AILSA CHANG, HOST:
If you spend any time on social media, you probably have heard this song.
(SOUNDBITE OF KEVIN MCLEOD'S "MONKEYS SPINNING MONKEYS")
CHANG: It's the background music for millions of videos, played billions of times. But few people know the name of the song or the person who composed it. On the year of its 10th anniversary, Deena Prichep has the story of the song, called "Monkeys Spinning Monkeys," and what it tells us about the soundtrack of the digital age.
DEENA PRICHEP, BYLINE: If you play "Monkeys Spinning Monkeys" for someone in their 20s, as I did recently on the streets of Portland, Ore., they're going to know it.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Yeah. Yeah. I know that from TikTok.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: TikTok, Instagram reels.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: TikTok, YouTube.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: It's, like, the generic TikTok sound.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: (Vocalizing).
PRICHEP: The song has been used in over 30 million TikToks, scoring pretty much what you'd imagine.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: So, like, cats being stupid or, you know, like, messing with stuff.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #7: Cute little pet videos and baby videos, I think.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #8: Also, like, pop quizzes.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: Child figuring out how to get to candy or something like that.
PRICHEP: These videos are everywhere, but the name of the composer - not so much.
KEVIN MCLEOD: My name is Kevin McLeod, and I write music for things.
PRICHEP: And a lot of McLeod's music is this sort of stuff - songs like "Sneaky Snitch"...
(SOUNDBITE OF KEVIN MCLEOD'S "SNEAKY SNITCH")
PRICHEP: ...Or "Fluffing A Duck"...
(SOUNDBITE OF KEVIN MCLEOD'S "FLUFFING A DUCK")
PRICHEP: ...The sort of loopable melodies that are perfect for short, fun videos.
MCLEOD: Usually, I'll be, like, watching a YouTube video, and the music sucks. And I'm like, well, let me try to do something better.
PRICHEP: McLeod says he has earned well over seven figures from monkey spinning monkeys, but that's less than it could be.
MCLEOD: Nobody in the U.S. pays me, or at least not until recently.
PRICHEP: McLeod releases most of his music under a Creative Commons license, which means that, for the most part, as long as users give him credit, they can have it for free.
MCLEOD: I just want my stuff to be heard. You got to make it as easy as possible.
PRICHEP: The story of "Monkeys Spinning Monkeys" is emblematic of how music has shaped digital platforms and been shaped by them. In the early days of YouTube, users would post pretty much anything regardless of copyright, says Bondy Kaye, a researcher at the University of Leeds and co-founder of the TikTok Cultures Research Network. But with crackdowns, Kaye says people increasingly turn to royalty-free songs, including "Monkeys Spinning Monkeys."
BONDY KAYE: Then you just follow that train as it goes all the way to TikTok.
PRICHEP: Kaye says while YouTube let users upload videos, TikTok made it easier to create videos in a way that's participatory. So if you see a TikTok you like, there are features that let you splice a reaction video alongside the original or take a short clip from it or use the music.
KAYE: So if you happen to see a viral video, with just two taps of your finger, you can create and publish a new video using that same song.
PRICHEP: Which means as more people saw TikToks with "Monkeys Spinning Monkeys," more people made TikTok with "Monkeys Spinning Monkeys." TikTok said they couldn't provide us with all-time numbers, but rankings by industry watchers over the last few years routinely show "Monkeys Spinning Monkeys" among the most used songs on the platform. So is this just a song that was in the right place with the right permissions at the right time, or is there something about it? The answer is both. Paula Harper is a musicologist at the University of Chicago who writes about sound and the internet. She says "Monkeys Spinning Monkeys" subtly uses some classic musical references, like in the bass line.
PAULA HARPER: You can find examples going back to the, like, 18th century, where composers like Mozart are using, like, (vocalizing) to signify, this is goofy. This is silly. This is comic relief.
(SOUNDBITE OF FRANCESCO MOLINARI-PRADELLI PERFORMANCE OF MOZART'S "DON GIOVANNI: NOTTE E GIORNO FATICAR")
HARPER: And then there's the melody. (Vocalizing). That is definitely evocative of something like a calliope, like a carousel.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
PRICHEP: Harper says that when "Monkeys Spinning Monkeys" comes on, people probably are not consciously thinking about turn-of-the-century circuses, and they're definitely not thinking about Mozart. But together, it creates a mood...
(SOUNDBITE OF KEVIN MCLEOD'S "MONKEYS SPINNING MONKEYS")
PRICHEP: ...Which is what people want from a TikTok song.
HARPER: You hear that, and you know that nothing's going to go back, right?
MCLEOD: I'm very proud of it. It's doing its job.
PRICHEP: Composer Kevin McLeod.
MCLEOD: People like it. People use it. And it does the thing.
PRICHEP: The thing that "Monkeys Spinning Monkeys" does is provide a perfect, free soundtrack to goofy joy, which has gone from platform to platform, cat video to cat video and will likely be stuck in our heads for years to come. For NPR News, I'm Deena Prichep.
(SOUNDBITE OF KEVIN MCLEOD'S "MONKEYS SPINNING MONKEYS") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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