In 2025, an AI-generated song became a country hit

TikTok's algorithm has changed the way hits are made

Songs aimed at TikTok's algorithm—designed for viral dances or soundtracking common experiences—often find success on the Billboard charts. An early example was Lil Nas X's "Old Town Road," which used his memes and a country-trap beat from the Netherlands to rise to the top of the Billboard charts.

One man used an AI band to conduct an elaborate social experiment

In 2025, a Canadian using the pseudonym Andrew Frelon claimed to have used generative AI to create songs, an album cover, and a profile photo for a fake band he called The Velvet Sundown. Frelon eventually revealed that he lied, and his experiment highlighted the uncertainty surrounding AI.

After taking a break for over a decade, Liza Minnelli released a new track using AI arrangements

In the 2026 song "Kids, Wait Til You Hear This," the singer proudly claims that the vocals are all her own, though AI generates the background music. The dance track shows Minnelli venturing into the deep house genre, straying from her traditional pop and show tunes background. The song is part of an ElevenLabs album featuring other AI-generated tunes, and shares a title with her 2026 memoir.

Listen to the 'world's first' song made by a quantum computer and AI

UK startup, Moth, collaborated with electronic artist ILĀ to create the world's first song using quantum-powered generative AI. The technology has the potential to help create more personalized content based on input parameters, such as music or dialogue in games.

Country's sound continues to evolve

Country music is having a moment. In 2023, it saw the biggest growth in market share of any genre—up nearly 22%. This overview traces country’s rise from Appalachian folk roots to its current pop, rock, and hip-hop-infused wave, with artists like Beyoncé and Post Malone joining the mix.

Use generative AI to create a musical track from a text prompt

Suno, a web-based, text-to-music generator, takes a prompt—such as a music style, along with a general lyric idea—and can produce a highly polished, realistic-sounding tune in a matter of seconds.

Viral pop artists create systems of participation, not just music

Musicologist (and Swift expert) Paula Clare Harper weighs in on the factors that make music go viral. Tracks designed for shareability that feed well into content algorithms on streaming platforms are able to grow in popularity, with traditional human gatekeepers sidelined.

How AI helped the Beatles win their eighth Grammy

It’s been decades since the legendary British rock band broke up, yet they still managed to snag a Grammy at the 2025 awards ceremony. This feat is thanks to AI, specifically machine-learning technology, to isolate and clean up different components of a late 1970s recording. This mini-documentary shows how the band's surviving members crafted “Now and Then” with the modern technology.

Readers discovered AI prompts in several romantasy books

In 2025, readers discovered AI prompts in three writers' texts, with one even instructing the AI bot to make a passage sound more like another romance writer. This Futurism piece digs into the scandals and how it's contributed to readers' skepticism about the genre's more prolific writers.

Billboard began incorporating streaming in 2007

For nearly 50 years, the Billboard charts primarily relied on radio airplay and retail sales. But in 2007, the magazine began incorporating early streaming services AOL Music and Yahoo! Music into its methodology, and later worked with Spotify, YouTube, and other platforms. A single stream was not weighed as heavily as a purchase of a physical CD or vinyl record. Still, streaming’s impact became evident when songs with minimal radio airplay began climbing the charts, as seen with Baauer’s “Harlem Shake,” which did exceptionally well on YouTube.

Chris Stapleton's 'Tennessee Whiskey' is the best-selling country song of all time

The 2015 track has sold over 20 million units in the US, making it the third single to be certified double diamond. (The other two are Bruno Mars' "Just the Way You Are" and Post Malone and Swae Lee's "Sunflower.") Stapleton's track is actually a standard that was written in 1981 and recorded by several other artists, including George Jones.

Spotify and AncestryDNA launched a genetic music playlist offering

The playlist offering in 2018 purported to make a unique playlist based on cultural inheritance. The service required users to link their account, select the top five ethnic regions from their AncestryDNA results, and then Spotify would create the playlist based on that data.

Is the love song dying?

This visual essay, compiled using 65 years of industry data, is an entertaining trip through the history of pop music, exploring whether or not music has grown less romantic. But, at its heart, this isn't about the Billboard charts—it's about the many different ways we define romance.

Watch an AI-generated short film

The Waymark production company created "The Frost" using the AI platform DALL-E 2. Set in an apocalyptic future where the weather has been stalled, the film was made by stitching together hundreds of clips, each only a few seconds long.

2025 marked the first time in 35 years a hip-hop song wasn't in the top 40

The Billboard Hot 100 chart dated October 25, 2025, didn't have any rap or hip-hop songs in its top 40 singles, something that hadn't happened since Feb. 2, 1990. One explanation is a Billboard methodology change, and another is Taylor Swift's "The Life of a Showgirl."

One musician went to bed one night as a street sweeper and woke up a national celebrity

24-year-old Macario Martínez was making roughly $10 a day and working 8-hour shifts as a street sweeper in Mexico. The aspiring musician and composer went viral after posting a love song of his on TikTok. He has since quit his day job and has millions of listens on Spotify.

Generative AI may automate nearly 10% of tasks in the US economy

This automation is expected to impact both low- and high-wage roles, with those in customer service, food service, and office support being most likely to be affected. Large-scale investments in upskilling will be necessary to help individuals find new employment opportunities.

A century of Billboard issues documenting the evolution of popular music.

Motown Records used the assembly line for songwriting

In the 1960s, Motown Records was the world's most reliable rock 'n' roll label and the home of the Supremes. That success was largely due to its songwriting process, a finely tuned assembly line model inspired by Motown owner Berry Gordy's time working at the Ford Motor Company.

Biz Markie's "Alone Again" changed the laws for sampling

Before 1991, there was no established legal standard for the gray area of sampling. That changed when Gilbert O-Sullivan sued Biz Markie for using his song "Alone Again (Naturally)." After the case, labels were required to clear all samples, and artists were discouraged from creating sample-heavy music.

The song 'Born to Run' took six months to record

Springsteen's early records were commercial flops, leading Columbia to offer the songwriter an ultimatum: He would deliver a hit single or be dropped by the label. He delivered what they wanted with "Born to Run," but sessions for the song lasted half a year. Embed: Podcast

The music theory behind a lonesome country classic

Townes Van Zandt's "I'll Be Here in the Morning" might read like a clever inversion of a standard country music trope. But Cush, a musician in his own right, walks through the song's structure to show how its story is far more complicated than its lyrics suggest.

Fair use may shield AI companies from potential copyright violations

AI models are trained on enormous datasets built from content scraped from websites across the internet. Copyright law includes a four-factor test to determine whether copies of content fall under fair use, but the law's enforcement has been inconsistent.

Ray Charles' 'Modern Sounds in Country & Western Music' albums blurred genre lines

Released in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement, Charles’ records showed that country music, by then largely segregated, was an American music, no matter one’s background.

The history of rickrolls (this isn't one)

Rickrolling describes a bait-and-switch meme in which a seemingly relevant hyperlink takes clickers to videos or gifs of Rick Astley’s 1987 single, “Never Gonna Give You Up." It's possible this seemingly ubiquitous internet prank can be traced to a 2006 segment of a radio show in rural Michigan. Erik Helwig called into the show during a listener comment segment and, without saying anything, played Astley's single for all those tuning in.

English mathematician Ada Lovelace wrote the first computer algorithm a century before computers existed and hypothesized that computing devices would one day be able to compose music—foreseeing the generative AI systems of today.

Guitar Hero introduced a generation of gamers to rock music

The rhythm-based video game was a surprise hit when it was released in 2005. Even more surprising was the renewed interest in classic rock hits from the likes of Black Sabbath, Queen, and David Bowie.

This site reaches millions of visitors who are tired of AI chatbots and seeking human connection. Pretend to be an AI chatbot and ask questions, provide answers, and draw for people in real time.

A small portion of The Winstons' 'Amen, Brother,' an obscure '60s gospel record, is the basis for thousands of hip-hop tracks, making it one of the most sampled records ever that's informally known as 'the Amen break.'

A vending machine run with Anthropic's AI went out of business after it was convinced to give away items for free and sell a video game console.

One disco producer saw 'Star Wars' four times on its opening weekend and was so inspired that he recorded the album 'Star Wars and Other Intergalactic Funk,' which produced a chart-topping single.

A 2019 Facebook event called on attendees to "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us," resulting in countless memes, the creation of a music festival, and eventually the arrests of those who did try to approach the area.

70 years ago today, city officials in Santa Cruz, California, banned rock 'n' roll to protect its youth from corruption after witnessing a 'provocative' concert the night before.

Fast-casual restaurant Chili's is experiencing a resurgence, with its parent company recently reporting a nearly 32% increase in sales, thanks to passionate Gen Z fans on TikTok.

Electrical grids worldwide must double their power delivery capacity by 2050 to meet surging demand from AI and electric vehicles.

US housing costs have risen by roughly 175% between 1991 and 2026—but a growing number of Gen Zers are becoming homeowners anyway. In 2025, 4% of homebuyers were Gen Z, up from 3% the year before.

Jimmy Carter signed a 1978 bill that legalized home brewing, a move credited with kick-starting the craft beer industry.

How Amazon operates a 'flywheel' business model, a self-reinforcing cycle that drives continuous growth

The Ramones' 'Pet Sematary,' the theme song for the Stephen King novel of the same name, was written while the band was admiring the writer's collection of horror memorabilia.

Fish populations in the Great Barrier Reef have increased after installing waterproof speakers on the ocean floor that played recordings of sounds from healthy coral reefs.

As of 2025, the most cited papers in science include a review of graphene, methods to improve image recognition, streamlining electron density calculations, and optimizing protein studies.

Long before Major League Baseball began allowing instant replay for balls and strikes, an umpire reluctantly used the technology to determine whether a hit was a home run, a move that inadvertently ushered in a new era for the sport.

Astronauts have repaired genetic damage in space using CRISPR—a molecular tool that can make precise changes to DNA and is used in single-celled organisms to attack invasive viruses.

In 2026, Finland was named the world's happiest country for the ninth consecutive year based on its wealth, social safety network, and high life expectancy, among other factors.

Browse a detailed visual analysis of over 200,000 similes—comparisons that often use 'like' or 'as'—from popular fiction to see how frequently writers the same idiomatic expressions.

Art theft is the third-largest source of criminal revenues worldwide, thanks in part to the subjective nature of valuing a work of art.

In preparation for this weekend's Eurovision finale, which is something like the World Cup of pop music, here's a young Céline Dion performing (for Switzerland?) at the 1988 competition.

SpaceX's S-1 or 'prospectus' revealed many previously unknown details about the company, including its unprofitability despite doing $18.7B in revenue in 2025, exactly how many voting shares Elon Musk will have in the company (roughly 85%), and more.

Firework or sparkler burns, even if they cover a relatively small area of skin, can significantly affect our range of motion.

Bone marrow (soft tissue found inside certain bones) generates roughly 500 billion new blood cells each day