Playing a rhythm-based game for eight weeks helps non-musicians become better at remembering recently seen faces. This suggests that learning to play an instrument could improve short-term memory for non-musical tasks.

There have been several studies showing that musicians tend to have better short-term memory than non-musicians when it comes to music-related tasks, such as remembering musical sequences. It is less clear whether these benefits carry over to non-musical tasks or to non-musicians who are learning to play an instrument, and how these changes might actually be seen in the brain.

Theodore Zanto at the University of California, San Francisco, and his colleagues, randomly assigned a group of 47 non-musicians, aged between 60 and 79, to play either a tablet-based musical rhythm training game, which emulates (模仿) learning to hit a drum in time with a teacher, or a word game for eight weeks.

At the start and end of the eight weeks, participants took a short-term memory test to measure their ability to remember a face they saw seconds before. Only the group who played the rhythm training game showed an improvement on their initial scores of around 4 percent. This suggests, says Zanto, that the rhythm training is improving the brain’s ability to focus attention on a task to get it ready for transforming what you are doing into memory.

The ability to remember and recognise faces tends to decline as we age, so any possible mechanism to turn that the opposite way is important, says Josh Davis at the University of Greenwich, UK. However, the effect demonstrated in this study needs to be shown in real-world facial recognition scenarios as well as in lab-based tests to be completely convincing, says Davis. Theodore Zanto hopes that extending training period beyond eight weeks may lead to a stronger effect on memory recall.

To stream or not to stream? That is a question facing both music listeners and musicians.

Taylor Swift made news recently by pulling her music off Spotify, the world’s biggest streaming music service and turned to iTunes downloading and stores for sales. Back in July, Swift swept the pop music industry by selling almost 1.3 million copies of her album, 1989 in its first week. In an article Swift wrote, “The music industry is not dying... it’s just coming alive.”

Her cheerful attitude surely comes from her own unique position. So far this year, Swift has made $64 million, according to Forbes. She’ll make plenty more by bringing in about 70 cents for each dollar paid to download her music. It is much more than the royalty (版税) rate paid out by Spotify of between $0.006 and $0.0084 per song stream.

According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), money from streaming on YouTube, Pandora and Spotify has helped bring in more money. But the small amount Spotify pays to musicians still caused many of them to withhold some or all of their music from the service, like artists from Beyoncé to The Beatles.

Yet for bands struggling to get by, struggling even to be heard, keeping their music off streaming services is not so easy. Such bands need to get their music out any way they can, and if they’re going to make money, they need to make their music easily accessible to listeners.

To stream or not to stream is a difficult choice for fans, too. The streaming model puts ownership (所有权) of the music in the hands of the music industry. Rather than letting you own your collection, the music business is moving toward a model similar to on-demand cable TV. Every song written is available online whenever and wherever you’d like to hear, but the problem is that you, the user, need to pay over and over again each time you stream it.

A man in black clothes jumps high into the air. Before he lands, he strikes a pose. Sometimes, he carries a red fan. With long white sleeves(袖子), he spreads his arms like wings. His dance is eye-catching, often attracting crowds.

He is Chinese dancer Ma Jiaolong. Since 2020, he’s made short videos of himself dancing in London. He has performed at the city’s parks and iconic landmarks like Tower Bridge. The 35-year-old has nearly 5 million followers on Douyin, where he shares his videos.

Classical Chinese dance combines martial arts movements with those of traditional Chinese opera. He started to learn it at 12. “I was attracted by the dancers who play ancient heroes through the movements of classical Chinese dance,” said Ma.

Later, Ma studied at the Beijing Dance Academy. Since 2019, he has been teaching classical Chinese dance at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Two years ago, Ma had to give online classes due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In his small home, he could only make small moves. One day, he took his wife’s suggestion and danced at Greenwich Park, a popular tourist spot. She recorded Ma. He then edited the video, added music and sent it to friends. “Surprisingly, they loved it, which inspired me to share it online,” said Ma.

Later, Ma made more short videos. He combines his dance moves with dazzling action. People are often curious about his performances. So, while dancing, he likes to interact with them. As his videos went viral, he received messages from people around the world.

“Now, making and sharing short videos has become a part of my life, and, most importantly, a great way to introduce classical Chinese dance to more people, especially overseas viewers,” said Ma.