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Tag: music

  • TikTok’s Missing Music Is Making Users Very Upset

    TikTok’s Missing Music Is Making Users Very Upset

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    #SwiftTok had a rough day. Early Thursday, after Universal Music Group and TikTok failed to reach an agreement on licensing music from UMG artists on the app, sounds from those artists—including Taylor Swift, Drake, and others—went silent.

    “Some of my most viewed videos are ones talking about Taylor Swift, that have Taylor Swift songs in the background,” says Savannah DeLullo, a Wordle influencer on TikTok and a Swiftie. “So, them being muted is pretty sad, because we put in all of that work.”

    DeLullo notes that creators might switch over to alternative versions of the official songs or experiment with ways to avoid copyrighted music altogether, but still the mood on #SwiftTok is far from light.

    “Half my drafts are muted now,” says Madeleine Macrae, a Swift fan and TikTok creator. While initially frustrated by the change, Macrae thinks there might be positive impacts. Even though many ardent fans value the online community built through social media, some are also uncomfortable with the flattening of poetic songs into 60-second memes. “Songs that Swifties would usually gatekeep aren’t going to be TikTok-ified now,” she says.

    It’s not just Swifties who are missing music on TikTok. Multiple videos posted on Olivia Rodrigo’s official account, including one with over 50 million views, are now quiet. Similarly, TikToks with UMG licensed music posted by Billie Eilish to promote her album display the message, “This sound isn’t available.”

    During recent years, UMG and other labels have built marketing strategies around getting songs to go viral with the TikTok algorithm. Younger users see the platform as a great way to discover their next favorite song and build out cool playlists. If TikTok and UMG don’t reach a new deal soon, the prohibition could dramatically alter how artists tease new music and connect with fans through social media.

    In an email to WIRED, Barney Hooper, a global head of music communications at TikTok, indicated that the change only impacts music from UMG and confirmed that videos with previously licensed music will stay muted until another deal is closed. Soon, TikTok might also take steps to remove songs in the Universal Music Publishing Group catalog, which would further increase the number of impacted artists.

    So, licensed music from UMG artists is gone from TikTok, for now, but it remains unclear what will happen to unofficial remixes and mash-ups as the catalog is wiped from the platform. Viral sounds on TikTok are sometimes warped versions of an original song, with vocals frequently sped up, and while some of those sounds remained on the platform Thursday, they may not for much longer.

    A well-known musician for almost two decades, Swift has seen her popularity skyrocket in recent years. Her Eras Tour is so massive it has the power to impact local economies and her appearances at NFL games to watch her boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, play have altered football viewership this season. Losing her music as well as tunes from Drake and others in UMG’s lineup, could alter the fabric of TikTok itself.

    Swift’s songs may no longer be all over the platform, but music remains core to the user experience of scrolling through TikTok. The cascade of snippets from huge artists disappearing could even usher in a new era on the For You Page feed. “I feel like a silver lining to this is that smaller or independent artists can have their chance to go viral,” says Macrae.



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  • Taylor Swift Conspiracy Theorists Get Psyops All Wrong

    Taylor Swift Conspiracy Theorists Get Psyops All Wrong

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    Public perception of psychological operations soured in a big way in the mid-1970s, when details of the CIA’s MK-ULTRA program were first released, detailing a plot—more based in science fiction than science—to brainwash subjects using psychoactive drugs. Further revelations that the US had supplied Nicaraguan death squads with psychological warfare guides would not help that public relations problem.

    A lot of the paranoia about psychological operations stems from “misapprehensions of what it is, what it is capable of,” says Tracy, who wrote one of the definitive books on the subject.

    While there may be grandiose ambitions of changing “hearts and minds,” Tracy says, the actual effect of this work is more modest: “Really, what you’re looking to do is affect peoples’ decisions of what to do, and what not to do.”

    In 1994, reports emerged of one particularly musical innovation from the Pentagon: During the Gulf War, the US military would boost morale by cranking up Pat Benatar’s “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” when responding to Iraqi SCUD missile attacks, for example.

    These techniques would later be adapted by the CIA to torture inmates captured in the War on Terror, a program now widely regarded as a complete failure.

    What Makes a Good Psyop?

    “Which is more effective: Tokyo Rose, in lovely, clear English, but … very much falsehood-based; or Voice of America and Radio Free Europe?” asks Christopher Paul, USMC chair for information at the Naval Postgraduate School, and a senior social scientist at RAND Corporation. He answers his own question: “You can also be effective and persuasive with the truth.”

    In recent decades, the Pentagon has even tried to rebrand these operations with a more mundane, but more accurate, name—Military Information Support Operations, or MISO. The name hasn’t caught on.

    Paul has spent years studying the effectiveness of psychological and information operations, particularly nefarious and covert propaganda efforts. Fears over how these techniques could be used against Americans are longstanding, he notes, and are exactly why this work is forbidden domestically.

    “The Department of Defense has an influence capability,” Paul says. “But by statute, law, habit, authorization and permission: It is only ever pointed at selected foreign audiences.” Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, for example, are expressly prohibited from broadcasting to domestic audiences in the US.

    Tracy and Paul agree that psychological operations work when they are targeted, clear, and—ideally—honest.

    Paul points to the Russian effort to sway the 2016 presidential election. “Did it change electoral outcomes? No, not as far as we can tell, Did it cause or prevent conflicts? No, not as far as we can tell,” Paul says.

    It was equally ineffective when the Pentagon tried it.

    In 2022, social media companies identified a fear-reaching campaign, run by the Pentagon, to use dummy social media accounts to spread propaganda targeted at Tehran, Beijing, and Moscow. The effort prompted backlash, and led to a full-scale review of these operations. (That, seemingly, hasn’t prevented the Pentagon from piloting the possible use of deepfakes.)

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  • Music Piracy Is Back in a Big Way—Especially From YouTube

    Music Piracy Is Back in a Big Way—Especially From YouTube

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    This weekend, dozens of artists are set to descend on Los Angeles for the 66th annual Grammy Awards. Trevor Noah will tell jokes, musicians will get trophies—and somewhere on the internet, someone will be downloading their music for free.

    There were more than 17 billion visits to music piracy websites worldwide last year, a staggering 13 percent increase from 2022, according to research firm Muso. After years of downturn in music piracy brought about by streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music, the uptick is somewhat startling. According to Muso’s report, the increase shows “an urgent need for the [industry] to understand the changes continuing to drive consumers toward unlicensed channels.”

    Music piracy had generally been on the decline over the past seven years, in large part because artists and labels stopped offering exclusive album releases to certain music platforms, says Muso CEO Andy Chatterley. Back in 2016, albums like Beyoncé’s Lemonade and Frank Ocean’s Blonde would be released as exclusives on Tidal or Apple Music and then get pirated by folks who didn’t use those services. Following a missive from Universal Music Group CEO Ludcian Grainge decrying the practice, exclusives died down. So did piracy. Now, it’s back in a big way.

    Chatterley says there are multiple factors causing the resurgence, but he suggests that in some cases it’s a matter of people not being able to afford music streaming services. In others it’s a matter of mobile data costs being high in some regions, leading people to download tracks to their phones over Wi-Fi rather than streaming them over a mobile data connection. He points to one specifically surprising stat in Muso’s findings: Some 40 percent of the music piracy the firm tracked went to sites that rip the audio from YouTube videos and turn it into downloadable music files. That represents the largest share of piracy, according to Muso’s data—more than illegal streams, torrents, or other forms of web downloads. “It’s a really significant problem,” Chatterley says.

    When asked about Muso’s findings, YouTube spokesperson Jack Malon noted that as soon as the video-sharing service is alerted to stream-ripping tools, steps are taken to block offending domains and develop technical methods to stop their use. YouTube also has a staff dedicated to sending cease-and-desist notices to those behind such applications. “We invest significant resources in tools to report and manage copyrighted material, while working closely with other industry leaders to set the standard for how tech companies fight piracy,” Malon says. “We remain committed to continuously strengthening these efforts.”

    Muso wouldn’t disclose which ripping sites it tracked for its latest report. Chatterley says this information is being withheld in order to not promote piracy services. The firm also wouldn’t disclose how many downloads the ripping sites were responsible for. To provide context, Chatterley offered up torrent numbers for 2023.

    Take, for example, Taylor Swift. The ubiquitous phenom is up for six Grammys this weekend and, although she didn’t release a new album in 2023, had six of the top 20 top-selling records in the US. Her release of 1989 (Taylor’s Version), the rerecorded version of her 2014 powerhouse pop record, sold some 2.9 million copies—the biggest-selling album of any year in nearly a decade. That same album was downloaded via torrent more than 275,000 times. (The original 2014 version of the album was torrented 430,077 times.)

    The other albums Swift had on that top-20 list also saw large numbers of torrents. Like 2022’s Midnights. That record was torrented more than 493,000 times last year. In fact, most of Swift’s most popular albums—Speak Now, Red, Folklore, Lover, Evermore—were torrented between 400,000 and 700,000 times. All told, Swift albums were torrented fewer than 5 million times in 2023, which seems like a small figure when you consider that Swift sold 19 million records in the US alone in that time, according to data from Luminate. Then you remember that torrents are the smallest fraction of music piracy worldwide; only about 3 percent of visits to piracy sites worldwide led to someone seeking out a torrent.

    And now that piracy appears to be on the rise—again. It’s been nearly a quarter-century since Napster changed how people acquired music. In that time, scores of options have emerged for how to buy and stream tunes, but snagging them from the internet may never go away.

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  • Your Favorite Songs on TikTok Could Soon Disappear

    Your Favorite Songs on TikTok Could Soon Disappear

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    Starting today, the sounds on TikTok might be getting a little quieter. That’s because Universal Music Group is planning to remove its catalog from the video-sharing app after the massive music company failed to reach a licensing agreement with TikTok. Taylor Swift, Drake, Bad Bunny, Ariana Grande, and Billie Eilish are just a few of the major artists on the label whose music might disappear.

    On TikTok, creators often add short song clips to their videos to participate in viral trends and make the content more engaging. Not only will users soon be unable to make new videos with official snippets from UMG artists, previously published videos that contain music from the pulled catalog may go silent. UMG’s catalog includes everyone from BTS to the Beatles, and any video featuring their songs has the potential to be affected.

    UMG released a statement Tuesday, the day before its contract with TikTok expired, claiming that renewal negotiations fell apart due to disagreements over artist compensation, artificial intelligence protections, and platform safety. The statement’s wording characterizes TikTok as a bully. “How did it try to intimidate us?” it reads. “By selectively removing the music of certain of our developing artists, while keeping on the platform our audience-driving global stars.” It’s unclear which smaller artists at UMG may have been affected before the deal lapsed and the wider song prohibition rolled out.

    TikTok responded to the announcement with a similarly charged, albeit shorter, statement calling UMG greedy and deceptive. “Despite Universal’s false narrative and rhetoric, the fact is they have chosen to walk away from the powerful support of a platform with well over a billion users that serves as a free promotional and discovery vehicle for their talent,” it reads. TikTok’s influence over the music industry has expanded in recent years as artists (and their labels) attempt to break through the platform’s cryptic algorithm. A stand-alone app for streaming songs, called TikTok Music, is currently in beta for certain international markets.

    As generative AI tools improve, songs featuring AI vocals or other structural elements continue to spread on social media. UMG’s statement claims TikTok promotes the creation of AI music and that the contract TikTok wants “is nothing short of sponsoring artist replacement by AI.” This is not the first time UMG has taken issue with machine learning. The label filed a lawsuit last October against Anthropic, a chatbot company, regarding how Anthropic’s AI model may use copyrighted lyrics from UMG artists.



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  • 20 non-fiction and popular science books to look forward to in 2024

    20 non-fiction and popular science books to look forward to in 2024

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    Young woman, wearing a orange jacket, is reading a book on an ebook reader during sunset over Himalayas. She is sitting on the top of a mountain and holding the e-reader.The afternoon sun on the background. Mount Everest National Park. This is the highest national park in the world, with the entire park located above 3,000 m ( 9,700 ft). This park includes three peaks higher than 8,000 m, including Mt Everest. Therefore, most of the park area is very rugged and steep, with its terrain cut by deep rivers and glaciers. Unlike other parks in the plain areas, this park can be divided into four climate zones because of the rising altitude. The climatic zones include a forested lower zone, a zone of alpine scrub, the upper alpine zone which includes upper limit of vegetation growth, and the Arctic zone where no plants can grow.

    TRUTHS and consequences dominate the books we are likely to read in the year ahead. We escaped the food chain, but now we have to defend the living world we once fought against. We have left the planet only to discover all the unexpected ties that bind us to it. Some of us now lead easy lives – for which we reap surprising and unhappy consequences. What can the science that drove our success do to ensure our survival?

    Irresistible attraction

    We are still a very long way off from understanding how the world works. We still have no clear idea…

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