Writing is 1% writing, 1% staring into space, and 98% doing little errands to “prepare” for writing. My favourite method of not writing is to compose a very specific playlist to “soundtrack” the thing that I’m writing. If you go hunting for the right music to write to, sorry, I’ve just ruined your excuse: here is Lifehacker’s four-hour playlist of writing music.

Some kids are natural bookworms, happy to spend hours of their day curled up in a comfy chair with a stack of chapter books. And some kids are, well, not.

Google has announced a somewhat limited and ad -supported version of YouTube Music. Pitched directly at the owners of smart speakers and other similar devices, Google is trying to ensure it doesn't become a bit player as Spotify, Soundcloud and iHeartRadio dominate the streaming music business.

I hate concerts but I’ve been to hundreds, standing amidst a sweaty pit of people clamouring to get closer to the stage.

Of the many pleasures of working in the place that you live, blasting your own music might be the best. (That or going pantless.) To help you get into that chill workplace groove, we built you a playlist for cranking up in the home office, or pumping through your earbuds to drown out the Starbucks crowd.

Last month, I felt a disturbance in the Force, as if millions of crappy songs from 2003 to 2015 cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. And they were. MySpace — yes, it’s still around — lost all the music uploaded to the site between these years thanks to some corrupted data during a server migration. Whoops.

Among a slew of announcements about a new credit card, a subscription service, and something to do with Oprah, Apple has finally launched the second coming of the AirPods.

When I’m getting ready to party, music is crucial. It’s the overture to the whole night of carousal (or of chatting on the couch in someone’s living room with a clear plastic cup of goon).

Looking for some new music to lose yourself in this weekend? Look no further. Each year, NPR’s All Songs Considered team puts together a 100-song playlist for the South By Southwest music festival, and it never fails to deliver new artists and genres.

Which Android app is worth a spot on your new smartphone or tablet? Trying to find the very best of the best is a challenging process, because there are millions of apps to pick from on the Google Play Store. Even if you just scan Google’s “top free” or “top paid” list on a daily basis, you’ll miss out on a lot of digital gems. Allow us to help you out with our freshly updated Lifehacker Pack for Android.

Dear Lifehacker, My daughter's primary school is in the midst of a TikTok craze. All her classmates use the app on their parents' phones to create duets and share music videos. My daughter doesn't want to be left out, but I have read disturbing reports about the safety of the app, particularly when it comes to online predators. On a scale of one to ten, how dangerous is TikTok for kids?

When my baby daughter was getting grumpy in the bathtub, and I put TLC’s “No Scrubs” on Spotify, I knew I had something special to share with the world. There are tons of bathtime songs for children, but most of them are tedious. So I made a bathtime playlist for adults (and people of any age who don’t mind some swearing and sexual references).

Recently, Spotify updated its interface, burying its “Repeat” button in the depths of a sub-menu on its mobile app — and people are pissed. Redditors and Twitter users alike have taken to the internet to voice their complaints.

If you’re trying to combine creative work with “pay the bills” work, look at IHEARTCOMIX, a creative agency that integrates its client work (recent projects include marketing for Black Panther and Mary Poppins Returns) with in-house projects like the music label IHC 1NFINITY, which sets all its music videos in a shared universe.

We talked to IHC founder Franki Chan about taking a brand that started as a party series, and developing it into a full business while staying fun and creative.

How you doing? Oh no! I thought it’d last forever! Sorry, buddy. Sounds rough. Let’s go drown our sorrows. I have just the right music for this.

Every morning Flow State emails subscribers a set of background music, mostly wordless, to soundtrack your work day. And they’re pretty good at digging up non-obvious music, some of which isn’t even available on major streaming services (though almost all of it is on YouTube).

A leaked sales deck for 2017's disastrous Fyre Festival contains the pitch CEO Billy McFarland gave investors ahead of the failed event. The model-festooned sales deck contains misleading information about the festival and has been described as "beyond parody." Here are the slides.

Pandora’s musical curation is a big reason the site still stands out among competition from Spotify, Google, Apple, and YouTube. Professional music analysts listen to tracks and identify common elements, building the Music Genome Project that powers Pandora’s customised user stations.

As a Senior Music Analyst, Hannah Glass is deciding what you listen to next. We talked to her about her work at Pandora, her musical background, and her own projects as a performer.

Have you ever picked a song on your phone using Spotify and found yourself looking at a 5-10 second looping video? That’s a “Canvas,” a new type of complimentary content Spotify added last year, similar to Genius’ “Behind the Lyrics” annotations. They’re currently attached to new songs from artists like Ariana Grande, Logic, and Demi Lovato. If you listen to any of Spotify’s top playlists, you’ve probably already seen them.