For the first installment of the News Literacy Edition of the NPR Public Editor newsletter, we're pulling the curtain back on a popular NPR program: Tiny Desk. We dig into the details on how artists are selected, how the concerts are recorded and produced, and how Tiny Desk fits into NPR's larger audience strategy.

NPR's mission goes beyond news, to "create a more informed public — one challenged and invigorated by a deeper understanding and appreciation of events, ideas and culture within the United States and across the globe." Music is part of that culture.
The Tiny Desk series has grown into a pop culture phenomenon itself, slingshotting musicians from obscurity to fame and expanding public perception of some musicians. More than 10 million people follow NPR Music on YouTube.
Tiny Desk draws in audiences by showcasing artists from all over the world, independent and commercial alike.

Bobby Carter, host and series producer of NPR's Tiny Desk Concerts, pointed to three main components that make for a great performance. An artist must be comfortable performing live, captivating an audience, and be willing to strip their performance down to the bare minimum, letting go of their usual comforts.
"Under normal circumstances, when an artist is on a stage, they tend to either have in-ears, these little things in their ears where they can hear themselves better, or they'll have what you call monitors, which are speakers that are facing the artist so they can hear themselves better," Carter says. "We don't provide any of that."
Everybody wants to do a Tiny Desk
Carter took over leadership of the Tiny Desk team last year. He receives between 150 and 200 emails a day from publicists, from musicians' management teams and from musicians themselves who want to perform on Tiny Desk. It wasn't always that way, though.
"A time long ago, well, not so long ago, let's say five years ago with Tiny Desk, we would just look at tour schedules to see what artists will be in the D.C. area and schedule that way," he says. But because of the program's global footprint, artists now approach NPR.
Carter and his immediate team of 12 to 15 colleagues meet regularly to sort through the email requests, comparing them to their personal wishlists of performers, and the wider NPR Music team's wishlists.
"When you look at Tiny Desk, the success of that is because there's a curatorial effort underway by like 12 people to say, 'What's the music I'm hearing that I'm most passionate about today that I really feel other people need to hear?'" said Keith Jenkins, vice president of visuals and music strategy at NPR.
They plan three performances a week. That means they also produce and release three performances a week. Typically, the Tiny Desk shows are scheduled four to five months in advance. "So right now, we're booked through April," Carter says.
Still, some flexibility is required to make space for unplanned performances. Sometimes, an artist who just happens to be in town will contact a member of the team. It might be someone who's really popular or a "white whale," someone the music team has been trying to get for years. "We have to make room for them," Carter says.
Sabrina Carpenter, whose performance aired on Dec. 20, was one such artist. The singer popped up at the last minute, at a time right before the holidays when the Tiny Desk team usually isn't shooting new performances, but they knew they couldn't pass up the opportunity.
"Our video audio team, they turned that around in about a week, which is a pretty big rush job," Carter says.
At its inception in 2008, Tiny Desk was a platform for newer and indie artists to gain some traction. That changed in October 2014, when T-Pain arrived for his show.
At the time, T-Pain's music was synonymous with Auto-Tune. He made his career in the early 2000s in large part because of his catchy choruses and his use of the pitch correction software as a musical device rather than an aid. In fact, much of the public didn't realize he could sing without it. "Frannie Kelley, who produced that show, challenged him to perform without Auto-Tune, and he did," Carter says. "And we heard his voice in real life, a lot of us for the first time, and it changed the trajectory of what we do."
After that performance, Tiny Desk became an international sensation. It was "the first time we broke the internet," Carter says. That concert prompted other, more famous, musicians to seek out the opportunity.
Since then, major artists like "Queen of Funk" Chaka Khan, Billie Eilish and Juanes have performed at NPR. It's also garnered outside attention from SNL to the famous "Watch This" meme with Grammy-winning R&B singer Usher.
Carter says that despite its now-popularity with big names, it is important to continue Tiny Desk's original goal of bringing attention to up-and-comers and lesser known artists. One way the team does this is through the Tiny Desk Contest, NPR Music's annual search for an undiscovered artist. The 2025 contest recently launched, and the winner will get to play a real Tiny Desk concert, be interviewed on All Things Considered, play a 10-city tour and be paired with a music industry mentor.
The NPR Music team aims to stage a mix of musical genres and artists, to continue to expand the audience.
"We'll play a game of Tetris like, oh, there's two folk shows on this week. Maybe let's move one up. Hip-hop, let's move that one down there," Carter says. "So we try to really, really balance it out. We spend a lot of time looking at YouTube comments and Instagram comments for suggestions, because our audience helps to inform what we do as well."
Keeping it authentic
The Tiny Desk signature sound prompted an audience question.
Tom Hendricks wrote on Jan. 1:
"Music vocals are mostly faked nowadays. Does the Tiny Desk Concert have real or faked vocals? Many have been caught faking vocals and then covering it up. Fake is rampant, but most listeners refuse to believe it's true. This fakery not only cheats fans but is unfair to artists like Billie Eilish, Adele, Pink, U2, Lainy Wilson, or Roger Daltry, who don't use it. People need to know when there are fake vocals pretending to be real talent."
"Absolutely 100% real. Yes," says Carter. Creating and capturing those vocals in an intimate performance is what makes Tiny Desk so unique.
"There's no bells and whistles at the Tiny Desk. What you see and what you hear is what you get," Carter says, "So we take all of the things that an artist may be accustomed to leaning on to feel safe, and we take that away. It's like walking a tightrope. So the No. 1 thing is you have to be able to perform live raw. You have to be built for it."
Shae Universe, a British Nigerian singer-songwriter who appeared on Tiny Desk in July 2024, recalled on TikTok an "intimate vibe" during her performance. The concerts are open to staffers and very occasionally, a staff guest. About 200-250 people fit in the space. They're quite literally just steps away from the performers. She offered a favorite fun fact: Participating artists can leave a souvenir on the set. The R&B singer chose to leave vinyl of her latest album. In a follow-up TikTok video, Shae Universe shared that her band had no idea they weren't allowed to wear in-ears until a half hour before filming. Her drummer had to play without them.
"And when you watch my NPR Tiny Desk back, you will realize just how extraordinary that performance was, because my drummer killed that," she said. "Period."
Carter says he and his team try to impress upon the musicians that a minimalist approach is best, and that includes dialing back their band and backup singers. "We don't want to replicate something" that's already been done on stage, he says. "We want to create a new moment for these artists. So we always encourage them to strip away."
After the show
Once the performance is recorded, Carter's team comes in and produces the video and article that appear on the NPR website and the NPR Music Tiny Desk Concerts' YouTube page.
So how does Tiny Desk make those vocals and the music sound so good? That goes back to people like Kevin Wait and Josh Rogosin, who were previously the audio engineers for the series and helped define the concert's sound.
Carter says the audio engineers deserve the credit for the series' stellar sound. "From our signature shotgun mics for vocalists to each instrument being meticulously mic'd up, the way our shows sound continues to separate us from any other live music platform. I mean, we are NPR, so I expect nothing less."
But, Carter says, none of that post-production magic can happen unless an artist can perform live. "What you see and what you hear is what you get. Obviously, our video team and our audio team, they do a great job in post-production, just editing everything beautifully and recoloring editing, that kind of thing. But in terms of what you hear, you have to be able to deliver live, and you can't bring audio to Auto-Tune." — Nicole Slaughter Graham with research by Amaris Castillo
The Office of the Public Editor is a team. Reporters Amaris Castillo and Nicole Slaughter Graham and copy editor Merrill Perlman make this newsletter possible. Illustrations are by Carlos Carmonamedina. We are still reading all of your messages on Facebook, Instagram, Threads and from our inbox. As always, keep them coming.
Kelly McBride
NPR Public Editor
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