In the 1990s, Dolby founded Beatnik, a Silicon Valley software company whose technology was used to play internet audio and later ringtones, most notably on Nokia phones.

At school in London, Dolby was good friends with Shane MacGowan of The Pogues and used to sit with him in the back row of the English Literature class.

[5] Dolby spoke of his early musical experiences in a 2012 interview: I sang in a choir when I was 10 or 11, and learned to sightread single lines, but other than that I don't have a formal education.

I picked up the guitar initially, playing folk tunes—Dylan—then I graduated to piano when I got interested in jazz, listening to people like Oscar Peterson, Dave Brubeck, Bill Evans, Thelonious Monk, and so on.

He adopted the stage name "Thomas Dolby" to avoid confusion with British singer Tom Robinson, who was popular when he began his career.

After leaving the Camera Club he joined Lene Lovich's band as keyboardist and wrote her hit song "New Toy".

Collaborators in Dolby's Cube at various junctures included Lene Lovich, George Clinton of Parliament-Funkadelic, Francois Kevorkian, and Lea Thompson.

With a wide range of influences including nostalgic jazz, funk-tinged Motown R&B, and world music along with a strong electronic element,[14] and featuring a slew of guest musicians including longtime Dolby collaborator Matthew Seligman on bass, Kevin Armstrong on guitar, Clif Brigden on percussion, and guest vocals from Robyn Hitchcock, Bruce Woolley, and others, The Flat Earth further established Dolby's wide range of talents as musician, songwriter, and producer.

For Astronauts & Heretics (Virgin UK), Dolby expanded even further stylistically, starting the songwriting process at the piano, then again collaborating with a variety of guest musicians.

Other collaborators included Jimmy Z on sax, Budgie (of Siouxsie and the Banshees) on drums and Leland Sklar on bass guitar.

Terry Jackson also contributed bass guitar on four songs before his 1991 death in a plane accident with seven other members of Reba McEntire's support band for her "For My Broken Heart" tour.

Two other songs on the album, "I Love You Goodbye" and "Silk Pyjamas", employed Zydeco influences, courtesy of Crowley, Louisiana, and guest musicians Michael Doucet of BeauSoleil on violin, Wayne Toups on accordion, and Al Tharp on banjo.

He performed his first public solo show in 15 years at the Red Devil Lounge in San Francisco, California, on 21 January 2006, surprising the crowd who were there to see local band Notorious.

A show at the 800-capacity Scala club in London was booked for 3 July 2006 as a warm-up for Dolby's Hyde Park set opening for Depeche Mode.

In a move close to performance art, Dolby tried to post a 'cease and desist' legal letter on Kevin Federline's MySpace page when other attempts to contact him proved fruitless.

The second new song, "Jealous Thing", was performed at least at The Graduate in Cambridge and London's Islington Academy on the UK tour in Summer 2007 and features a Bossa-Nova type rhythm.

The Golden Age of Wireless and The Flat Earth were remastered and reissued later that year with numerous previously unreleased bonus tracks.

The third section of the album, entitled Urbanoia,[22] was not released as a download or physical CD, but the songs were premiered online as part of the Floating City game (see below).

Contributors to the album include Kevin Armstrong, Matthew Seligman (both had played together with him on The Flat Earth and as part of David Bowie's Live Aid appearance), Bruce Woolley, drummer Liam Genockey, guitarist Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits, Regina Spektor, Natalie MacMaster, Eddi Reader and Imogen Heap.

In a 2010 press release he was quoted as saying: I marvel at the new landscape of the music business – distribution via the Internet and recording technologies I barely dreamed of when I started out," he continues.

In Dolby's own words, "The Floating City is set against a dystopian vision of the 1940s that might have existed had WWII turned out a lot differently."

Survivors explore a fictional Google map, forming tribes and trading relics amidst a bizarre sea-going barter society.

Players earned free song downloads, and the winning team or "tribe" was awarded a private performance from Dolby.

[26] Dolby produced two albums for the English sophisti-pop band Prefab Sprout: 1985's Steve McQueen and 1990's Jordan: The Comeback.

[28][29] In 1987, Dolby played synthesizer on Belinda Carlisle's "Heaven Is a Place on Earth", which reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States that December.

[36] It had the advantage of small file size like MIDI but allowed recorded sampled sounds to be included at a higher bitrate for better overall reproduction.

In the fall of 2018, Dolby created a New Media workshop at The Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University[39] with VR equipment donated by HTC Vive.

He provided live musical introductions to sessions, sometimes with a TED house band, and helped secure guest musicians and entertainers.

In March 2012, at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California, Dolby spoke at the DESIGN West conference, produced by UBM Electronics.

[45] In March 2017, the Peabody Institute announced that Dolby would lead a new four-year undergraduate degree program, Music for New Media, and the first cohort would commence in the fall of 2018.