Music

A brief history of cyborgs, superhumans and robots in pop music

The recent Wellcome Collection Superhuman Exhibition has shown how human enhancement permeates our culture from sport to comic books. A rich seam also runs through popular music — a medium that has explored both the joy and the alienation of living in a world dominated by technology and imagining what it’s like to become cybernetic.…

Recreating the Antique Poster That Inspired a Beatles Song

John Lennon wrote “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite” in 1967, but most of the fanciful lyrics were actually written in 1843. You see, Lennon didn’t pull them out of a drug-induced hallucination—he pulled them off a 19th-century poster advertising the Pablo Fanque Circus. The story’s actually fairly well known, but there are only…

Xbox Music Hands On: The Perfect Music Service—If You Use Nothing But Microsoft Stuff

We’ve known that Microsoft has been working on a music service for a while now, and we finally got a chance to check it out first hand. Xbox Music is exactly what you’d want in a streaming service and store. It’s complete in a way that Spotify, Amazon, and even iTunes aren’t. Microsoft’s new music…

Haunting 3-minute music video tells the panspermia story better than Prometheus did

In Prometheus, we saw a mysterious alien seeding the Earth with DNA. This act of fertilizing a planet with life from space is called panspermia. And in this music video from director Tom Walsh and the band Swimming, you can see a breathtaking short story of panspermia that feels far more satisfying than the one…

Pluck Band Names from the Air with The Top Five Song ID Apps

You’re innocently going about your day when it happens: You hear a song you’ve never heard before. It rules. You need to know what it is. Before the age of smartphones, this would probably require writing down a few lyrics to Google later. Before computers, you’d probably have to come to terms with never ever…

Here’s How Much Pandora Pays Music Artists

Pandora wants you to know that Pandora is good for music because it pays artists millions and millions of dollars for their songs. Take Drake and Lil Wayne, they get nearly $3 million each a year. And Pandora wants to pay them more. According to Pandora CEO Tim Westergren, Pandora will pay over two thousand…

My Little Ponies singing about fan conventions is kind of amazing

If ever you need a song to get yourself amped up for a convention, turn to this pony-filled video. The My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic crew espouses the joys of cosplaying, tabling, and just hanging back and tweeting about the panels in pitch-perfect song. Even if you don’t watch My Little Pony, hit play.…

Blue Note: Because There’s a World of Rad Jazz You Need to Hear

Yeah, we get it. This is the iPod generation, and you won’t listen to anything smarter than a Top 40 song by Shakira or whoever the hell is popular right now, but there’s a lot of classic jazz that you should really learn more about—if only to impress future dates. What does it do? Founded…

Is the BBC Working on a Free Spotify Rival Called Playlister?

The Telegraph is reporting that the BBC is developing an on-demand music service called Playlister, which will provide access to “hundreds of thousands” of tracks for free. While it sounds like a direct rival for the likes of Spotify and Rdio, the newspaper’s numbers suggest that the service would provide a fraction of the songs…

Queen + Van Halen + Giant Robots Puppets = YEEEEEEAAHHH

When it comes to matters science fictional, the band Queen is best known for their soundtrack to Flash Gordon (although Freddie Mercury’s encounters with Wolverine are near and dear to us). https://gizmodo.com/wolverine-meets-freddie-mercury-the-greatest-marvel-c-5905016 But back in 1983, Queen guitarist Brian May teamed up with Eddie Van Halen and members of REO Speedwagon and Alice Cooper’s and…

Happy 30th Birthday to the CD, Digital Music’s Patient Zero

30 years ago today, a game-changing pair of products were announced: Billy Joel’s 52nd Street on Compact Disc, and the Sony CDP-101, the first device to be able to play it. And the age of the CD was born. A joint effort of Phillips and Sony, which had both been working independently on different versions…

Watch a Bunch of Computer Parts Somehow Sing That Gotye Song

I don’t know if I’m more sick of this Gotye song or that Call Me Maybe song (though Gangnam Style is quickly catching up to both of them) but this is actually pretty freaking cool: a bunch of old computer parts—hardrives, scanners, etc—combine to sing the song, ‘Somebody That I Used to Know’ by Gotye.…

The NY Post reports that Apple’s music-streaming Pandora ripoff has hit a snag; Sony wants more cash. No rush, guys! https://gizmodo.com/apple-might-be-trying-to-launch-its-own-pandora-knock-o-5941217

Brian Eno’s Bonkers New iPad App Thinks for Itself

Brian Eno has made some trippy iOS music apps before but the latest, Scape, takes Tiger Mountain by wackiness. Look at the video above. What are all those strange symbols and shapes? Is this a music app or a weird new age religion? Or Scientology? https://gizmodo.com/trope-the-new-brian-eno-iphone-app-is-the-true-follow-5364329 In Scape (a collaboration with Peter Chilvers) you make…

Neil Young Unveils His New Pono Music Player

Neil Young has been banging on for some time about his dreams for hi-res digital music. Now, appearing on the Late Show with David Letterman, he’s unveiled his new music player: Pono. https://gizmodo.com/neil-young-piracy-is-the-new-radio-5881167 Rolling Stone reports that Pono is in fact a music ecosystem: a music download store, a tool that converts digital audio files…

Old iOS Music Accessories Should Work With Apple’s New Lightning Dock Connector

For people like musicians who use more sophisticated 30-pin devices, Apple’s switch to a new dock connector could potentially be devastating. Luckily, initial reports indicate much of this hardware will work with the new Lightning connector. Just because a $30 adaptor will allow the new iPhone to work with an old iPod dock doesn’t necessarily…

Your Future iPad’s Display Might Have Built-In Speakers

Apple’s always publishing patents, but here’s one that sounds rather fun: imagine an iPhone or iPad with a flexible display that has speakers built in to it, to provide surround sound. The patent describes a flexible display with all manner of built-in features: a tactile keyboard, laser mics and speakers. Much of this is made…

Check Out Megaupload Founder Kim Dotcom’s Next Project: Megabox

We’ve sort of known that Kim Dotcom was launching Megabox from the remains of Megaupload but we didn’t know exactly what it was. Now that Dotcom has leaked a video about the service, we have an idea: a music service that wants to destroy labels and put the artist in charge. https://gizmodo.com/is-megaupload-relaunching-this-year-5934132 This ain’t piracy.…

Cheap Goodies on Google Play for the Next Five Days

Google just crossed the rather staggering 25 billion apps downloaded mark, and to celebrate it’s offering some heavy discounts. For the next five days you can download apps from top developers (Game Loft, EA, Rovio, and others) for just 25 cents a pop. And that’s just the app side. There’s also going to be steep…

Apple Can’t Trademark Its Music Icon Because Of… MySpace

In a hilarious court ruling, Apple got denied a trademark on its orange music icon (the one that’s on iOS devices) because trademark judges said consumers might confuse the logo with one owned by MySpace. Hah! Yes, My_____ or ____space or whatever it’s going to be these days, is screwing with Apple’s plans. Take a…