Consumer & Gadgets

How AI is shaping the music listening habits of Gen Z

For four years, we've been teaching a class on music and the mind. We've asked the students at the start of each semester to complete a short, informal survey on their music education and favorite songs and artists.

Machine learning & AI

ChatGPT-rival Anthropic releases more powerful AI

Anthropic, a major player in generative artificial intelligence, announced new models to fuel its Claude chatbot, the company said on Monday, as ChatGPT faces more rivals.

Business

Universal-TikTok feud ramps up as more songs come down

Universal Music Group has lambasted TikTok's approach to AI as the feud between the two companies over song royalties escalates and popular music is expunged from the social media platform.

Music

Music is an art form whose medium is sound. Common elements of music are pitch (which governs melody and harmony), rhythm (and its associated concepts tempo, meter, and articulation), dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture. The word derives from Greek μουσική (mousike), "(art) of the Muses".

The creation, performance, significance, and even the definition of music vary according to culture and social context. Music ranges from strictly organized compositions (and their recreation in performance), through improvisational music to aleatoric forms. Music can be divided into genres and subgenres, although the dividing lines and relationships between music genres are often subtle, sometimes open to individual interpretation, and occasionally controversial. Within "the arts", music may be classified as a performing art, a fine art, and auditory art.

To many people in many cultures music is an important part of their way of life. Greek philosophers and ancient Indian philosophers defined music as tones ordered horizontally as melodies and vertically as harmonies. Common sayings such as "the harmony of the spheres" and "it is music to my ears" point to the notion that music is often ordered and pleasant to listen to. However, 20th-century composer John Cage thought that any sound can be music, saying, for example, "There is no noise, only sound." According to musicologist Jean-Jacques Nattiez, "the border between music and noise is always culturally defined—which implies that, even within a single society, this border does not always pass through the same place; in short, there is rarely a consensus.... By all accounts there is no single and intercultural universal concept defining what music might be, except that it is 'sound through time'."

This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA