The Ultimate Library

The Latest Across the Library

Fresh picks from right across the library — AI, recording, live sound and the gigging craft — with my take and a link to the source.

• OpenAI is switching Sora off — the video API dies 24 September, so don't build your music video on it

  OpenAI's own help centre says the Sora app went dark back in April and the Sora API shuts down for good on 24 September 2026 — after that the endpoints stop and account data gets deleted. It's a useful nudge for anyone making a music video this way: the tool you lean on can just vanish, so keep your source images and your final export off the platform, not only in it. It's also why I keep pointing at Kling and Veo, the ones actually being invested in, rather than chasing whatever's newest.

  Source: OpenAI Help Center→15 Jul 2026

• The government's new music plan lets venues run more one-off live nights — which means more gigs going on the pub circuit

  Music Ally reports the government published "Turn It Up: Our Plan for Music" on Monday, and the part that actually touches the rooms I play isn't the funding, it's the licensing. It says Temporary Event Notices go from 15 a year to 20, and the days you can use them from 21 to 26, so the pub down the road can legally put on more one-off live nights than it could last week. Whether any of that turns into a booking still comes down to whether they want you back, but there's a bit more room on the calendar to be wanted in.

  Source: Music Ally, Stuart Dredge→14 Jul 2026

• Building the summer set? Jamzone's 2026 list says balance three eras, not chase the new stuff

  Jamzone's 2026 festival-season list makes a point I keep relearning at gigs: don't just chase the newest tracks, balance three eras. They pair current floor-fillers like Post Malone's Circles and Jelly Roll's Save Me with the party anthems (Mr Brightside, Uptown Funk) and the old bones, Chuck Berry, Sinatra, James Brown, that every crowd knows in its body. On the summer circuit that mix is what keeps a mixed-age room with you all night, not just the 20-somethings for two songs.

  Source: Jamzone→11 Jul 2026

• The Suno case in Germany finally has a date — 31 July, in Munich

  MLex reports that the Munich Regional Court has pushed its ruling in GEMA v Suno back to 31 July, having first pencilled it in for June. GEMA is Germany's equivalent of PRS, and it says Suno trained on and reproduces songwriters' work without a licence or a payment to the people who wrote it. If the court sides with GEMA it would be the first proper European answer on whether an AI music platform has to license the music it learns from, which is worth watching if you're one of the people whose songs it learned from.

  Source: MLex→10 Jul 2026

• Ed Sheeran and Orange have built a range of acoustic busking amps

  MusicRadar reports Ed Sheeran has teamed up with Orange on the Outlowd ES range — three acoustic amps aimed squarely at buskers and small-room players, from a £149 3-watter up to a 100-watt one with an XLR in for your vocal. That vocal input on the top model is the bit I would care about: for a solo acoustic act it is the whole gig in one box, guitar and voice, no separate PA to lug. Whether it beats a proper little PA in a pub corner I would want to hear for myself, but a busking amp getting this kind of push is no bad thing for anyone plugging an acoustic in.

  Source: MusicRadar, Jonathan Horsley→7 Jul 2026

• Spotify is building an AI-credits standard — and says owning up to AI won't get your track down-ranked

  Spotify says it's backing a new industry standard (through DDEX) that lets you declare where AI actually helped on a track — AI-generated vocals, instrumentation or post-production — with those credits now showing in the app since the April beta. The bit worth holding onto is Spotify's own line that this “is not about punishing artists who use AI responsibly or down-ranking tracks for disclosing.” So if you're bouncing ideas off a tool but writing the song yourself, nothing really changes — do the work, then declare it honestly.

  Source: Spotify Newsroom→6 Jul 2026

• Post records or merch to EU fans? A new €3-per-item duty lands on 1 July

  Bandcamp says that from 1 July the EU is scrapping the duty-free threshold on small parcels coming from outside the bloc, so a flat €3 now lands on each item type — a vinyl and a CD in the same order is €6, though digital downloads aren't touched. It's a Bandcamp post, but the change hits anyone shipping physical stuff to Europe, including from your own storefront. The bit worth doing is prepay the duty (DDP) or get the right IOSS/VAT details on the customs form, so your fan in Berlin isn't ambushed by a surprise charge on the doorstep.

  Source: Bandcamp→3 Jul 2026

• Nearly everyone who tells me they can't sing actually can — real tone-deafness is rare

  I lose count of the people who tell me they can't sing a note, and almost none of them are right. Real tone-deafness — where the brain genuinely can't tell one pitch from another — is rare, something like one person in twenty, and most who think they've got it can actually hear pitch perfectly well. What's usually going on is just an untrained gap between the note you hear and the note your body makes, and that gap closes the more you sing. That's the whole idea behind the book: start where you are, sing a bit every day, and let the voice catch up to the ear.

  From the book2 Jul 2026

• Instagram is now counting a share as worth 4x a like — so make the ONE thing worth forwarding

  Hypebot reports that Instagram's 2026 ranking treats a share as roughly four times the value of a like, and that it's watching how fast people fire a Reel into their DMs — what they call share-to-DM velocity — to decide how far it travels. That quietly changes the automation game: it's not about pumping out more posts, it's about making the one thing a mate actually wants to forward. When you're auto-announcing a gig or a new cover, that's the question to ask before it goes out — would anyone actually send this to someone else?

  Source: Hypebot, Bruce Houghton→1 Jul 2026

• Couples arent picking band-or-DJ anymore — they want both, and they want you to read the floor

  FixTheMusics Adam Southall went through 10,000 couples conversations and reckons the big shift this year is the hybrid setup — an acoustic set for the ceremony, then a DJ or full band later — with over half now asking you to blend genres rather than stick to one style. The bit that stood out to me is that nearly 70% say they trust the musicians judgment on the night. Thats the whole job at a wedding: theyve booked you to read the room and call it as it happens, not to play a fixed list off a sheet.

  Source: FixTheMusic, Adam Southall→30 Jun 2026

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