hear at every ticketing panel, delivered with the confidence of a weather report: regulate the resale market and you will destroy jobs.

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Contracts A photorealistic editorial photograph of a young musician seated alone at a wooden kitchen…
Contracts · 5 min

Pro Bono Legal Support for Musicians: Where the "Just Get a Lawyer" Advice Actually Breaks Down

The advice you have heard a hundred times is this: never sign a music contract without a lawyer. It is on every forum, in every "things I wish I knew" thread, repeated by every producer who got burned…

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Ai Video A dimly lit home music studio at night, shot from a low angle with…
Ai Video · 5 min

AI Music Video Generators Won't Fix Your Rollout — But They'll Feed the Feeds That Do

Here is a number worth sitting with: a single track release now routinely needs somewhere between eight and twelve distinct visual assets to cover the surfaces where it has to live.

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Ai Music A late-night close-up portrait of a weary gamelan teacher seated beside a gleaming bronze…
Ai Music · 5 min

AI Music Generation vs Human Musicians: Where the "Just Use It as a Tool" Advice Holds and Where It Snaps

A gamelan teacher in Kuala Lumpur said the sentence to me like it was a seatbelt: "AI is just a tool. Use it, keep your soul." He'd read it in a dozen op-eds.

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Licensing A moody close-up still-life on a dark slate surface: a vividly styled synthetic wig…
Licensing · 4 min

Trade Dress Infringement, Six Years, and $17.9M: What OMG Girlz vs L.O.L. Surprise! Teaches Anyone Licensing an Artist's Brand

The arithmetic tells the whole story before the law does. A jury in September 2024 put the number at $71.5 million. A judge knocked it to $1 on a technicality of damages calculation.

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Ai Music A professional recording studio control room photographed in warm tungsten light, foreground dominated by…
Ai Music · 9 min

Studio Time vs. AI Music Generation: What a Track Actually Costs You in 2024

The number everyone quotes is ten thousand dollars. That's the figure that gets tossed around when someone wants to make the case for AI music: a real studio session runs you five figures, and a…

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