Thursday, January 23, 2025

10 years of ‘Monkeys Spinning Monkeys’ on TikTok : NPR

MIDI inputs in Logic for the song Monkeys Spinning Monkeys taken from Kevin MacLeod's Youtube channel. Unlike other artists who seek to protect the rights to their creative work, McLeod encourages anyone to use his music for free. “I just want my stuff to be heard,

MIDI inputs in Logic for the music Monkeys Spinning Monkeys taken from Kevin MacLeod’s Youtube channel. Not like different artists who search to guard the rights to their inventive work, McLeod encourages anybody to make use of his music totally free. “I simply need my stuff to be heard,” he says.

Kevin MacLeod/YouTube/Screenshot for NPR


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Kevin MacLeod/YouTube/Screenshot for NPR

Flip to TikTok for some amusement, and also you’ll discover quick movies of a fluffy cat cuddling a fluffy canine, a toddler clutching a bag of Doritos as if it have been a teddy bear, or a penguin creating flipper-print art work.

You’ll have to show up the amount to listen to what all these posts have in frequent: a music created ten years in the past referred to as “Monkeys Spinning Monkeys” by Kevin MacLeod.

Though few individuals know the identify of the music or the one who composed it, over the previous decade, it’s served because the background music for tens of millions of TikToks and has been performed billions of instances. It’s additionally throughout Instagram and YouTube.

The music’s story illustrates one of many core ways in which music and social media have formed one another during the last decade—with the proliferation of viral, loopable songs that instantly telegraph a video’s temper on digital platforms designed for ease of copying sound from video to video.

The person behind the monkeys

Kevin MacLeod is a prolific composer who obtained his begin as a pc programmer. He created songs for enjoyable on his pc and in entrance of audiences at improv comedy reveals.

MacLeod’s compositions are what’s often known as “library music,” stockpiles of songs that content material creators draw upon to attain their works. These are the kind of melodies that you’d by no means queue up on Spotify however find yourself within the background of all kinds of issues: video video games, movies, and numerous quick movies.

“Normally, I will be like watching a YouTube video and the music sucks,” says MacLeod. “And I am like, nicely, let me attempt to do one thing higher.”

And as soon as he tries his hand at one thing higher, he releases it totally free.

Within the early days of his profession, MacLeod would craft his personal licenses — to not shield his rights, however to provide them away. MacLeod says his strategy was to “discover a license, after which do every thing the other,” including clauses like “you have the correct to make use of this in your private issues. You have the correct to make use of this commercially. You can promote this factor in one other product if you wish to.”

Then Inventive Commons got here alongside, standardizing royalty-free rights. Whereas some composers and business individuals argue that such sharing undermines composers’ capacity to make a dwelling, MacLeod says he simply desires his work out on the earth.

“I simply need my stuff to be heard,” explains MacLeod. “, you gotta make it as simple as potential.”

Soundtracks unfold with two faucets of a finger

Within the early days of YouTube, customers posted just about something no matter copyright, says Bondy Kaye, a researcher on the College of Leeds and cofounder of the TikTok Cultures Analysis Community.

However with crackdowns by digital fingerprinting applications like Content material ID, Kaye says individuals more and more turned to royalty-free songs, together with “Monkeys Spinning Monkeys.”

“And then you definitely simply observe that practice because it goes all the way in which to TikTok,” says Kaye.

Kaye says that whereas YouTube lets customers add new movies, TikTok makes it simpler to create movies that construct off present content material with options that permit customers to splice a response video alongside the unique, take a brief clip from it, or reuse the music. (Instagram additionally comprises an identical characteristic.)

“So in case you occur to see a viral video, with simply two faucets of your finger, you may create and publish a brand new video utilizing that very same music.”

As extra individuals noticed TikToks with “Monkeys Spinning Monkeys,” extra individuals made TikToks with “Monkeys Spinning Monkeys,” too.

One thing magical about “Monkeys”

TikTok mentioned they couldn’t present us with all-time numbers, however rankings by business watchers over the previous couple of years routinely present “Monkeys Spinning Monkeys” among the many most used songs on the platform. MacLeod says that out of his 2,000 compositions, “Monkeys Spinning Monkeys” accounts for half of all listens.

“Monkeys Spinning Monkeys” comprises a fluty melody and bouncy bass line— musical parts that sign “enjoyable” to the listener.

YouTube

Even with the Inventive Commons license, he’s nonetheless earned over seven figures—principally from different international locations that don’t at all times observe the identical cost protocol.

So is “Monkeys Spinning Monkeys” only a music in the correct place, with the correct permissions, on the proper time? Or is there one thing particular about it that makes it such an interesting soundtrack for our favourite foolish, joyful highlights?

“The reply is each,” jokes Paula Harper, a musicologist on the College of Chicago who writes about sound and the web.

Harper says “Monkeys Spinning Monkeys” subtly makes use of some traditional musical references, like its booming bass line.

Musicologist Paula Harper says “Monkeys Spinning Monkeys” shares some parts from classical music, like this aria by Mozart. Each songs characteristic a bouncy bass line that highlights the songs’ meant comedian reduction.

YouTube

“Yow will discover examples going again to the 18th century the place composers like Mozart are utilizing growth, growth, growth, growth,” says Harper, mimicking the bouncing bass line, “to suggest that is goofy, that is foolish, that is comedian reduction.” For instance, she factors to the primary aria in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, “Notte e Giorno Faticar,” when an identical baseline introduces Leporello as “the goofy comic-relief servant character.”

Then there is a melody “that’s positively evocative of one thing like a calliope, like a carousel,” says Harper. instance, she says, is the circus march “Barnum and Bailey’s Favourite,” which shares the identical fundamental construction of a lightweight melody on high of an alternating bass line.

The sunshine, tinkling melody of “Monkeys Spinning Monkeys” comes from computer-synthesized flutes, however evokes the identical kind of carousel or circus ambiance as songs just like the march “Barnum and Bailey’s Favourite”

YouTube

When “Monkeys Spinning Monkeys” comes on, Harper says individuals in all probability aren’t consciously eager about old-timey circuses, they usually’re positively not eager about Mozart. However collectively, the music performs on associations we already need to evoke a temper instantly.

Composer Kevin MacLeod acknowledges that “Monkeys Spinning Monkeys” is musically unexceptional. “I imply, the combo is not notably nice. The devices aren’t notably nice…. There’s nothing sonically fascinating about it,” admits MacLeod.

Nevertheless it pulls collectively these musical concepts in a method that permits you to know what’s taking place, and with – he thinks – a little bit of subtlety.

“It isn’t assaulting you with comedy. , there’s not slide whistles and practice horns and vehicles honking,” laughs MacLeod. “Individuals prefer it. Individuals use it. And it does the factor.”

That “factor” has gone from platform to platform, cat video to cat video. And it doesn’t matter what occurs to TikTok, the sound of “Monkeys Spinning Monkeys” will doubtless be caught in our heads for years to return.


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