Music and TikTok sounds

The bar: searching the library

• Keyword — an artist, a title, a subject. Press Search or Enter.
• Type — a genre, or a whole archive.org collection. Order — most played, newest, alphabetical. Playlists / Songs — one row per album, or every track on its own row.
• ⏱ the playlists you opened recently · ★ what you starred (a song or a whole playlist) · ⬇ the music stored in this space · ▤ your own playlists.
• ☆ on a row stars it; ⬇ on a row stores the file in your space so it plays offline and on every browser.
• The player at the foot: ⏮ ▶ ⏭, the scrubber, the volume, and the name of what is singing. The header's chip says where it came from — archive.org, my files, TikTok, YouTube.

▤ Playlists: music that is yours

1. ＋ New playlist — a named, ordered list. ✎ renames it, 🗑 deletes it and its files.
2. 🎵 Import files… and 📁 Import a folder… — audio from this computer, stored in your space under a playlist you name.
3. 🔗 From a TikTok link… — paste a sound's link, or a post that plays one: your space reads the page, pulls the sound, and writes down where it came from (the account, the page). Inside a playlist the same button puts the sound into that playlist.
4. 📈 Top sounds… — the reading described below. From the Playlists view its pulls go to TikTok · Top sounds (or TikTok · #tag, TikTok · @handle); from inside a playlist they go into that playlist.
5. In a playlist: ＋ Add files…, a click on a row plays it, ☆ stars it, ✕ takes it out of the list. Under a title the small line says who it is by, where it was found (a dashed #hashtag or @account chip for a sound that came from a Top sounds reading — press it to open that reading again; a sound met under two hashtags wears both), and links to the page it was read from.

📈 Top sounds: the music TikTok is using

TikTok no longer shows its own ranking to anyone who is not signed in, and Orbital never signs in to a source on your behalf. So the reading is built from what is public — and it is honest about being a reading, not a chart.

1. Pick a source with the segmented control:
   • #hashtag — the posts under a hashtag (#phonk, #slides, #instrumental…). Every sound they play — an instrumental, a sped-up edit, the sound under a slide deck — ranked by how many posts share it: a sound three strangers used is the trend, a sound one post used is that post. Leave the box empty for the explore history.
   • An account — one profile's posts, its sounds ranked by how far each post went.
   • Catalogs — the playlists people curate on YouTube ("TikTok songs 2026"). Eight are read and the ranking is their consensus: a track in six of eight lists comes before one a single curator liked. Change the words in the box to read other lists.
   • tokchart — the rows tokchart.com shows for free today.
2. Press 🔄 Check for updates. While it reads, ⏹ Stop ends the reading there and keeps what came, and 👁 Show what came lists the rows found so far while the reading goes on. The line under the bar prints what your space is doing — reading list 3 of 8, scrolling for more posts — 48 so far, pausing 7 s before asking again, as a person would — and when it is done, how many rows are new since your last check of that source and how many are already in your space.
3. Read the rows. Rank, cover, title, who it is by, and why it ranks there (in 6 of 8 lists, 2.1M plays · 3 posts · 1 slide deck). Chips: in your space (hover for the playlist), new, original sound (the poster's own audio — usually talk). ↗ opens the source page.
4. ▶ hears a row before you pull it. A TikTok sound plays its clip in a small player right under the row (space plays and pauses, ←/→ skip five seconds); a YouTube row embeds the video's own player. Press ▶ again to stop; opening another closes the first.
5. 🔎 looks for the song on YouTube. A TikTok sound is usually a clip of a song; 🔎 lists the versions YouTube has — best match (the label's own upload, by how well the words match) and most complete (the longest good match: the full track, an extended edit) flagged — each with ▶ to hear it and ⬇ Pull to store that one version into the playlist. Nothing is pulled on a guess.
6. Tick what you want. Your space ticks what you owe yourself: not already held, not an original sound, and for the catalogs the top 25 you lack. Tick all, None, Only the new.
7. Choose which file in the foot: Full track from YouTube when found, else the TikTok clip (the usual choice — a TikTok sound is a clip of a song), Full track only, or The TikTok clip only (for instrumentals and sounds that are not a released song).
8. Press ⬇ Import N sounds. The bar fills; the line beside it says the row in hand, the step (opening the sound's page for the clip, pulling the track from YouTube) and each pause. ⏹ stops after the sound in hand. When it is done the rows that landed turn in your space and a message names the playlist, how many came, and what did not, with the reason — the list stays in front of you for the next batch. The pull is also a work on the ⛓ board: it keeps running if you reload or close the page (even across a restart of your space), the board's row says it is importing and since when, ⏸ there stops it after the sound in hand, and ↻ pulls only what is still missing.

How it reads — and what a wall means

• Like a person. Every request waits a random moment after the last one to the same site; a page is read for a second or two before it is scrolled, and scrolled in a few flicks; the import pauses between pulls and takes a longer break after every fifth. That is why a reading takes a minute or two and says so.
• A wall. YouTube sometimes answers "confirm you're not a bot"; TikTok sometimes answers a hashtag with a check page. When that happens your space writes it down and does not ask that site again for a while — a row's reason and the check button say until when. A person does not hammer a wall.
• Through a relay (the ⇅ proxy toggle in the head, shown only when one is set up): the reads — pages, lists, renders — go out from another address, which helps when this one is walled; ↻ beside it reconnects the relay (a fresh connection, a fresh address) and lifts its back-off. The audio never does: a song is always pulled directly. Those reads are counted in ⚡ Consumption ▸ Data.
• What is stored. A clip is stored under its TikTok sound id, a full track under its YouTube id, each with its source written beside it; importing the same sound again replaces the entry rather than listing it twice.