Music & Technology

Start studying up for the streaming wars, music lovers.

By Chris Opfer

During the early 1960s, many songs featuring tragic teen deaths, usually in car crashes, became huge hits. What was behind this morbid craze?

By Melanie Radzicki McManus

Billions of dollars' worth of CDs and digital downloads are sold each year and the Grammy Awards recognize the people who create all this music. How are winners picked and who have been some of the most controversial?

By Tracy V. Wilson & Alia Hoyt

Soprano Audrey Luna sings an A over high C, the highest note ever achieved onstage at the Metropolitan Opera.

By Patrick J. Kiger

Hot on the heels of the vinyl revival comes a mini-boom for cassette sales. But who's really buying them?

By Chris Opfer

Will subscription music services – and the unlikely comeback of vinyl – save the music album from extinction?

By Dave Roos

The renowned string quartet will improvise live music to accompany 'space sounds' created by sonification of the total solar eclipse.

By Robert Lamb

A computer programmer used data analysis to crunch the numbers for six decades of pop music's hottest hits.

By Chris Opfer

Where else can you find an instrument that can be played with a mallet, a violin bow or a hair comb?

By Melanie Radzicki McManus

Emancipate yourself from mental slavery by learning more about this reggae superstar.

By Kathryn Whitbourne

Nearly four decades after the Village People anthem hit the discos, the song's namesake still isn't really ready to fully embrace it.

By Chris Opfer

When the Clash started working on their third album, they had no idea it would be so influential.

By Kathryn Whitbourne

Which other famous rock star inspired the Lizard King's persona?

By Kathryn Whitbourne

The copyright infringement lawsuits didn't kill off sampling. Musicians just figured out how to hide it better so artists often can't tell they're being sampled.

By David Dennis

Not everyone agrees that as you age, you only want to hear the oldies.

By Dave Roos

Whether you love cheery pop tunes or melodramatic ballads has a lot to do with your age and gender, right? Actually, your musical taste depends more on your personality.

By Jonathan Strickland

Ludovico Einaudi's 'Elegy for the Arctic' is part of a Greenpeace campaign to draw attention to the region's rapidly melting ice.

By Christopher Hassiotis

A musicologist uncovers a surprising link between the musical cultures of ancient Europe and India.

By Christopher Hassiotis

But does name-checking a product in a song always mean a big sales bump?

By Dave Roos

Here's a riddle: If a musician creates an artificial intelligence that composes music, then who actually wrote the concerto?

By Julia Layton

Overt religious themes? Canine-human hybrids? Gender-bending marionettes? Yep, David Bowie did it all, and often faced censorship because of it.

By Chris Opfer

From fleek to bling to hood, hip-hop and teen culture influence the evolution of American and global English.

By Chris Opfer

Now that "Happy Birthday to You" is free to use, people everywhere will publicly sing it, right? Most likely. But the answer's not so clear.

By Laurie L. Dove

That infamous pharma exec Martin Shkreli just bought the sole copy. Bummer.

By Jonathan Strickland

Sure, some do, but it depends on what kind of music you're listening to.

By Alison Cooper