How Apple's GarageBand changed music

Apple started out in a garage in 1976

Shifting the focus of personal computing from businesses to everyday consumers, Apple found early success with the Apple II, which sold 6 million units, and the Macintosh, which featured a user-friendly graphical interface.

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.

Taylor Swift influenced record labels to change the way they write contracts

In addition to being a successful songwriter, Taylor Swift is a change-maker in the music industry. She asserted creative control over her music, re-recording her earlier albums after she lost the rights to them, and sparked a vinyl revolution in a digital age.

The Beatles sued Apple in 1978 to defend naming rights to their record label

The band created their own record label, Apple Corps, after their manager died in 1967, while the technology company chose the name "Apple" to appear before the video game company Atari in directories. Subsequent lawsuits were not settled until 2007.

The history of the 808, the drum machine that changed pop music

Roland's TR-808 is one of the most consequential pieces of gear in the history of popular music, providing the framework for innovative hip-hop, dance, and pop records in the early 1980s.

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.

The iPhone reshaped culture, media, and communication through innovation

Cultural moments, such as Ellen's viral Oscars selfie and Taylor Swift's iPhone Notes statement, have demonstrated how deeply integrated the device has become into society. The film "Tangerine" and Kendrick Lamar's "Pride" were created with the iPhone, underscoring its use in media creation.

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.

Apple's latest invention

Apple may be working on a robotic smart lamp. Internally called ELEGNT, it's designed to respond to music, display emotion through movement, and even serve up reminders. A new research paper details how it could work—though Apple hasn't officially confirmed a release.

Abbey Road Studios invented stereo recording (and was the site of most of the Beatles' recordings)

Built around 1830 and bought by the Gramophone Company in 1929, the St. John's Wood property became the world's first purpose-built recording studio. Its legacy spans stereo sound's invention, the Beatles' entire catalog, and blockbuster film scores from Star Wars to The Lord of the Rings.

The Bristol Sessions built a structure for a nascent music industry

Peer presented each artist at the Bristol Sessions with three separate contracts: one for royalties on the record, one for publishing of the composition, and one for management. It was a business model that would become the norm for the nascent recording industry.

Winning (or losing) a Grammy can impact the music an artist makes

A group of sociologists wanted to understand the impact the Grammys have on artists' musical output. They discovered that winning a Grammy often emboldens artists to release music that deviates from their own previous work and others. Nominees who lose do the opposite and trend toward the mainstream.

The surprising and strange sources behind 12 famous songs

Britney Spears's "Toxic" borrowed strings from a 1981 Bollywood film, Billie Eilish sampled The Office, and one duo made an entire album using only the sounds of their Whirlpool washing machine. Explore how sampling can pull from pretty much anywhere.

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

How musical guests disappeared from late night TV

The late-night landscape has changed dramatically in the past five years, with the most visible difference being a severe lack of music. This writer set out to learn why that is—and what it means for audiences and artists alike.

The first music delivered by podcast was the Grateful Dead

In 2001, Dave Winer pioneered the podcast by using his RSS feed to send the Grateful Dead's "Truckin'" to his subscribers. That would pave the way for the podcasting revolution, which came just a few years later, along with a corresponding music genre: podcast theme music.

Microphone technology made crooning possible

Before the electric microphone, vocalists needed to project to have their voices captured. The new technology, however, made softer, more intimate singing possible, leading to a new style of singing that took off in the late 1920s, with "crooners" becoming some of the first American pop stars.

Goldenvoice, Coachella's promoter, began with punk and gangster rap

This documentary produced by Coachella tells the story of Goldenvoice—a scrappy upstart booking punk, hardcore, and gangster rap shows in Southern California—and how it created one of the biggest festivals in the world. Beyond the narrative, though, this is worth watching for incredible performances from the White Stripes, Kendrick Lamar, Amy Winehouse, and more.

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.

The Brill Building was a breeding ground for girl group classics

The Brill Building was a building in New York City that housed the working offices for over 160 music industry professionals, including some of the country’s finest songwriters, such as Neil Diamond, Burt Bacharach, and George Clinton. Below is a 1959 picture of three more Brill Building pros: Carole King, Paul Simon, and Gerry Goffin.

Bardcore: the modern exploration of medieval music

The medieval instrumentation and lyric interpretation of modern pop, rock, metal, and hip-hop took off in April 2020, launching a new and growing genre. Bardcore is defined by its use of musical nostalgia and internet culture’s “memeification,” according to the historians in this nearly two-hour-long podcast. Listen to this episode to hear a medievalist and music historian break down the rise, relevance, and reasons behind Bardcore.

Hear 50 years of iconic hip-hop samples, the genre's foundational looped tracks

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.

Type out a tone and play it back with this fun game

Compose an original piece of music from your phone or desktop with this simple, super fun interface: Just start typing, discover the various sounds associated with each key or letter, and then press play. Go back, tweak, delete, and revise to your...

How a crisis over managing Linux versions led to the foundational software behind GitHub

In 2005, after enduring several challenges with BitKeeper—the system then used to manage the Linux source code—Linus Torvalds spent about 10 days writing code for Git, a new system to organize and track versions throughout kernel development. Git provides distributed version control for GitHub, which, as of 2023, is the world's largest host of software development projects.

By the mid-1980s, rappers began developing complex techniques

Early hip-hop featured straightforward meter and rhyme, with rappers generally following the beat and using rhyming couplets in the style of nursery rhymes. MCs like Rakim, though, began pushing the limits of the form through varied stresses and dynamic, multisyllabic slant rhymes.

3D printing has made musical instruments more accessible

Violins fabricated from durable plastic, rather than being built from wood, can cost hundreds of dollars less, allowing children to try them out without financial pressure. They can be made in colors that appeal to children, sizes tailored to their bodies, and with tactile guides to help visually impaired learners.

Irish music became popular in the US during the 19th century

The influx of Irish immigrants in the mid-1800s, driven by starvation and abysmal employment opportunities, led to a significant Irish-American culture, especially in urban hubs such as New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and San Francisco.

The Beatles' US label rejected the band's first two singles, 'Please Please Me' and 'From Me to You,' with one executive calling the band 'dead in the water.'

The name 'Silicon Valley' arose from the founding of Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Fairchild Semiconductor in 1956-57, founded near Stanford University in Palo Alto

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.

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.

A researcher recently discovered an interview from 1967 between groundbreaking journalist Joan Didion and the Grateful Dead, years before the band became an institution.

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.

Children are now three times more likely to say they want to be a YouTuber when they grow up than an astronaut, with some even attending 'YouTube camps' that teach kids how to create content for the platform.

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.

Sony set the standard for cylinder-shaped batteries when it repurposed manufacturing equipment used to make rolls of magnetic recording tape.

Prince's sexually explicit 1984 track 'Darling Nikki' attracted the ire of the Parents Music Resource Center, an advocacy group that inspired the Parental Advisory sticker, even though the song ends with a Christian message.

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

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.

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

Learn how your body is, scientifically, like a firework with its own slow, controlled burn.

The word 'jazz' evolved from 'jasm,' 19th-century American slang for 'energy'

About 2,000 US babies are born annually without some portion of their limbs, potentially leading to a lifetime of pricey prosthetics.

The Mona Lisa's celebrity status and repeated restorations have obscured what made the painting so revolutionary for its time

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.

While the first exchange-traded fund (a 'basket' of different assets that can be bought and sold on a stock exchange) in the US only launched in 1993, the global ETF market has grown to more than $10T in the short time since.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps is independent of Iran's regular army and is one of the most powerful and influential military-political organizations in the Middle East.

The first steps to rebuilding your credit score include getting to know exactly what's on your credit report and figuring out how far you are from the '700 club,' or 'good score' range.

The price of gas is a composite made up of several different factors, with the federal gas tax making up less than 20% of what drivers pay at the pump.