You can't escape viral TikTok songs. They're everywhere, and you're bound to hear them over and over again if you spend time on any social media platform. If you actually like listening to TikTok earworms, you can now also listen to them on SiriusXM. The satellite radio service has launched TikTok Radio, a full-fledged music channel dedicated to viral hits from the platform that's now available in vehicles, on desktop, connected devices and on the SXM app.
According to the companies, the channel will sound like a radio version of the platform's "For You" feed. In fact, some of TikTok's most popular creators will be presenting music and sharing stories about the viral hits you can listen to. They named Billy (@8illy), Cat Haley (@itscathaley), HINDZ (@hindzsight), Lamar Dawson (@dirrtykingofpop) and Taylor Cassidy (@taylorcassidyj), in particular, though the channel will feature more creators in the future.
One of the shows you can look forward to is The TikTok Radio Trending Ten, which will have the creators presenting the current most popular songs on the platform. It will stream every Friday at 3PM ET with replays throughout the weekend. You can also listen to it anytime through the SXM app. DJ Habibeats (@djhabibeats) and DJ CONST (@erinconstantineofficial) will also serve as the channel's resident DJs and will mix trending hits live simultaneously on TikTok and Tiktok Radio every Fridays and Saturdays starting at 7 PM ET.
Scott Greenstein, President and Chief Content Officer of SiriusXM, said in a statement:
"Our groundbreaking new channel with TikTok is a first-of-its-kind, capturing the pulse of the global music culture, vibrancy and vitality found on the entertaining social platform and recreated as a full-time music channel on live national radio and our streaming platforms. The creators, who are also presenting the music on TikTok Radio, are deeply involved in the channel and will reflect the unique sound and personality of TikTok that is so enmeshed with today's music culture and community. TikTok creators will be delivering new audio experiences for our listeners as they tap into the latest music trends on TikTok."
You'd think EA would have released a Madden NFL soundtrack years ago given its penchant for licensed music, but no — it's only getting to that now. The publisher has teamed with Interscope Records to release its first album for the football game franchise, Madden NFL 22: The Soundtrack. The title unsurprisingly tries to walk the line between big names and indie cred with artists like Swae Lee, Tierra Whack and multiple up-and-comers.
The full game will include more than 50 extra tracks while you're playing the new Yard mode, including originals from artists like Killer Mike and hit-of-the-moment songs from the likes of Drake and Lil Baby.
You can stream or buy the soundtrack through common services like Apple Music, Spotify and Deezer. This probably won't convince you to buy Madden if you weren't already sold on the formula, but that's not really the point. Much like other game soundtracks, it's another way to capitalize on the game beyond the usual sales.
For the better part of its recent history, Spotify’s Discover Weekly and Release Radar playlists have been the company’s go-to way to help people discover new music. In the span of a week, it has added two additional discovery tools. The first, What’s New, is a panel that highlights new releases from your favorite artists and podcasts. The second, which the company detailed today, is a curated playlist, but one that’s aimed at those who want to know more about the music industry.
Dubbed "Noteable Releases," the weekly playlist collects new tracks from the world’s leading producers and songwriters. Expect to see contributions from people like frequent Billie Eilish collaborator Finneas O’Connell and Ester Dean, who helped write Katy Perry’s 2010 hit “Firework.” The result is an eclectic playlist that doesn’t stick to any one genre, though pop music is represented strongly for obvious reasons.
The introduction of Noteable Releases follows last year’s rollout of songwriter pages and is another example of the company trying to cater to the broader music industry. You’ll notice at the top of the playlist that Spotify encourages digging into a song’s credits to find out more about the people who worked on it. You can do that by tapping the three dots icon and then “show credits.”
If Gary Numan had heard a different sound the first time he encountered a synthesizer, we might not have had “Cars,” “Are 'Friends' Electric?” or even Gary Numan (he was born Gary Webb before adopting his stage name). The New Wave movement might have been little more than a ripple, Synth Pop may have never happened and, in a roundabout way, Calvin Harris might never have known what we came for.
But Numan did hear that all-important sound, the one that lit up his brain and switched him on to technology as a music-making tool, paving the way for electronic music to go mainstream. That’s just one of many accidentally influential moments to be found in Watch the Sound with Mark Ronson — a documentary jaunt through the cornerstones of music technology that’s streaming now on Apple TV+.
Ronson is, perhaps, best known for his work with Amy Winehouse — a decidedly analog, brassy affair. But his love of technology is abundantly clear as Watch the Sound serves up easily digestible bites of musical history around key technological themes: Sampling, drum machines, synths and beyond. Along the way, Ronson casually drops in on such luminaries as Paul McCartney, Quest Love and the aforementioned Numan, along with contemporary artists such as Charlie XCX and King Princess. If the series doesn’t inspire you to google around for a MIDI controller by the end of it then nothing ever will.
Apple TV+
Unlike Netflix’s fast-paced This is Pop, Watch the Sound leans more histrionic. Each episode starts with Ronson recounting his own first experience with whatever this episode is about (a sampler, distorted guitars and so on). He then spends time with artists that popularized that sound, asking pensive questions and generally nerding out about music as only someone with Ronson’s wide palette of influences really can.
This sense of a journey through Ronson’s musical interests gives Watch the Sound a more intimate feel than This is Pop’s more talking heads approach. “I think what's important is that there is a familiarity between the episodes, there is a kind of a guiding force. And that was always going to be Mark's personal experience,” executive producer Mark Monroe told Engadget.
This sense of “experience” is perhaps no more apparent when Ronson spends time with Sean Ono Lennon. Lennon talks candidly about his father’s own struggle with the sound of his voice. He then adroitly reinvents a recording of Lennon senior with Harmony Engine (that Ronson describes as “autotune on steroids”) in what turns out to be a surprisingly tender moment. Lennon junior is visibly moved by this brief yet intimate musical encounter.
Of course, the show is about the machines as much as the people that made them important. Watching DJ Premier’s absolute mastery of the MPC, for example, is as impressive as it is frustrating (at least to anyone else who’s had a go on one and could barely peck out a beat). Later on, watching Ronson take a box cutter to a speaker cone with David Grohl feels like it should have been an outtake until... goddammit, why is he somehow good at everything? (You’ll have to watch it to find out why they did this.)
Other humorous moments are, perhaps, less intentional. Ronson at one point finds himself in a full miner’s jumpsuit, and he’s never looked so uncomfortable. In episode one, we enjoy a rare, albeit slight crack in his golden touch as he struggles to make anything remotely musical with autotune (he rectifies that later, naturally).
If there were an enduring message in Watch the Sound (and many other series of its ilk) it’s that perfection and talent are rarely what creates something magical. Most of the technology featured was either misused, misunderstood or reappropriated through necessity. Legends were born thereof and this is just how we do things now.
It’s refreshing, if not invigorating to know that you don’t have to aspire to perfect pitch or even really have any formal musical training to be a pioneer. In fact, it’s easy to convince yourself that knowing your scales might even hold you back sometimes if you find yourself trying to only play by the rules.
This sentiment is solidified in the episode about synthesizers. Here, the cast of heroes is more at home with an oscilloscope than with an oboe. The band of misfits (and, let history show, many, many more women than are ever given credit) effectively reinvented what music could be from the ground up.
Apple TV+
Monroe said that was something that became apparent during filming, too. “Digging into synthesizer and really kind of understanding what a disruptor it was … what an opportunity for the people on the outside of the music business … and not just to gain a foothold, but to become, you know, legendary.”
Even if you don’t have an interest in how music is made, the show will have you jotting down the names of bands and songs you want to explore further and delight you with a sense of possibility. Or in my case, vindication. The episode on sampling recounts the abhorrent push-back that this new technology received. “That’s not real music” someone remembers being told. If, like me, you grew up listening to Fear of a Black Planet and the countless artists it inspired, it’s hard not to do a mental fist-pump to yourself for not being one of those jerks.
By the end of the show, you might find yourself motivated to dig out that guitar from the loft, or fire up your laptop. Apple, it seems, knew this might be the case. To coincide with the show’s launch, the company has created a “companion experience” for GarageBand via an exclusive Producer Pack.
That said, once you discover how the Beastie Boys achieved their iconic vocal sound on "So What’Cha Want" or how Sonic Youth creatively used drumsticks on their guitars, you might realize you don’t even need any fancy software to do something different.
Watch the Sound with Mark Ronson premieres on Apple TV+ today.
Have you ever seen a musician's GIF and heard the song in your head? You won't have to leave things to the imagination for much longer. Spotify and Giphy have partnered to effectively give GIFs a soundtrack. Find an artist's GIF on their official Giphy channel and you can tap a "listen on Spotify" button to visit that artist's Spotify page. The hope, of course, is that you'll be inspired to stream a hot new album after watching a looping animation.
A handful of artists are already using the Spotify-Giphy tie-in, including Doja Cat, The Weeknd and Nicki Minaj. You'll find it both on the web and in Giphy's mobile app.
This is ultimately about translating GIF views into money for artists. Stars may be more likely to share clips from their latest music videos if they know they'll get more plays for their latest tracks. Even so, it might be helpful if a GIF gives you an earworm that won't go away until you stream a song and get it out of your system.
It’s an old misconception that digital musicians just use a mouse and keyboard for their art. This is often far from the truth, as many computer music artists have a wide variety of keyboards/synths, MIDI controllers, and “analog” instruments that all get used in their creative process. But what if one of those instruments was just a mouse?
Well, that must have been what was going through [kzra]’s mind when he turned an old ps/2 roller ball mouse into an electronic instrument. Born out of a love for music and a hate for waste, the mouse is a fully functional MIDI controller. Note pitch is mapped to the x-coordinate of the pointer, and volume (known as velocity, in MIDI-speak) is mapped to the y-coordinate. The scroll wheel can be used as a mod wheel, user-configurable but most often used to vary the note’s pitch. The mouse buttons are used to play notes, and can behave slightly differently depending on the mode the instrument is set to.
Not satisfied with simply outputting MIDI notes, [kzra] also designed an intuitive user interface to go along with the mouse. A nice little OLED displays the mode, volume, note, and mouse coordinates, and an 8×8 LED matrix also indicates the note and volume. It’s a fantastic and versatile little instrument, and you’ve gotta check out the video after the break to see it for yourself. We’ve seen some awesome retro-tech MIDI controllers before, and this fits right in.
Roblox is rushing to strike official music deals in the wake of a $200 million lawsuit over alleged copyright violations. TechCrunchreports that Roblox has unveiled a team-up with Sony Music that will bring more of the label's artists to the game platform. The two will collaborate on "innovative music experiences" beyond what you've seen so far, including a Lil Nas X concert in November and a Zara Larsson launch party in May.
The companies didn't say what kind of events you might expect, or when you might see them.
This isn't Roblox's first such deal. The gaming giant reached a similar agreement with BMG in June. It does represent Roblox's largest music pact to date, however, and leaves Universal and Warner as the only two heavyweight labels that haven't signed agreements.
Roblox might not have much choice but to keep making these arrangements. The music industry sued Roblox for allegedly doing little to stop gamers from making virtual boomboxes that stream copyrighted music. That's not including Robloxcore and other music designed for game worlds. The developer maintains that it screens uploaded music and cracks down on violators, but that clearly hasn't been enough for labels convinced Roblox is enabling piracy. Deals could help Roblox persuade Sony, BMG and others to call off their lawsuit, or at least soften the blow.
Riot Games is no stranger to making music. With K/DA, the studio has one of the world’s most popular virtual bands, but it’s latest musical project is different. On Friday, Riot released Sessions: Vi, a 37-track album of instrumental beats with contributions from artists like Chromonicci and Junior State. What makes the release special is that streamers and content creators can use all the songs from Sessions: Vi for free.
Riot hopes the album and future ones like it will help ease some of the copyright headaches Twitch streamers have had to deal with for much of the past year. At the start of last June, Twitch got a “sudden influx” of DMCA takedown notices. The majority of those targeted archived broadcasts that had been up on the platform for years. The company has tried in a variety of ways to prevent more takedown notifications from coming in, but those efforts don’t seem to have addressed the problem. That's because in May Twitch said it received another batch of approximately 1,000 individual DMCA notifications. For some streamers, those notices represent a potential ban from the service.
The infectious and delightful soundtrack to PlayStation 5 exclusive Astro’s Playroom is now available to listen to outside of the game. As Polygon notes, you can stream it on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube Music and Tidal (if you’re fancy like that). For those who prefer to own their media, it’s $11 on Apple Music and Amazon Music.
Not only is Astro’s Playroom one of the PS5’s best games at the moment and a compelling tech demo, it’s also available to download for free. Penned by composer Kenneth C.M. Young, the 20-song soundtrack includes standouts like “I’m Your GPU” and “CPU Plaza.” And if you’re curious how Young ended up creating a love letter to the PS5’s hardware, the composer wrote a post on the PlayStation blog on exactly that topic.
If you’ve spent any portion of the last year’s mandated downtime mastering a musical instrument, then congratulations on being more productive than most. Expressing yourself creatively is a great way to maintain your sanity, and if you’re actually writing your own music, all the better.
But if you want to actually turn any of your hooks and riffs into songs, you’re going to need more than confidence and a recorder app on your smartphone — you need quality sound mixing software. Luckily, the Complete Ableton Live 11 Music Production Essentials Bundle will bring you up to speed.
These eight courses will take you through everything you need to know about the intricacies of Ableton, with some ancillary information about music theory and songwriting thrown in for good measure. The three introduction classes kick off the bundle to give you an overview of how the software works, while the Warping & Automation and Essential Features guides show you how to execute more advanced tricks. Finally, the two-part Music Theory & Songwriting lectures help you hone your musical masterpiece with technical and structural guidance to help your work really pop.
What’s most exciting about this bundle is that it’s just as useful for seasoned musicians as it is for beginners. If you already know your way around the keyboard (or fretboard, or woodwind), this is your opportunity to immortalize the skill you’ve dedicated years to perfect. On the other hand, if you’re simply learning a few early chords on the ukulele, these classes will give you the foundational knowledge you need to achieve true expertise.
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