标签：#Music

This is going to be a very different article from what I usually write. No technical discussions, architecture deep dives, or engineering practices today. Instead, we're talking about something much older than software itself: music. We treat language like it's the default mode of human communication, like it's the real and only thing used to communicate, everything else is secondary, emotional, aesthetic, nice to have. But language is actually the outlier. It's the new protocol layered on top of something much older. Music is the original standard and we've basically forgotten how to read it. The Protocol Stack Think of communication like a network stack. Language is high-level. It's TCP/IP. Built on assumptions, needs learning, breaks the second you cross a boundary. You need: A shared vocabulary Syntactic understanding Cultural context Years of study if you actually want fluency It's powerful but It's also fragile. And it's recent . Written language is a few thousand years old. Spoken language is older, sure, but both are late abstractions compared to the hundreds of thousands of years humans have been syncing bodies to shared sound. Relative to that timeline? Language is yesterday's patch. Music? That's the lower-level protocol. The physical layer everything else runs on. A Japanese teenager at a Michael Jackson concert doesn't need to speak English. She doesn't need to understand what "Man in the Mirror" means as a concept. She also doesn't need a music degree. Music isn't zero -cost. Genre, culture, convention still shape how we hear it. But the entry barrier for emotional communication is way lower. A rhythm can hit urgency, celebration, sadness, or tension long before anyone understands the formal structure behind it. Her nervous system speaks that fluently. And so does everyone else in that stadium. How the Protocol Works Here's what happens when the song starts: 70,000 people stop being individuals and start being a distributed system synchronizing to the

SoundCloud has acquired decentralized music platform Nina Protocol, months after the startup announced it would shut down. The deal brings Nina’s artists, editorial archive, and music discovery tools to SoundCloud as the company continues expanding its platform for independent musicians.

Deezer said more than 90,000 AI-generated tracks were uploaded daily on the platform in June.

Sony Music Entertainment has filed another lawsuit against Udio, accusing the AI music generator of infringing the copyright of more than 30,000 of its songs, ranging from Elvis Presley's Hound Dog to Beyoncé's Say My Name, and Harry Styles' As It Was. The lawsuit, filed in a New York court on Monday, claims that this […]

Just why? ʅ͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡(̸̢̛̼̞̭͋ͅ)̸͚̰͛̔̾̀̿͒͂:̴͓̞̑̌̂̆̊͋̀:̸͎̟̯̂̓̌ ҉ ͡ ͞ ͞ ͞ ҉● ࿀ ● ࿀ ● ҉⃝ ⃝͢ ͞ ͘ ͞⃝̕ ͢ ̛ ⃝ ̸ ̡ ͢⃝̧ ͡ ͡ ̀ ̧ ̢⃝͜ ҉ ͞ ͞ ⃝͞ ͞ ͡⃝ ⃝҉҈҉҈҉҈҉҈҉҈҉ :̶̢͙͙͕̠̩͆(̷̮͍͚̫͚͂̍)̵̳̗̊( ̟̞̝̜̙̘̗̖҉̵̴̨̧̢̡̼̻̺̹̳̲̱̰̯̮̭̬̫̪̩̦̥ What am I supposed to do with this? It's un-Googleable. Unpronounceable. It doesn't even render the same way on various platforms. It looks one way on YouTube Music. Another on Apple Music. And yet another on Bandcamp. Even the artist name ⣎⡇ꉺლ༽இ•̛)ྀ◞ […]

I would never go so far as to say there's no place for AI in music (I'm a fan of Holly Herndon, after all). But I generally find music made with generative AI to be offensively boring, especially the outputs of Suno. So I'm having a bit of a tough time processing the fact that […]

In 2017, I bought an old Magnus chord organ off Craigslist for $10. It's one of my favorite music gear purchases. Electric chord organs let you play full chords with just a press of a button, making them perfect for aspiring singer-songwriters or fooling around at home. But chord organs largely fell out of favor […]

Organizers want the show to be the most-viewed halftime show in history. Having Shakira, Justin Bieber, Coldplay, and BTS will surely help—but do soccer fans want it?

Apple Music is more expensive now. In the US, an individual plan now costs $11.99 per month, a $1 bump up from the previous $10.99 price. A family plan now costs $19.99 per month, up from $16.99, and a student plan costs $6.99 per month, up from $5.99. Apple, in a statement to Music Business […]

CD sales are apparently going up, reportedly thanks to fans realizing they're an affordable way to support their favorite artists. According to a new report from research firm Luminate, 16.3 million CDs were sold in the first half of 2026 in the US, a 16 percent increase year-over-year. The growth in CD sales was driven […]

Suno data obtained in a hacking incident has exposed that the AI music generator was trained by scraping millions of songs and lyrics from online audio platforms, including YouTube Music, Deezer, and Genius, 404 Media reports. Given that Suno has avoided revealing what's in its training datasets and how they were acquired, this a rare […]

Spotify is experimenting with a new AI feature that allows Premium subscribers to play and explore music, audiobooks, and podcasts by having conversations with a chatbot. The "Talk to Spotify" feature appears across the Home and Now Playing view on Spotify's mobile app. You can interact with the chatbot by typing your request in the […]

Spotify is rolling out a new AI-powered conversational feature that lets Premium subscribers chat with the app to discover music, podcasts, audiobooks, and more.

Lorde was performing at the Real Cool Festival in Madrid on Thursday and took some time during her set to speak out against AI glasses. While she didn't specify any brands in particular, it's likely she was taking a shot at festival sponsor Ray-Ban, which has collaborated with Meta on a pair of AI smartglasses. […]

Matmos are an incredibly accomplished duo between their own solo records like the masterpiece A Chance to Cut Is a Chance to Cure and production classic Bjork records like Vespertine. But Drew Daniel, one half of Matmos, is fiendishly prolific. When he's not literally dreaming up new viral music genres, he's also putting out records […]

After setting the music gear corner of the internet on fire back in 2023 with the first glimpse at the Nopia, creators Martin Grieco and Rocío Gal are almost ready to bring it to market. The duo brought it to the MusicRadar offices for an in-depth first look and revealed that it will be launching […]

If you're a music maker of a certain age, then you probably once dabbled with a pirated copy of a little app called Fruity Loops. These days it's called FL Studio, and Constantin Koehncke, is the man responsible for shepherding the pioneering digital audio workstation (DAW) through the modern age. As CEO of Image Line, […]

Summer 2026 marks the 30th anniversary of Jay-Z’s debut Reasonable Doubt. To honor it, he put on a massive concert at Yankee Stadium—complete with performances from Beyoncé, Nas, and Alicia Keys.

Spotify is giving listeners control to fine-tune what gets surfaced for them in Release Radar - one of its most popular weekly playlists. The new options allow you to narrow the playlist to a specific genre, focus on artists that are new to you, and more. Listeners can choose from up to five options like […]

Last year, Image Line introduced Gopher for FL Studio, an AI chatbot that was basically a glorified instruction manual. You asked it how to do something, and it would serve up the relevant instructions. It's the kind of thing I actually use AI for on a semi-regular basis. But in the new release, Gopher can […]