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March 2026

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124 articles

March 20
- "The first thing, Maurice walked in and said 'You're the guys who stole our song!' He was just joking – he said, 'Thanks for making us cool again!'”: Kevin O’Toole recalls the Bee Gees’ reaction to N-Trance’s ‘90s cover of Stayin’ Alive
- “Although most of the songs on those two albums aren't really aimed at my demographic, they're all so good that it's hard not to fall in love with them”: The Cure’s Robert Smith gushes over Olivia Rodrigo, and says that they’ve been in the studio together
- Relive the golden era of the DX7, Jupiter-8 and Prophet V with this mega-pack of free '80s synth samples
- MusicRadar deals of the week: Score hundreds off PRS, Bose, and Moog - and grab a new guitar pedal for less than £10!
- SampleRadar: 303 free organic drone samples
March 19
- I just stumbled on a treasure trove of free glitch plugins
- “The truth is that a 12-year-old girl pre-sold her creative output before she knew what it would be like, and before she knew what she was signing away”: Lorde confirms that she no longer has a recording deal with UMG
- “I would have to do the mental work… I think I could find it in myself”: Miley Cyrus says that, although she “loves and misses live shows,” she still has no plans to go on tour – but she isn’t ruling out performing at the Super Bowl
- “That was a Juno-DS keyboard – it was literally plugged into Logitech computer speakers, not running into a board or an interface even”: Jim-E Stack reveals the lo-fi production techniques behind Bon Iver's Walk Home
- “The perfect marriage of brilliance and brute force”: With high-output humbuckers, an onboard Lumen Filter, compound radius fingerboards and a contoured body, Gretsch unveils the reinvention of the Jet
- “The drums were triggering random sounds on the Juno and DX7, making what you now hear as the intro: a squelching, pulsing bass sound”: How a happy accident helped George Michael have a huge hit with the banned song he thought sounded too much like Prince
- “Our determination to achieve a sustainable future is strengthened and energised by your support”: Native Instruments releases update on insolvency proceedings
March 18
- Locking tuners, oiled ‘Speed’ neck, compound radius ‘board with rolled edges: Charvel’s hotrodded shred performance just got more affordable with the launch of the $569 Standard SD Series
- “Push the reset button on the debate on AI and copyright”: The music industry breathes a sigh of relief as plans to let AI firms pilfer copyrighted material are dropped
- “Is NOT going to happen... Nil response. I speak with many close to her, including fam, but have not had a single syllable back in over two decades”: William Orbit has written a sequel to Ray Of Light but he says Madonna hasn’t responded
- Like Nuno Bettencourt, Mark Morton isn’t afraid to use a classic dirt pedal in an unorthodox fashion – here he reveals the secret behind his crushing Lamb Of God rhythm tone
- iZotope's Tonal Balance Control 3 captures audio directly from Spotify, YouTube and your DAW timeline for fast and intuitive referencing
- “You’d have Mark talking about strings, Our Kid talking about amplifiers. Whereas me and Bez would just walk in and be ourselves. So nobody wanted to talk to them”: Shaun Ryder on life in the Happy Mondays
- “I said, ‘Hey, you guys want to jam on some Isley Brothers?’ Nobody laughed”: Les Claypool remembers his audition for Metallica
- Unwatched and unloved: Two-thirds of recorded footage from gigs is never played back
- “Who would have thought we'd be having full Ableton running on an iPhone chip? That's kind of crazy”: The first reviews of the MacBook Neo are in, and it looks like good news for budget-conscious music producers
- “It inspired a whole generation of hard rock guitarists to pick up the instrument, not least Metallica’s Kirk Hammett”: How a broken string, a loan from his brother and a fresh paint job helped Michael Schenker turn this Flying V into an icon of rock
- Shake off the winter lull and dust off the cobwebs with up to 60% off guitars, pedals, synths, mixers, and more in the massive Thomann Spring Sale, including £542 off an ESP LTD and £70 off a UAFX reverb pedal
- “These tools should not replace the artist, but support a workflow where human intent, taste and creativity remain at the core”: Roland unveils generative AI tool, Melody Flip
March 17
- Would you buy “one of the greatest rock albums of all time” from this man for $2 million?: Meet the ex-Kiss guitarist asking one lucky fan to pay to manufacture and sell his album
- "Of course I knew this device would be controversial": ChatDSP generates instruments and effects in Max for Live from text prompts - but now even its creator is asking if he should take it down
- “All roads go back to the music we did. I worked with Bruno because he loved what I did with Amy, and as big as other records were, that is ground zero": Mark Ronson explains what made Amy Winehouse such a great musical collaborator – "she had no filter"
- “The Telecaster is like the heart and soul of rock and roll music”: Fender celebrates 75 years of the electric guitar that started it all with limited edition collection
- “It’s not for the faint of heart. You need to know what you’re doing to play that guitar”: Derek Trucks reveals what it’s like to play Jerry Garcia’s record-breaking $11.56mn Tiger guitar
- “Fans are consuming music from the artists they love in more ways than ever”: US vinyl sales hit the $1 billion mark for the first time in over 40 years
- "The numbers are going backward": New report finds that 2025 saw "no progress" for women in music
- “I had just finished a Christmas album; he had just finished a Metallica album”: It might have been “a bit of a whiplash” for some of his fans, but Josh Groban says he has no regrets about his “ballsy” decision to make an album with Rick Rubin
- “We do not ever want it to be like we’re going through the motions or we’re having to run on empty. We’re going to do 20 shows each year. No more, no less”: Radiohead suggest they’ll play short-term residencies in other continents
- “I urge them to reconsider and step up to help the next generation of talent”: Minister’s message to Live Nation’s dawdling over £1 arena and stadium levy
March 16
- “People never believe me that Kraftwerk created Atomic Kitten”: OMD’s Andy McCluskey says that it was an electronic music legend who advised him to form the ‘00s girlband who would hit number 1 with Whole Again
- “Was Courtney impossible, difficult, a drug addict, terrifying, and even mean sometimes? Yes, she was. But it took me one second to understand that she was also a survivor”: Melissa Auf der Maur on her time in Hole and why she’s “proud” of Courtney Love
- “At least three albums with people who are a few of my favourite artists of all time... I’d say 95 percent of the work I’ve done was unpaid”: James Blake on the hit and miss nature of his production work
- "I picked up the acoustic guitar and noodled around, and Bruno was freestyling and singing along. That started the whole idea, and we were like, 'OK, this is where we go'": Why Bruno Mars' new single Risk It All could have ended up sounding very different
- “At least I'm a record holder of something!”: Songwriter Diane Warren is out on her own as the most nominated person not to win an Oscar as KPop Demon Hunters’ Golden wins the Academy Award for Best Original Song
- "How real can drums feel inside a plugin?": Klevgrand promises to "redefine what a drum sampler can be" with OneShot 2
- "Lot after lot, we felt like we were making history”: John Lennon’s Broadwood piano goes for a record-breaking $3.3 million
- “To me, it was like being asked to tour with the Beatles”: Paul Gilbert on why he turned down the gig of a lifetime – and why not maintaining his “Whitesnake haircut” was a barrier to career progression
March 14
- “It would be way better if drummers weren’t reduced to nothing”: Eric Johnson on the one thing he doesn’t like about modern pop music
March 13
- “I didn't get it at first. Then I visited my friend's studio. The way he was using it opened my eyes”: House icons Alan Braxe and Fred Falke on embracing AI in the studio
- “Loving this cover!”: Tears For Fears give Harry Styles’ performance of their biggest hit the seal of approval, but was there a more appropriate version he could have sung?
- “The Matrix hack song to clear your debt and get wealthy”: Is Anita Ward’s Ring My Bell more than just a disco classic?
- “I’ve spent so many thousands of hours wasted on plugins – it just doesn't matter”: Fred Again on how "getting into the weeds" with software can distract from songwriting and make you less creative
- “It was horrifying. All week, we were rehearsing. It was perfect. I don’t know exactly what happened”: Alex Warren on his Grammys night in-ear monitor mishap
March 12
- Gibson unveils the Songwriter Recording Artist acoustics, dreadnoughts with a little bling and a top-tier build – and quite possibly the makings of a future player favourite
- Get a FREE Bitwig 6 8-Track license exclusively with MusicRadar
- “I just think it’s more important that kids learn how to actually play the guitar. It’s a tough instrument. It’s not easy”: Unlike Guns N' Roses, Metallica and Aerosmith, Prince never allowed his music to be used in Guitar Hero – here’s why
- “I was 28 or something and he was 80. He’s like, ‘Here, son, this is how you do it.’ How sad is that?” Joe Bonamassa on the time BB King taught him how to use an iPod (and what made him blues guitar’s GOAT)
- “I have a little bit of a love-hate relationship with my Prophet ’08”: Art School Girlfriend on the synths, software and studio secrets behind new project Lean In
March 11
- “It’s my song… I wrote it”: Watch Paul Rudd and Joe Jonas going from friends to foes in the trailer for Power Ballad, the new musical movie from John Carney that centres on a songwriting dispute
- Always crashing in the same car: Major album releases lead to increased traffic fatalities
- “I said, ‘Sam, I’m gonna tell you what I told Alex, which is, I don’t really play like Eddie’”: Joe Satriani says he told David Lee Roth and Alex Van Halen to call Nuno Bettencourt when they called about EVH tribute tour
- “Normally, people were happy to take his tracks, because he’s Prince. But we wanted to do the song our own way": When Prince gave the Bangles Manic Monday he assumed they would just sing over his demo, but the band had other ideas
- “A lot of people got a hard drive full of music and they don’t know how to finish… just tell everybody, ‘Hey, that’s what I got – hope you like it!’”: Watch Saba, No ID and Jimmy Douglass build a track from scratch
- Bitwig Studio 6 is here with improved automation, Clip Aliases and tons of workflow enhancements
- “I was cacking it, I really didn’t know if it was going to work or not. We did Creep by Radiohead and I noticed I was crying halfway through": Alex James on Britpop Classical, Blur and the prospect of returning to Coachella
- “I shuffled into this big open room, and Tina was there and she was very upset. She said to me, ‘If we get rid of David, would you join the band?’”: Adrian Belew insists he was asked to replace David Byrne in Talking Heads
- “Spotify is the highest-paying retailer globally - paying the music industry more than $11 billion in 2025”: Spotify reveals how much it actually pays out to musicians in its new Loud & Clear report
- “The first thing I start off with is figuring out the chords like this. As you can see, I put them in manually”: PinkPantheress reveals that she composes and records her chord progressions using her MacBook’s QWERTY keyboard
- “The type of reverb pedal that will sound incomprehensibly huge and haunting with all the settings maxed out”: EarthQuaker Devices reinvents reverb once more with the Towers Stereo Reverberant Filter
- Baby Audio's “most advanced synthesizer to date” is a granular plugin with audio-rate modulation capable of creating “entirely new textures”
- Long-lost peak George Michael tour film and live album unearthed and set for release
March 10
- “There are a lot of amazing guitars in this world, but none are as versatile as the Telecaster”: Country star John Osborne’s signature Tele comes factory modded with a distressed nitro finish, custom pickups – and it’s even got a B-bender too
- Frustrated about the sterile feel of your digital guitar rig? Friends and family commenting on how stiff your playing has been since you went all in with modellers? Victory’s PowerValve 200 has the mojo to restore that tube amp “thump” and feel
- “I didn't say that I think her music was 'boring' or whatever click bait the net is trying to scrape together”: Jack White puts the record straight about Taylor Swift
- PRS sues Steam for using music without a licence – for 23 years
- “The thing was lighting up like a toaster. It was glowing red”: Eddie Van Halen’s guitar solo didn't set a speaker on fire during the making of Michael Jackson’s Beat It, but an AC/DC issue did
- “Protecting the integrity of Fender’s iconic designs is essential to preserving the legacy of the artists and builders who shaped them”: Fender wins historic German court ruling over Stratocaster body design
- “Oddly enough, the first person who made me fall in love with the sound was Dave Navarro”: Why Cory Wong needed the signature wah pedal that could do it all
- “Right now I gotta lotta of rehabbing to do”: Jello Biafra has had been hospitalised with a stroke
March 9
- “This will revolutionise the ticketing marketplace”: Deal has been worked out between the US Justice Department and Live Nation
- Harry Styles outed himself as an unlikely modular synth fan in his new Netflix special, but was all that knob-twiddling for real?
- “You’re not working with anyone else. You don’t have to worry even for two seconds about what they think”: Boy George on why he prefers writing songs with AI than humans
- “I was trying to learn Bohemian Rhapsody on the piano and I messed up a little bit. And then I just wrote half the song accidentally from that”: How making a mistake while trying to learn a huge Queen song inspired Sienna Spiro to write Die On This Hill
- “Music is just such a sweet shop. There are so many styles and talents, and it’s hard to just stick to one thing”: Jonny Greenwood to release another collab album with Israeli Qawwali musician Shye Ben Tzur
- SampleRadar: 213 free wooden percussion samples
- “Dylan said the answer was blowing in the wind, he didn’t tell you what the answer was”: Jack White on why he doesn’t write protest songs
- “I was told to take it off. I didn't want to take what he'd said to me off... Because I thought it was really interesting": Damon Albarn reveals that Lou Reed’s voice on The Mountain is a ‘replica’
- “We didn’t just want to set a record; we wanted to create something iconic. Something that shows the world what Africa is capable of when vision meets excellence”: Record broken for Largest Orchestra at an Afrobeats concert
March 7
- “When I first met George I was just speechless. But when we started playing, he gave no direction. He liked the way I played, and I would just be myself”: Robben Ford on what it was like working with a Beatle at the age of 22
March 6
- “It was such a special moment. It felt very special to be able to give her that towards the end of her life”: Marianne Faithfull's last performance captured in new doc
- “I don’t want anybody kissing my eyes. I don’t want anybody staying up all night to hear me breathe. What are you kissing my eyes for?”: 28 years later, songwriter Diane Warren is bewildered by some of her lyrics for what became Aerosmith's biggest hit
- “I can play timbres and speeds other drummers can’t – up to 20 hits per second”: Meet Jason Barnes – the prosthetic-assisted one-armed drummer
- Waldorf upgrades its Iridium Desktop synth with a little help from Aphex Twin
- Furby organs, lightsaber theremins and the 1000-oscillator synth: Look Mum No Computer on his 7 craziest musical inventions
- “We believe labels and distributors must take an active role in reporting”: Apple Music announces new tagging system for AI-generated music
- MusicRadar deals of the week: Score $390 off a divisive Fender Stratocaster, $180 off a stunning Gretsch and hundreds off PA and live gear
March 5
- “Until now, creativity has been stifled by the need to acquire playing skills. Now, using the computer, any child can play": Unearthed BBC video from 1986 shows what music technology in the classroom used to look and sound like
- “I’m sure there are players that don’t have an interest in playing dynamically and just want to be on or off… that’s cool, and there’s a lot of pickups that do that. But not mine”: How Mark Morton and Gibson reinvented the Les Paul for modern metal
- “Six highly collectible amplifiers valued at more than most homes are worth”: Looking for the holy grail tube tones of Joe Bonamassa, John Mayer, Carlos Santana and Robben Ford? IK Multimedia just put $300,000 of Dumble mojo into a Tonex One mini pedal
- “A happy bending of the rules of nature”: Elektron’s latest Syntakt update adds sample synthesis and new sequencing tools to the hybrid drum synth
- “The magic of the Mac at a breakthrough price”: Apple’s new MacBook Neo might be cheap, but for music producers, could it be a false economy? It’s complicated
March 4
- “Afterwards he sent David an invoice for $10,000. I don’t know if David actually paid him that much”: Tony Visconti on Dave Grohl’s “ludicrious” Bowie session fee
- “I wanted to recreate it, being lost in instrumentation and the musicality”: Harry Styles says that “hypnotic” electronic music by the likes of Floating Points and Jamie XX has influenced not only his new album, but also his marathon training
- “We set out to honour the soul of these iconic instruments while making them accessible to every kind of player”: Epiphone raises the bar for its acoustic guitar range with all-solid builds, rosewood fingerboards and affordable takes on Gibson classics
- Chompi's latest firmware update turns this cutesy sampler into an "entirely new instrument" with an arpeggiator, sample-slicing and more
- “For the past 30 years it has been the quintessential backline amplifier on stages and in studios around the world”: Fender celebrates three decades of the Hot Rod Deluxe with a stunning anniversary edition
- “MTV in 1997 or 1998, suddenly they decided rock was out - it was replaced by rap… People were waving guns. Some people assert the CIA was involved... above my pay grade, but I saw it happen”: Billy Corgan says rock was “dialled down” in the late ’90s
- “Every time I play a Les Paul or anything I just wanna do, like, AC/DC”: Sam Fender releases behind-the-scenes footage of him working on a guitar part for Rein Me In, his hit single with Olivia Dean
- “Dolly said ‘Can you just make it, like, reds and greens and sparkles?’. I played as many notes as I could while the other hand was working the transposer. She was going, ‘Yeah, yeah, that’s it. Whee!’”: Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter on his life as a session player
- "An analogue FM synth that is actually fun to play": Frap Tools’ debut polysynth Magnolia might be the most exciting new instrument of 2026
- Tembo is a kid-friendly magnetic drum machine and sampler that promises "unforgettable family jam sessions"
March 3
- “I’m watching this sort of genius develop right in front of me, and he seems he has no physical barriers”: Joe Satriani on what it was like to teach a teenage Steve Vai
- “A couple of the lyrics turned out to be AI-generated… I thought, ‘Okay, I like the music. The lyrics are still in the spirit of what I’m going for, and so I’ll go for it’”: How Paul Gilbert accidentally wrote a song using an AI hallucination
- “It blew me away, and I felt things that I hadn't felt before. And also, more than that, I felt like I was listening to something I'd never listened to before”: How PinkPantheress’s meteoric rise has been aided and abetted by Basement Jaxx
- Hello Old Friend: Clapton heads out to Midwest for September US tour
- Novation unveils Launch Control 3 with OLED screen and expanded connectivity
- “This is a love and friendship story I have with Mexico that can’t be compared to anything. Thank you for all the excitement, all the joy you’ve made me feel”: Shakira breaks record for the largest gig in Mexico City’s Zócalo
- “There’s a box for the band, and if we’re lucky and they want to jump on stage, great”: Could Billy Joel make a live comeback at his own tribute night?
- “Independent venues aren’t just part of music history – they’re where the future is written”: Marshall launches membership scheme and pledges percentage of online sales to support grassroots music venues
- Lights Up: Harry Styles one-off cut price Manchester show is to be made into a Netflix Special
- “Ignore the cameras, and ignore the Hall Of Fame drummer sitting next to you”: When some drum students find out their regular teacher’s been replaced by Chad Smith
- 10 of the best Roland TB-303 tracks of all time: Aphex Twin, Fatboy Slim, Voodoo Ray and more
March 2
- “It’s my legacy as a human - like raising my kids, marrying my wife, and honouring my parents”: Brandi Carlile on helping Joni Mitchell return to the stage
- “I’d been in and around music since I was 15, so I guess I wasn’t surprised. I just started to become conscious of it”: Pete Tong admits he has to wear a hearing aid these days
- "If you watch closely, the cello’s slipping and I’m pulling it up while playing. It was so embarrassing. I think I faked it but it didn’t sound that great": Laufey reveals that she suffered a cello malfunction during a Grammys performance with Billy Joel
- “Then Tim said something that changed everything: ‘There’s clearly still an audience. Fans still love these games. Just start by making a guitar’”: Guitar Hero's spiritual successor is on the way
- “The advice I give to all aspiring songwriters and performers is ‘Don’t repeat yourself. Develop and grow. Raise the bar”: Singer-songwriter Neil Sedaka has died, aged 86
- Dawesome's Love 2 granular multi-effects plugin promises "instant beauty for any sound"
March 1
- “They got me a drum instructor. When I heard that the song (for the advert) was going to be In The Air Tonight, I was just like ‘this is amazing’”: The man inside the gorilla suit for the In The Air Tonight Cadburys ad remembers his “dream job”