Adam Protz

If you're a musician or a big music lover, it's difficult to overstate how vital your hearing is. Unless you want to live out Ludwig van Beethoven's arc, making music or enjoying live music requires healthy ear canals. Perhaps you had an uncle or family friend who would ask you to repeat yourself and explain that they spent too many years standing by speaker stacks at gigs. The loud, obtrusive ringing in the ears known as tinnitus is no friend to musicians or music lovers, and it currently has no cure. Rehearsals, playing live, and going to concerts are almost unequivocally at volumes that will damage your hearing.

Anglo-Nordic band Girl Group are redefining genre with ‘brat-punk' – a hybrid of hyperpop, electronic and indie. They are a North Sea collaboration comprised of Katya Birkeland, Thea Gundersen, Mia Halvorsen and Maria Tollisen, all Norwegian, while member Lily Christlow is from Bridlington, Yorkshire. Each is an alumnus from the prestigious Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, where they met and formed the band. After their hit performances at Reading and Leeds Festivals and gaining support from Elton John and BBC 6 Music, Girl Group speak to

BMG and Concord have come together to create a combined operation, with the stated aim of creating the world's leading independent music company. As one entity, the new company will continue under the BMG name, with BMG Publishing and Concord Records as the two primary organisations under the umbrella.

Hildur Guðnadóttir calls 2026 her “monster year.” The Icelandic composer went from releasing indie-classical solo cello albums to becoming an awards-magnet film composer, with BAFTAs, GRAMMYs, and an Academy Award to her name. It was her score for the Joaquin Phoenix-starring Joker that brought her the Oscar gong, as well as awards hosts stumbling over the pronunciation of her surname, when she had already won international fandom from her music for HBO's Chernobyl . And the reason she deems this year as monstrous is following her work on 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple and the Maggie Gyllenhaal-directed The Bride! . She chats about her journey from indie musician to one of Hollywood's most in-demand composers, working on these idiosyncratic films back to back, and why Cubase is key to her work.

Matt Hansen is only a quarter of a century old, yet he has already amassed a passionate global following. The L.A.-based singer-songwriter is another artist who has played the TikTok game very well, boasting three million followers on the app. And offline, he has headlined tours across Europe, the U.S., and Australia, and opened for artists including Train, Lauv, and Teddy Swims. He speaks to

Guitarists: read this article, and you can then confidently say ‘who needs a synthesiser?' and back it up. It was once true that you could only achieve a few variations of the guitar sound — clean, crunch, high-gain, distorted, etcetera, etcetera. But now, the sounds you can achieve with your beloved axe are rather outrageous. And with the best guitar synth pedals currently on the market, you can now fully step into the world of electronic synthesis.

Panasonic Projector & Display Corporation has acquired 100% of the issued shares of UK-based media technology company Hive Media Control Ltd.

Jenny is on holiday, namely, from being one half of the acclaimed experimental pop duo Let's Eat Grandma, with three albums and a Netflix score released so far.

Rising out of Birmingham's underground DJ scene, Alexandria has rapidly become a name to watch in the UK's new generation of selectors.