This morning I heard about the unexpected passing of Norteño/a music diva Jenni Rivera. In-between concerts, Rivera's plane lost contact with air traffic control and crashed. Molly Lambert has written a great story on the Mexican-American artist, pioneer, and entrepreneur over at Grantland.

Quite simply, Jenni was a badass and an amazing artist who touched upon millions of fans.

Watch Jenni Rivera in a live performance of "Que Me Vas A Dar" (What Will You Give Me?) from her album Parrandera, Rebelde Y Atrevida (Rager, Rebellious and Bold).

Bay Area music darlings The Family Crest have successfully funded their recent Kickstarter campaign. The 324 lovely backers of the project have helped the group reach their $20,000 goal. Money from the project will go towards the completion of their upcoming album Beneath the Brine. The campaign's pledge gifts are very unique – including 2 VIP passes to all of their shows for an entire year – and we'd like to extend our own thanks to those who supported the band. We are looking forward to working with The Family Crest at our event with Sylvia Massy on December 8^th.

From their second successful KickStarter campaign:

“It’s taken us a lot of hard work to get where we are today, on both musical and business levels. This year alone, we’ve been on several West Coast tours, released an album, played at the Red Light Management GRAMMY Party as a Google Magnified Artist, showcased at SXSW, and opened for Train, The Head and The Heart and OK Go. We've also been fortunate enough to play both the 75th Anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge and the 75th Anniversary of San Francisco's Stern Grove Music Festival. Our song North was featured on the television show Awake and it just won first place in the rock category of the Unsigned Only Songwriting Competition. Our hope for the next year is to bring our music to the entire United States and Europe, expanding our Extended Family along the way.”

We wish them all the best with their continued efforts finishing this recording and are very happy to have this group participating in our inaugural ASSR studio training session at Studio Trilogy in their hometown of San Francisco with the legendary engineer / producer Sylvia Massy at the helm. We look forward to a very successful day of recording!

We want to help out the great developers at Fingerlab by sharing the amazing news that Rockmate is currently free on the App Store. I can personally say that it is one of the collaborative musical apps for iPad. Dive in with up to 3 of your friends and record a mini-rock hit! This offer ends today, so don't waste time! Download on iTunes.

We're not quite sure why, but Alan Parsons' music is a hot commodity for sample-based producers. Kanye West's "Heartless" scrubbed through "Ammonia Avenue" while Drake and T-Minus picked out the moody introductory lines of "The Cask of Amontillado" for Lil Wayne's "It's Good." There are too many examples to list, but check our WhoSampled.com for their great collection of tracks that sampled music by Alan Parsons.

So here is your chance to create the next great Alan Parsons remix! Promoting the John Cusack film, The Raven, Satellite EDM has partnered with Alan Parsons to provide the audio stems for The Raven off of the Alan Parsons Project's album The Raven. ASSR & Appophone readers are invited to submit an official entry and win $1000 plus have your remix released by Satellite EDM! Tip: Your mix can sound even better by learning the techniques and methods shown in the Mixing video in ASSR. Will you be the next remix producer to make a top hit out of Alan Parsons' repertoire?

Sign up now at Satellite EDM to get your copy of "The Raven" audio stems and start remixing!