Charli XCX has made a career out of releasing music however and whenever she wants. So if much of her new album, Charli, already sounded familiar to fans, that's because it should: about half of the album's tracks were released as singles before its release, spanning back almost a year. This would have been unthinkable before streaming. But Charli uses the instant nature of modern platforms to her advantage, upending the traditional idea of an album and growing her audience in the process.

"I was feeling very creative and wanted to release my music rapidly and when I wanted," Charli tells me. "Without streaming, it would be so difficult to …

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The middle of Texas should be an unlikely place for a sold-out K-pop show. But at the Smart Financial Center outside Houston in late July, thousands of fans gathered with homemade banners, tribute costumes, and armfuls of merchandise as they waited in line to see Monsta X, a K-pop group on their third world tour. These fans didn't get here because of radio play or by combing through bins at a music store. Instead, everyone I ask says they've shown up thanks to one specific site: YouTube.

Online, K-pop's addictive tunes and big-budget videos are raking in billions of streams, making new fans across the globe, and continually breaking YouTube …

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On a quiet street in Pasadena, California, is a house where one of the world's most famous pop songs was made. It's owned by Andrés Torres and Mauricio Rengifo, the duo behind "Despacito." I'm sitting in their home studio to talk to them about one of the key techniques they use to make many of their hits: sampling.

Sampling started as a way to cut up an existing recording to use bits of that audio in a new way. It's helped spawn entire genres of music and has been used to make hit records for decades. The catchy melody in Drake's "Hotline Bling"? That's a Timmy Thomas sample from 1972. Those horns from Beyoncé's "Crazy In Love"? That's a Ch …

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Sitting in a room that looks more spaceship than studio, movie composer Tom Holkenborg (also known as Junkie XL) tells me about the first time he heard his music in a movie. It's an iconic scene you might know - the blood rave from Blade. "It's a track from my first album," he says. "It's a very aggressive breakbeat track, and it plays when all that blood comes out of the ceiling." The track worked so well, that he "really got interested in pursuing [movie scoring] myself."

Even if you're not familiar with the name Tom Holkenborg, there's a good chance you've heard his music. He's a Hollywood go-to for blockbuster action flicks, composing t …

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The idea that artificial intelligence can compose music is scary for a lot of people, including me. But music-making AI software has advanced so far in the past few years that it's no longer a frightening novelty; it's a viable tool that can and is being used by producers to help in the creative process. This raises the question: could artificial intelligence one day replace musicians? For the second episode of The Future of Music, I went to LA to visit the offices of AI platform Amper Music and the home of Taryn Southern, a pop artist who is working with Amper and other AI platforms to co-produce her debut album I AM AI.

Using AI as a tool …

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In the first episode of The Future of Music, I attended an Imogen Heap concert… by putting on an Oculus virtual reality headset. This concert, which takes place in a VR model of her childhood home, is a collaboration between Heap and Los Angeles-based company TheWaveVR. While Heap sings, I walk around, wave at, talk to, and make friends with other people in the room who are represented by cute animal avatars like a fox or bunny. The kicker to all this: I'm not watching Imogen Heap perform but a 3D hologram-like version of her.

Seeing your favorite artist in person is one of the best feelings in the world, but virtual reality concerts are ra …

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