Music

Show Us Your Personal Spotify Year In Review and We’ll Show You Ours

Yesterday we posted a playlist of the most streamed songs on Spotify from 2013, but you’re better than the rabble, right? You have better taste than the pathetic mindless horde. If you log in to your Spotify account from the service’s Year In Review page, it’ll spit out stats about your year in Spotify jams.…

Charting the Popularity of Tech Through Hip-Hop Lyrics

Rap music is usually a pretty good marker of what’s trendy—or what’s going to be trendy in a few months. Maybe people were bragging about Sidekicks in the early aughts, but when did that drop off? RapGenius’s new RapStats feature shows you. For the uninitiated, RapGenius is a massive database of lyrics from hip hop…

CanOpener Improves iPhone Sound Quality for $4 Using Actual Science

Well, we might have just found the grandaddy of all audiophile music apps, perfect for the most important music snob in your life: you. Of course, if you care about sound quality, you already have nice headphones. Canopener for iOS ($4), is about what happens right before the sound leaves your iPhone, but before it…

Listen to This Year’s 100 Top-Streamed Spotify Tracks Right Here

If all your favorite playlist is missing is everyone else’s playlist favorites, fear not! Spotify has released its 100 most-streamed songs of the 2013, both in the US and globally. The results? The most agreeable mix you’ll hear all year—and a whole lot of Rihanna. The US and Global lists seem to be in some…

Google Play Music has officially arrived on Glass, so those ahead of the curve can now, um, listen to music.

Holy Scheisse, There’s a Shazam For Nazi Music

German authorities have developed a special app that allows them to identify extremist, right-wing music from just a brief clip, according to the German newspaper Der Spiegel. The new app works much like “Nazi Shazam.” According to the report, the app isn’t currently in use, and authorities from the Interior Ministry are currently meeting to…

Is this ice drumming for real?

Last year, Russian percussion band Etnobit recorded themselves creating incredible music by drumming on ice shards on Siberia’s ancient Baikal Lake. You won’t believe it. According tothe Siberian Times: How did they realise they could make their own Coldplay on Baikal? [Said Natalya Vlasevskaya,] ‘The wife of one of our drummers, Sergei Purtyan, slipped and…

A New Study Says You Sell More Music If You Get Rid Of Content Locks

Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems are used on things like ebook and movie files to make them more difficult to share. During the Napster era the major record labels got on board with DRMs in a big way hoping that they could reduce piracy by locking their music files down. But a new study shows…

Do you ‘ship absurd fictional couples? This music video is for you.

When you envision fictional characters getting together, are they the most implausible, inappropriate pairings you can imagine? The ladies of Not Literally celebrate ludicrous fan ‘ships with their music video parody of Icona Pop’s “I Love It.” If you’re looking for some particularly terrible ‘ships, io9ers have chimed in on their least favorite proposed couples.…

Best For Music: PS4 or Xbox One?

Let’s get one thing out of the way: Nobody buys a gaming console for music. Yes, modern consoles increasingly run all kinds of non-game apps — especially the entertainment kind — as the manufacturers of just about every type of consumer electronics aim to be the primary interface between people and their favorites 1s and…

The First In-Flight Movies Had a Live Orchestra

As crude as they may seem when compared to the home theater setups we enjoy in our living rooms, the in-flight entertainment options available on most flights have come a long way. Although, it’s hard not to feel a tinge of sadness that movies accompanied by live orchestras never caught on. Now that was flying…

Build This Ray Gun Synth That Generates Wonderfully Retro PewPew Sounds

Usually, if you’re building your own synthesizer, you have aspirations of composing the next great techno track. But this kit—available from the Maker SHED for just $20—lets you build a wonderful toy ray gun that generates electronic “pewpew” sound effects. And, instead of just cycling through various sounds like you would with a cheap toy,…

Lovers find an interstellar connection in Broken Bells’ new music video

Classic love story, astronaut girl falls to the Earth, boy discovers astronaut girl, they fall in love. Check out the brand new, two-part music video from Broken Bells (Danger Mouse and The Shins’ James Mercer) starring Kate Mara and Anton Yelchin. Directed by Jacob Gentry this music video (officially titled “After the Disco”) is a…

Say Hello to 3 New Subdomains on Gizmodo

We’ve added three subdomains to the greater Gizmodo umbrella this week, three awesome blogs that have long been carving out a niche for themselves elsewhere. So here’s a hearty welcome to Southland, Abler, and Disquiet. Southland Southland comes to Gizmodo as part of an exciting new content partnership with the USC Libraries, specifically the member…

More Than a Record Shop: Inside Brooklyn’s Massive New Music Outpost

Holy crap, someone is opening a new record store? Who in their right mind would open a record store? And in New York of all places, with its exorbitant rents! Didn’t these guys see what happened those who came before them? Well, this is different. All photos by Michael Hession Yesterday, Rough Trade NYC opened…

Volkswagen’s New App Creates Music Based On Your Driving Style

Have you ever noticed that how you drive is often based on what you’re listening to? Softer music can make you a more cautious driver, while loud upbeat tunes make you more aggressive. But with this new app from VW it’s the other way around. It generates music in real-time based on how you already…

Watch a 9-year-old ninja fight dystopian police, in this great video

If you need a futuristic fight scene to perk you up, then we’ve got you covered. This catchy new song from Five Knives, “The Future,” comes with a terrific video that shows a scary future world of authoritarian police, rigid conformity — and 9-year-old ninjas who fight back against the system! Video director Lance Drake…

Illustrated ballad tells the life story of Alan Moore

This past week, comic book writer Alan Moore turned 60, and in his honor, songwriter and cartoonist Jeffrey Lewis set Moore’s biography to pictures and music. [via Forbidden Planet International]

Deezer’s Music Streaming Service Is Headed to the US in 2014

If you’re not already fully signed up to the likes of Spotify, Rdio MOG or the rest, there will soon be another music option: the French streaming service Deezer will launch in the US in 2014. You may never have heard of it, but in other parts of the world it’s already a big deal.…

Pharrell Made a Joy-Filled 24-Hour Music Video For “Happy”

Earlier this week, Bob Dylan graced us with an interactive music video for “Like a Rolling Stone” that featured a bunch of faux cable channels you could click through. Today, the seemingly omnipresent Pharrell is giving you another reason to love music videos yet again, with a 24-hour vid for the song “Happy.” It is…