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Originally published on IFEELVOID . Play the song and count the pulse for 15 seconds. Multiply that number by four. If you counted 35 beats, the song is roughly 140 BPM. That is the fastest manual way to find the beat of a song. It is also where the confusion starts. A trap record at 140 BPM can feel like 70. A drumless intro can hide the pulse completely. A sample can drift. And knowing the tempo still does not tell you the musical key you need for bass lines, vocal tuning, remixes, or harmonic mixing. This guide gives you the manual method, the DAW method, and the faster analysis workflow I use when a session cannot stop for guesswork. First: what does “beat” mean? People use “beat” to describe three different things: The pulse: the steady count you nod your head to. The BPM: how many pulses happen in one minute. The instrumental: the drums, melody, bass, and arrangement behind a vocal. If you need the tempo and key so you can work with the audio, keep going. Method 1: count the BPM manually Find the strongest repeating pulse. In most trap and hip-hop records, start with the snare or clap. Count along for 15 seconds, then multiply by four. Start the song at a section where the drums are clear. Tap your foot or nod to the main pulse. Count every pulse for exactly 15 seconds. Multiply the count by four. Repeat once to make sure your count is stable. Twenty beats in 15 seconds is 80 BPM. Thirty beats is 120 BPM. Thirty-five beats is 140 BPM. Watch for half-time and double-time A beat can be represented at two mathematically correct tempos. A dark trap record may read as 70 BPM or 140 BPM depending on whether you count the slow backbeat or the faster production grid. Neither number is automatically wrong. Use the tempo that matches your purpose. Producers usually want the grid that makes drum placement and subdivisions easy. DJs may want the value that matches the rest of their library. Method 2: use tap tempo Most DAWs, DJ applications, and metronome tools include ta

Sadly, there hasn't been a new episode of No Dogs in Space since July of 2024. Part four of the podcast's series on Can wrapped up an abbreviated season three, which focused on experimental rock. Don't get me wrong, I loved seasons one and two, but the show seemed to be gearing up for a […]

Tom Vek burst onto the scene in 2005 with his album We Have Sound, which garnered a solid 7.6 from the tastemakers of the day over at Pitchfork. His undeniably catchy brand of dancy indietronica landed him an appearance on The OC and placement on the Grand Theft Auto IV soundtrack. His follow-up, Leisure Seizure, […]

It took long enough, but now LA rapper Fenix Flexin appears to have admitted using AI for the 80s synth pop-themed song "Rubberz." His comments follow the producer Medasin's videos claiming that an AI tool called Treblo (formerly Sonauto) was used to make the song, and the company releasing an AI detector that identifies it […]

Suno plans watermarks and download limits to stop "large-scale abuse."

Suno announced plans to implement a new watermarking technology and download policy to limit the spread of spammy AI tracks and increase transparency. In a lengthy blog post, CEO and co-founder Mikey Shulman laid out the company's principles and the next steps for the company as it seeks legitimacy. The company is rolling out new […]

Suno's watermarking feature comes as the company is fighting legal battles on several fronts.

We were pretty sure that Fenix Flexin's "Rubberz" was made using AI, but musician Medasin was confident that it was made using Treblo specifically. Now the company and a new detection tool seem to confirm it. On Monday, the company announced the open-source Treblo AI Music Classifier, which detects when a song was generated using […]

Spotify says Merlin, which represents more than 30,000 independent labels and distributors, has joined Universal Music Group in backing its upcoming AI-powered remix and covers product. The paid tool will let fans create AI-generated covers and remixes of participating artists’ music while ensuring artists opt in, receive credit, and are compensated.

Notably, the company saw its subscriber base swell by 9% in the second quarter despite raising prices in several regions this year.

Fenix Flexin’s hit song “Rubberz” has hip-hop fans arguing over whether it was generated by AI. Some say they have proof it’s machine-made, but will anyone care?

Two minutes and thirty seconds into the title track of Rachika Nayar's Heaven Come Crashing, an absolutely massive drum and bass beat drops. As a fan of Nayar's debut record Our Hands Against The Dusk, it caught me off guard. That album has no percussion on it at all. Heaven Comes Crashing is almost entirely […]

Fender CEO Edward "Bud" Cole gave an interview to T3 in May celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Telecaster with comments on AI and music that initially flew under the radar. But it has started making the rounds recently, pouring more fuel on an already raging fire of bad PR following the company pissing off […]

Fenix Flexin is best known as a member of Shoreline Mafia, a rap duo from Los Angeles. But he's recently found solo success with the track "Rubberz," which has climbed to number 58 on the Billboard Hot 100. Almost immediately, though, questions were raised about the song's origins, with many speculating that it was largely, […]

Several record labels, including the big three - Universal Music Group, Sony Music, and Warner Music Group - have proposed rules regarding chart eligibility for AI songs. In short, they wouldn't be. The proposal goes quite a bit further than a labeling proposal put forth by the RIAA, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry […]

Ariana Grande filed a lawsuit on Monday in the Los Angeles County Superior Court against the currently unidentified hackers who allegedly stole and leaked private content. It aims to "uncover the identities of these currently unknown and unscrupulous individuals," referred to as "John Doe 1 and John Does 2 through 100." The lawsuit also says […]

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 […]