The world is getting accordion and percussion emojis in 2020

30 January 2020, 16:14 | Updated: 18 February 2020, 16:50

Musicians around the world are in for a treat, as a set of emojis coming in 2020 includes two new instruments.

Smartphone users will soon have access to two new musical instrument emojis.

An accordion and a long drum are included in a new set of 117 emojis, which will be available on iPhone, iPad, Mac, Android and other devices later this year.

Also included in the set are a gender-neutral Santa, a man in a wedding dress and a woman in a tuxedo, as well as a transgender pride flag.

The new characters and images have all been approved by Unicode Consortium, following calls to make the emoji keyboard more inclusive.

😍 First Look: All 117 New Emojis for 2020

Last year when Apple launched its new banjo emoji, we requested that a trombone, flute, cello and organ be added to the keyboard. (Like, seriously, with Lizzo doing her stuff, why don’t we have a flute emoji??)

We won’t pretend we aren’t a bit disappointed that our requests have been overlooked, but that’s OK.

For now, we’ll celebrate the new emojis we did get with this fabulous accordion explainer from Latvian-born musician, Ksenija Sidorova...

For more videos like this, go to Classic FM’s Discover Instruments series on YouTube.