Fixed income refers to any type of investment that is not equity, which obligates the borrower/issuer to make payments on a fixed schedule, even if the number of the payments may be variable.

For example, if you lend money to a borrower and the borrower has to pay interest once a month, you have been issued a fixed-income security. Governments issue government bonds in their own currency and sovereign bonds in foreign currencies. Local governments issue municipal bonds to finance themselves. Debt issued by government-backed agencies is called an agency bond. Companies can issue a corporate bond or get money from a bank through a corporate loan ("preferred stock" can be "fixed income" in some contexts). Securitized bank lending (e.g. credit card debt, car loans or mortgages) can be structured into other types of fixed income products such as ABS – asset-backed securities which can be traded on exchanges just like corporate and government bonds.

The term fixed income is also applied to a person's income that does not vary with each period. This can include income derived from fixed-income investments such as bonds and preferred stocks or pensions that guarantee a fixed income. When pensioners or retirees are dependent on their pension as their dominant source of income, the term "fixed income" can also carry the implication that they have relatively limited discretionary income or have little financial freedom to make large expenditures.

Joshua Paul "Josh" Davis (born June 29, 1972) better known as DJ Shadow is an American music producer, DJ and songwriter. He is considered a prominent figure in the development of instrumental hip hop and first gained notice with the release of his highly acclaimed debut album Endtroducing....., which was the first album to be recorded using only sampled sounds. He has an exceptionally large personal record collection, with over 60,000 records. He is the cousin of singer and guitarist Richie Kotzen.

DJ Shadow was experimenting with a four-track recorder while in high school in Davis, California, and began his music career as a disc jockey for the University of California, Davis campus radio station KDVS. During this period he was significant in developing the experimental hip hop style associated with the London-based Mo' Wax record label. His early singles, including "In/Flux" and "Lost and Found (S.F.L.)", were genre-bending works of art merging elements of funk, rock, hip hop, ambient, jazz, soul, and used-bin found records. Andy Pemberton, a music journalist writing for Mixmag, coined the term "trip hop" in June 1994 to describe Shadow's "In/Flux" single and similar tracks being spun in London clubs at the time. Though his music is hard to categorize, his early contributions were certainly important for alternative hip hop. He cited groups such as Kurtis Mantronik, Steinski, and Prince Paul as influences on his sample-based sound, further claiming that "lyrics (...) were confining, too specific". His music rarely features more than short clips of voices or vocal work.