Slashdot Mirror
New Computer Program Determines "Hitability"
illuminatedwax writes "It looks like the process of homogenizing the mediocrity of Top 40 radio is going to be aided by a computer, according to an
article from the Music Industry News Network. Polyphonic HMI has developed a new program called Hit Song Science (HSS) and compares "underlying mathematical patterns" in current hit songs and compares them to a new song to determine if it will become a hit or not. Looks like we can expect even more of the same old junk being recycled for us on the radio, although the article claims that it 'will allow new sounds and styles to flourish.'"
This works if you assume that a "new" or "different" song isn't likely to be a hit.
increases "hitability" in elementary school.
The media is already telling you what songs you will be listening to. Why would they need a computer to tell them what they already know?
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Sign of the apocalypse
having Britney Spears rerecord the same song over, and over, and over and . . .Arrrrgh! Just shoot me now.
KFG
Its just too silly.
All I see this doing is allowing the RIAA to determine which songs should be invested in and which shouldn't be. Doesn't add to diversity because all it does is identify hits. If anything, it'll further homogenize corporate radio.
What'll be scary is when they use a modification of this to write top 40 hits, thereby taking people out of the mix entirely. I wonder, could the RIAA support such "musicians" when there is no real "artist" (I don't see them calling the people who wrote the code the artists, for some reason)?
By the way, this was posted over 24 hours ago on Fark. You'd think Slashdot would be a little faster on the updating.
If not all sentients are human, couldn't it be possible that not all humans are sentient either?
sorry, couldn't resist
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
I am the reason the music industry is dying.
It couldn't possibly be the crap quotient that has gone up enormously over the last decade.
It seems like more then ever the music industry just sticks with whatever sells, experimenting with new sounds, who wants to take that risk?
Wow this thing will generate more of the same.
Quantifying tastes in music.
Evil.
Oh yeah, the problem with the music industry.
My bad.
1) Make song exactly like current hit
2) PROFIT!!!
> and how is this gonna change what's on the radio right now? They just play stuff until they find something that people like, which usually sucks
Actually, they just play whatever's written on the payola $$$, and people "like" it because they think everyone else does.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Do they give it all the songs ever, and it says "not a hit" for all of them, and it's 90% correct, because 90% of songs are worthless?
Hell, I could write that.
#!/bin/sh
echo "not a hit"
I have a new program which determines which songs are most likely to get a Grammy award. I call it Grammy Award Science (GAS). It's based on a neural network and it's been trained with recent data. However, I think I need a larger dataset for training as at the moment, it simply tags any song which has "writer" or "performer" containing "Norah Jones"
1) Bohemian Rhapsody
2) Smells Like Teen Spirit
3) London Calling
An NPR article a few years ago reported how music companies decide which Country Music songs will be played on the radio. They cold call people and have them listen to 5 seconds of the song. This tortured person is then asked to rate the song 1-5. The music industry then takes all the songs that get 1s and 5s and discards them. It turns out that often when one group rates a song a 5 another will really hate the song and rate it a 1. So what the industry is really looking for is songs that score 3s.
The reasoning behind all this is that if you hear a song that you'd rate a 1 (hate) you're likely to turn the radio dial. But if you hear a 3 you're not likely to have any particular response at all -- thus you'll stay tuned in for more comercials.
Pop is probably done the exact same way. I guess that's why when you listen to "Classic hits of the [6-9]0s" you hear the same tripe over and again.
#!/bin/bash
grep -i "britney" song_titles.txt
The songs that will be hits are the ones that get the most spins, whether it's because a local program director/music director got sweet-talked by a distribution rep (aka legal payola), or because Clear Channel says it'll be a hit. IAADJ.
Furthermore, MTV has a big part to play, still, because how many fat, bald guys do you see with hit records? Take hot chick, add dance background, have hit. For variety substitute a few decent-looking boys for the hot chick.
As for this program, remember, the nutrimat in the Heart of Gold also determined Arthur Dent would like the Advanced Tea Substitute. See what happens if he drinks it too much.....
Can it also detect traps and find kitten killers?
To examine only the song in today's market is idiotic. The vast majority of people who listen to top 40 radio is that the singer(s) of the song be hot. Gotta look like Brittany if you are a female or a backstreet boy if you are a male. No matter how thoroughly you examine a song, it won't tell you if people will jerk off to the singer.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
Doesn't really matter...All the "hit" songs playing on the radio all follow the same basic formula. The suits already understand what makes a hit song and crank that garbage out ad nauseum. Is it Bratney? Christina Ugularia? Mandy Whore? Who cares, they all sound the same!
The only stations I listen to now are the classic rock and oldies stations (except it kind of depresses me to listen the oldies stations...Some of my favorite songs from the 80's are starting to get playtime on them)
-R
Imagine if these "mathematical patterns and structures in music that until now have been hidden" can be extracted and then applied to existing recordings which haven't done as well as the labels hoped or to new recordings in order to enhance their success subliminally. As an example, what if these secret signals were applied to remaster William Shatner's old recordings?
1. Take song from 70s
2. Remix it
3. Analyze through computer model
4. ???
5. Profit!
If only they can make a program to predict "slashdotability", their server wouldn't have to suffer like this.
--
Error 500: Internal sig error
if you need a computer to tell you that a song is good...
well...i can tell you right now the song isnt going to be a hit
If this program works like they say it does, then this could be the final nail in the coffin for the radio. If they made popular music MORE cut and paste, it'd just be some time before more people just quit listening.
Most new music is already cut and paste, and it's bad enough as it is.
If something like this had been in place for the past 30 years, there'd have been no innovation in music, and the music industry would be consolidated into one terrible company emitting pure crap, instead of the 5 or so major labels which emit mostly crap...
"...and there goes the last DJ..."
Feed all the teenagers who listen to this crap and think that they're rad to the goatse man!
check out negativland - announcement... just trust me :)
Love?!?
Who's been tampering with the machine!
-Look lively. LOOK LIVELY!!! --Mr. Shmallow
Music and Math are closely related, as anyone who's read Godel Escher Bach knows. Musical scores have themes that appear in many different variations such as canons (when a melody is offset in time) and fugues (more complicated than a fugue, read the book if you want to know).
I'm not acoustically talented, and I'm sure I couldn't recognize a fugue or a canon if I heard one, but I know that there is some music that I really like, and that sounds better made and more complete than others. I wouldn't find it hard to believe those songs have properties that a computer could pick out.
For example, have you ever listened to a song for the first time, and been able to anticipate what the next notes would be? I think on some level our brain recognizes patterns that we can't see conciously. With statistical analysis, a program could determine if more hit songs always follow a pattern or a specific pattern (easy to hum songs that get stuck in your head), or if more hit songs would break the melody and hit a note you weren't expecting (like those really mind-blowing high notes).
As a music lover, I would be thrilled if this application worked. It would really enhance websites that try to suggest other songs that you might like based on your favorite songs. In a lot of the music I like, the singer's voice gets deep and gravelly in parts. There could be bands that I hadn't considered listening to who match that profile, and a program like HSS coudl find them.
for me, ``hitability'' doesn't mean the same at all.
Reading the title made me wonder if a computer was able to do some kind of ``Hot or Not'' evaluation of a picture.
A message from the system administrator: 'I've upped my priority. Now up yours.'
hey, how long till i can have it automaticly D/L the songs that i will [Mathematically] like?
...that movie, especially the moment they read a chapter in their poetry book in which they compare the beauty of a poem to some mathematical representation...
So, tomorrow's hits will be the same ole shite because of a lunatic narrow-minded nerd ?
Trolling using another account since 2005.
I think this kind of system, while it may very well do good for promoting songs that have similar qualities to existing 'popular' ones, would eventually bring up flaws if relied on too heavily, from the feedback loop it would have to generate. A few wildly popular songs would define what's released/promoted in the future. Those promotions, themselves only selected due to the use of an artificial construct, would then define what follows. I think some pretty icky patterns could start to reveal themselves.
2005: a little known new zealand band is suddenly promoted beyond belief. In most respects they're identical to the spice girls, they just happen to sound like New Kids On The Block, and their lead singer is named "Michael Jackson"
I'm running scared already.
... also, I can kill you with my brain.
Can I run the program on music I might consider listening to and rule out anything it approves?
Actually, this is useful on a person by person basis. I can tell it which songs I like, and it can pre-scan new music and decide what I'm more likely to enjoy.
Jason
ProfQuotes
From the way progressions resolve to the overused arrangement of "Intro Verse Chorus Bridge Verse Chorus Bridge Verse Breakdown Verse Chorus Outro", most popular music has the same basic structure. Why is it that 95% of rock songs have the same 4 chord major progression? IT WORKS! Yes, there are exceptions where real song writing ability carries the song on to success (Queen, anyone?) but the general templates are there...and record companies KNOW (and bank) on it. (considering that most pop buyers can only hear the singing, I'll understand if no one gets this)
"Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them."
It listens to female pop singers and prints out "I'd hit it" if it thinks the woman is hot...
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
In pop music it would fail, because pop songs become hits by a pretty standard formula which has little to do with the song:
- Good Looking Singer
- Catchy Lyrics
- Lots of advertising/publicity
For something like classical music however, HSS would have a good chance of finding hits because classical music follows almost mathematical rules. If the program could recognize a pattern that hit classical songs followed, other themes and melodies could be fit to the pattern, imagine the ability to have new Mozart or Bach symphonies.The computer version will have two big advantages over humans:
a) it'll be fast
b) it'll be consistent over long periods of listening
I can see those traits being helpful when sorting through huge piles of unsolicited junk submissions, but not when doing the final litmus test to see what people will enjoy.
I wouldn't mind working on the project though. It'll be equivalent to finding "pretty" pictures, or "good" web sites based on content alone. Fun stuff.
I used to be a narrator for bad mimes. (wright)
In what way is this not going to be used to justify very bad music? I can hear hundreds of different artists everyday on the college radio station. Why on earth would people think this program can determine what makes everyone like certain songs? Do some experiments. Run it on a beatles song from the 60's...and then tell me it's going to predict that song being a hit in today's world. Otherwise it's just marketing gimmicks.
I'll bet Beatles songs would fail to be hits even if they were hits in the past.
Call me naive, but aren't they supposed to be experts in picking hit songs already, and if a computer program can do the job what the hell are they being paid to do?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
The original Star Wars: Episode IV does not fall under what you refer to as "commercial exploitation." V and VI, well, maybe (no argument about I, II, and III). Episode IV was truly a work of art though. It was one of the highest grossing films of the late 70s because of substance, not hype. People went to see it because it was a good movie with groundbreaking special effects, not because the media said "go see this movie" as is usually the case, sadly enough. I do not understand how the world would be a better place without Star Wars; however, it WOULD be a better place without Jar Jar Binks... *dismounts soapbox*
Does it also know what discs should have DRM? Can it predict how long it will take to crack it?
same as the old crap.
that's actually a great idea... If some software could analyze your current jukebox and boil it down to say, types of sounds you like, arrangments you like, melodies, keys, and tempos...you could have music delievered to you that you stand a better chance of liking. Maybe throw in some sort of intelligent randomizer so you could branch out occasionally and not end up with a HD full of knock-off bands) Now, if this thing could understand that I like Merzbow AND Air, I would be ultra impressed! ;)
"Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them."
It's not (only) the song that detemines the hit-factor. It's the looks of the 'artist' and the promotion...
I want my karma, and I want it now!
Input Breast size:
34C
Hit!
Only one step away from inverting this technology and having "hit" songs autogenerated on the fly. Imagine it! Hearing a new and unique, totally cool pop song every time you press the "new song" button on your "song player" machine...
Finally that last pesky seal to the gates of hell can be breached.
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Why not look at it from a different angle ?
It might be able to pick what song becomes a hit by checking if it's relatively similar to current hit (charts) songs.
So if you take the alternate end of the results, the songs that -least- resemble the current top charts songs, then perhaps it's there that you will find interesting, alternative music.
Or utter crap. In which case the interesting music might be somewhere in the middle. It'll differ per-person anyway.
Either way, it's a win/win situation for everybody - as long as you keep your own view upon the result statistics, and keep an open mind for anything that falls outside of your own 'set parameters'
Great idea. Put this in file-sharing programs and pick the good stuff by content, not title. This would inherently reject garbaged files, since they sound lousy. This could be the answer to the RIAA's pollution of file-sharing networks.
while read f; do newsong = lookuptitlefrom($decade); cp $f $newsong; add($basslevel); add($artistvoiceprint); done;
- profit!!
Triple J, music that doesn't (mostly) suck.You can do it now. Or you could at least. .com that when you set up an account, you selected how much you like genres of music, and it shot down random songs at you. For each song played you could select how much you like it, to black list the [song|artist]. The system would thus learn what you like. Sory I dont have a url to prove that Im right :P
I dont remember the name of the company, but there was a streeming media
But there are lots of online retailers who have "people who bought this also bought..." boxes on all there pages.
...this is pretty similar to the computer program described in The Jazz by Melissa Scott. A kid stumbles onto a program that can tell him how similar something is to existing works. It goes slightly further - making suggestions also - but the idea is the same. In the book, a major studio uses it for movies.
Still, even given the rapaciousness of her management and record company, Britney will have made enough money to live like a princess for the rest of her life, so at this point I wouldn't really be caring terribly much if I were her.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Today, Kenwood announced a new model in their line of automotive head units that incorporates the fruits of their recent alliance with the Chinese software group SinOn.
SinOn is providing the AI side of the new MoDI car stereo that can be trained to recognize the owner's favorite style of music, and subsequently anticipate which streams, with permission, will be selected for play. The user simply puts the unit in training mode for approximately 10 hours, after which it is then set for autoplay. When set for autoplay, the software will prescreen all incoming audio streams and compare "underlying mathematical patterns" to determine if they match the listener's preference in music.
We tested the unit against the North Atlantic music satellite weave, giving it the suggested 10 hours of training. Once switched to autoplay, we travelled along the coast for two days, allowing MoDI to select music for us. We were happily surprised with the serendipity of track selection, and pleased with the seamless performance of the unit at all times.
We can report a positive experience with Kenwood's latest, and a recommendation for anyone looking for the newest in mobile audio while avoiding the pap of modern programmed listening.
too bad it would probably be made by the music corps who 'know' that you will 'mathematically' (as in mathematically adding to their bank accounts) like the 'brand new' (as in manufactured worthless crap) 'music' (as in anything but) they are producing
Rivers uses a mathematical formula when writing his songs based on songs by several bands including Nirvana. As a huge Weezer fan, I'd have to say he's on to something. He's talked candidly about it in interviews. I'm at least fairly interested in what comes of this.
As far as the media telling you what you'll be listening to...
You've got a point, but it's slowly eroding away. Payolla (sp) is now illegal. With all the attention companies like Clear Channel have gotten for owning such a high percentage of the nation's radio stations could soon result in regulation. Then we've got those nasty little P2P file sharing networks lurking around with mp3z to download. *wink*
You've got to face the fact that these record companies and radio stations only care about the money. If they can run a program that will reliably tell them if song A is more likely to be a hit than song B... maybe they can spend less money on promoting song A and get the same results as if they had released song B with extra money for promotion. That's just common sense, man.
thundercatzlair
it's about the artistes... Why the hell else stupid shows like American Idol and Popstars (Bardot who?) become so popular?
Welley Corporation - SLM Scammers
So if we let this ride out for 30 years or so we WILL end up liking the songs our parents listened to because the original hits will define what record companies pump out. Scary!!!
True. I saw the original Star Wars on its first release, and I do not remember much in the way of merchandising, if any. No figurines, comic books, etc. I would definitely say the first Star Wars was not about commercial exploitation.
I want software that writes itself first...
but seriously, why not? these are some of the wealthiest people around, and they have serious problems with existing technology. Imagine a watermark that was composed into the song. would p2p networks be capable of throwing this off? perhaps. But it doesn't matter which way you throw it, such a conception is going to give them even more control over the music we listen to, not that they are wanting in much in the first place there. I was watching i think it was 'spy kids 2'[don't ask] and there was a few sequences of 'high tech' going all wrong...and i'm thinking
this is brewing an ideaology in our young citizens who are watching this and then the next day i saw my first christina augularea(sp?) video. woa softporn. not that i'm totally against that or anything, but this is serious power they are weilding here. where was i. oh yes. the next step...where else could they go? i'm imagining that this is going to be a further tool used to promote not only new artists, but old ones as well in a way. after all, "hey! 'the green backs' sounds kinda like pearl jam!" sells pearl jam records, doesn't it?
so what is the meaning? i just skimmed through this thing andi'm not paying attention to a word your saying musicgod, what the hell are you saying anyway? well you have three options
-
This is not the last we are going to hear of this technology, or at least it's going to lead into something more...
- if you enjoy music, and are strong enough
...boycott the riaa. it can take some effort, especially if you really love music and live in a backwards world where there are no independant outlets...but fight them... they will destroy your music, if you do not. [unless your also a musician, then post underneath this post so i and whoever else can see you crazy cubic zirconiums!]
- musicgod needs some female companionship. apply here then he'll be quiet more.
green backs used to be here. not sure if they are still there any more.GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
The computer generates the song for you.
Gotta love the record industry. It really just gets more and more obvious that they are digging their own graves.
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
This may be the excuse to buy a CD/MP3 player. Then I can listen to the hits my mom picks out for me.
This article just adds more proof that we need a revolution
I hope NOFX are right and 'Dinosaurs Will Die'
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything" -- Josef Stalin
... and they'll learn that what makes a hit is not being the same as previous hits, but rather being different from them.
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
/$artist/i } <TITLES>) {
use strict;
my $artist = $ARGV[0] || 'britney';
my $pwd = cwd;
open(TITLES, "./song_titles.txt") || die $!;
open(NOISE, ">/dev/dsp") || die $!;
foreach my $song (grep {
open(SONG, $song) || die $!;
print NOISE $_ while (<SONG>);
close(SONG);
}
close(NOISE);
close(TITLES);
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
News thats a day old and a dollar late. Better pick it up guys or your first mover advantage won't mean squat.
Get it over with and move up....find a way to wire in an iPod and live large :)
My 10gb iPod will stay in the car, and I'll get a new 20gb model to carry around.
Of course, there are some of us who suspect that step was already made about 10 years ago, but no matter.
--
Today, I'm listening mostly to Handel.
A third of the way down (Jan 23 in fact) http://www.bangedup.com/archives/z ard. jpg
Is a link titled "Any idiot can rap"
and it leads to
http://www.bangedup.com/archives/MicroRBHitWi
[ ] Yes
[ ] Yes
YAW
Your head of state is a corrupt weasel, I hope you're happy.
People, people, we already HAVE this. Observe circumstancial evidence:
Program start: Logic
------
Marylin Manson was a hit.
Marylin Manson plays guitar
Marylin Manson has long hair
Marylin Manson is considered "rock".
Avril Lavigne plays guitar and has long hair
Avril Lavigne is rock.
-----------
End program: Logic
Obviously it is in its very early stages, but you know, the record companies may just leave it that way since they make more money off the stupid people.
Why not try to somehow reverse the algorithm to help bands come out with good songs? I can think of quite a few that would greatly benefit from such a program
----
Squirrel
Idea --
They could package the program up and sell it off the shelf as a porn filter! If it can accurately determine 'Hitability', it could save millions of masturbators from potential deflation upon running across a photograph of some ghastly beast.
Hell, they'd probably make enough money that they'd stop caring about music piracy!
~GoRK
An artist puts something of himself or herself into the work. It conveys emotions and ideas. There may be science in music, but there's no science behind what makes a song good or enjoyable.
People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
The application is called Hit Song Science (HSS) [clip] Now the company is working at various levels within all five major label groups. Some of the labels already using or exploring the service include Universal UK, Sony, RCA, J,(of the BMG group) Innocent,(of the EMI group) and Liquid 8 (independent).
These early tests already reveal that anything by Michael Jackson...all rap and disco and all music between 1988 and 2002 has been flagged by HSS as 'UC1' (utter crap, level one).
Select 'YES' to move hilighted items to the trash now.
When this algorithm can understand and reproduce the genius of the Beatles I will be impressed. recognizing tripe is still tripe. Creating tripe is still tripe. Write Yesterday, or In My Life and only then will I retire as a musician.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
Have the program crank out the hit music, then who needs artists anymore. This kind of practice just guarantes we can buy only one kind of music on CD in the stores. OTH, do you still buy CDs.
Too bad for the music corps that seeing as it's an open source application, as the title of this little threads mentions, we would be able to remove their mathematical biases whether they like it or not.
I'm surprised I didn't see this mentioned anywhere. I remember one of the particularly depressing things from 1984 was the music generating machine used to create music for the proles.
A machine that checks to see if a song is going to be a hit with the masses based on mathematics is not far behind a machine that will be able to generate a hit for the masses.
Creepy.
you can take the road that takes you to the stars...
give Dirk Gently some ambient background noise.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
"underlying mathematical patterns"
I wouldn't have a problem with that, if they were judging each song independently. Like it or not, music DOES revolve around math. Beat, Harmony, Melody, Rhythm, and Tone are all by definition the elements that make something into music instead of just a bunch of noise.
Today MANY musicians make what is by definition closer to noise than music, because it only has some of these elements. A dripping faucet can have a beat and rhythmn, but it doesn't have a melody.
A lot of top-40 crap is manufactured garbage that is hollow and uninspired, but on the other hand it follows all of the rules of music and thus isn't exactly horrible to listen to (share and enjoy.)
On the other hand, a lot of VERY POPULAR singers completely disregard some of the most basic rules of music. (Did beat go out of style while I was off on another planet or is the entire population of the world go retarded while I was gone?)
A simple test for the quality of music is to compare it to all of the basic elements and see how much of each it has, and how well each one has done.
You can take a lot of music and quickly notice that the singer can not in tune, is off beat, isn't in harmony with the music, the music behind the singer's voice has no real melody (it's just a baseline - a common violation these days), or (very often) it's several of these things.
Again, much top 40 follows the rules. I'd rather hear that than some indi band that doesn't. Much of the top 40 doesn't, and I can do without those. Essentially I'll listen to anything well done, regardless of the type of music or whether or not it's "popular". I can even enjoy classical.
So if someone were to write a program that could simply screen out the "noise" and keep it from getting put on the charts, I don't think that would be a bad thing. Top 40 might not instantly stop being shit, but at least it would be musical shit, and not just a bunch of noise.
You're either going to agree with me on this, or flame me to death. What the hell, I have Karma to burn.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
Take a peak at who wrote her songs... and then take a peak at which other acts he has produced...
It doesn't take some dumb machine to sell tons of CDs to the masses, it takes a few guys with insight into what would appeal to the masses, and then you find people who look right.
I seriously don't think that the machine would fix me up with music I like, because the parameters would be all skewed towards the drooling idiots that are the masses. No wonder I don't buy CDs anymore, I rather put my money elsewhere thank you very much.
heads from their asses. If you look at the huge stage successes bands like Phish, The Dead, or Dave Matthews are, you can basically dispel this new method. Hell, even Norah Jones doesn't really fit the mold of 90% of shit they play on the radio, and she won 8 emmys! Maybe if they move do diversify music (ex. XM and Sirius) instead of making it all the same people wouldnt be downloading millions of MP3s ever day! Imagine that!
You'd have to know more about how the system works to tell. It's very well possible that those songs share some mathematical similarities with other less original hit songs. Statistical methods can find rather deep hidden similarities even in superficially dissimilar things.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
The result was the coolest station I had ever or since heard. Dont know exactly what killed them, but i yearn for something half that cool among all the clearchannel stations i have to fight with.
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan
1) Make song exactly like current hit 2) PROFIT! 3.PROFIT! 4.PROFIT! 5.PROFIT! 6. ...=>70 years.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
1. I'm pretty sure that the program is some variety of snake oil. Whether it's an interesting AI project that might sometimes work or a pure fraud remains to be seen.
2. This won't change anything, even if it works. The major labels already use focus groups and mixing factories to make sure every piece of music they release is bland. (Why? Because recording has gotten too expensive, so they need to make every release a "sure thing", so they spend millions on focus groups and big-name mixers.) This program, even if it works, can't possibly make things worse.
Surely it's the marketing and not the tune which makes a hit. If a company can get a single into the top 10 (Not too hard with sales fixing etc.) then they will start to make real sales.
It's the popularity of a song that makes it popular, not the music. When was the last time you heard a mainstream DJ say "This song is great. It's got strong African rhythms mixed with Celtic melancholy." Or how about "This song is great. It's got the gothic movements mixed with C&W lyrics". Now, how about "This song is great. It came in at number one"...
People aren't interested in hearing music. We're interested in hearing what other people are hearing.
Unfortunately, I am not Wil Wheaton
1) Make song exactly like current hit 2) PROFIT! 3.PROFIT! 4.PROFIT! 5.PROFIT! 6. .>. CUltural revolution among the masses.
7.Corporate Music Biz Dies.
8. Musical Utopia of independant artists selling their own music, owning their own music, blooms.
9.Musical creativity and general quality increases.
10. Good feelings.
11.Computer program designed that writes ten times better than the Beatles.
12. Human Massive inferiority complex causes a million guitars to burn in bonfires across the world.
13.Art is Dead, becomes top hit amongst elitists.
14.Britney comes out of retirement telling ET ,"yeah so.??." dazzling teens with the top single "All you need are Breasts"
15.Profit?
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
damn it I didn't format it.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
She's not, like, very smart.
I would say that based on the interview above, she would have a hard time writing anything more complex than a small grocery list. At very least she's not a friend of the big words.
I confess that I have only heard one of her songs, in passing, on Saturday Night live, so I can't speak to the body of work spanning her entire career. The one song I heard, however, was less than remarkable. I didn't even know who she was until everyone was going on about that virus named after her. And I'm out of her demographic; I'm almost exactly twice her age. Perhaps I'm just not as receptive to the message of teen angst as I once was.
My hunch says she has very good handlers who are actively trying to use her to separate disaffected teens from their parents' money.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
It's push technology all over again. Someone call Microsoft up they can use all that old code again. And everyone thought it would never come back.
Tim Smith - Ramblings from Nerd Land
All we had to do was look for anything produced by Phil Spector who is now trying out the other meaning of hit man.
Music has some mathematical component, but also a very big cultural component. I think that this system is no more than a joke. How can it, for example take in consideration "sense of humour"? Many hit songs use it. Or the hype of the moment, things like a specific revival going on...
I would like to see the results of this when applied to the biggest music classics, from Muddy Waters to Gershwin to the Beatles, etc...
Anyway, taking in consideration what is going on in TV and radio, are you use that the labels aren't ALREADY using a program like this.
1984 is here, really...
Who was the big winner? Was it some teen sex idol? No. It was the daughter of a sitar player.
OK, where can I get info on the algorithm that drives this system? With a little research I'm sure I can pump out a potential hits and then hopefully sell the rights to a publisher before they catch on to my game.
Deltron 3030 - Virus (music video)
if you had access to the program, and you fed it the songs that were your own personal hits, maybe rated them, it would be better than just about anything else at telling you what else you'd like. Finding you bands you'd never heard of that were actually pretty good. It could allow you to expand your musical horizons rather than forcing you into the narrow spam mold of the cold musical marketing machine. It could easily evolve into a simple web based tool to sell more and a broader variety of music, but they'd never even think of it.
Hmmm, didn't they have a game on the commodore 64 which actually did the same thing? :D
Sure music is mathematical, but you get completely different music from a computer or machine making the music (player piano, etc.) and somebody actually performing it. The person is able to put expression and feelings in the their work. Often the actual words sung are important to give the right expression and emotion.
Can a computer program really translate the meaning of the words sung and see if they are able to capture people emotionally?
Furthermore, when recording a song, there might be a lot of 'takes' to get a good song. Some are obviously better than others to the human ear, but I would be curious if this computer program rates these fairly or the same.
Live recording CDs change songs quite a bit also. When I play song, I try and change it a little each time, because it is a whole new experience. It keeps the audience interested because even if they have heard it before, they have not heard it quite the way I play it that time. The point is, little variations give a song the cutting edge to make it better. I know I have an album by the same band, but two different producers (Sponge - one by Chaos, the other by Work). One version is definately better than the other even though they are the same songs.
It is sort of the same for a song that was orginally lots of electric guitars and they re-did it all acoustic. Sometimes I even didn't like the electric and loved the acoustic. Can a computer program handle these extreme differences? I wouldn't think so.
A friends roomate was totaly adicted to that thing. Ultimately it was shot down by the record-companies, even though it was owned by one of them...
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
This actually makes sense when you consider that constraints and restrictions actually force a person to be more creative. Having said that I'm not trying to suggest that this is a good idea, just an observation.
I want one. Running every song on the radio through this algorithm would be good. Just so I can automagically switch channels if the software says it's "hit-material" mind you..
it's the music equivalent of spamfiltering.
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
If you can get ahold of the algorithms that are used to rate the music, you can then compose music that will make the record execs pee their pants with excitement. "Whoa, your song went up to eleven!"
We've already seen this happen -- build a spam filter and the spammers will then engineer their spam to get around it...
If I were a record exec, I'd be particularly dubious of this.
Sean
Does that mean that they can be sued for copyright infringement? :-)
Or "sound and feel" since by using that software they're admitting they're copying one or more existing artists?
... and as a hobbyist musician I love articles like this.
When the general public get sick of all the pop and 'reality' stars made for them, they turn to the underground, and this is where you'll find people who truly allow new styles to flourish.
All this Hollywood stuff is for chumps. If you want real music, and real musicians, just look for the underground.
It's out there.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
you're one of those that believe in 'free will' and creationism too.
Music is mathHow small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
There is a great saying that I love that I've heard credited to David Cronenberg (never been able to verify it). The saying goes, "An entertainer gives you what you want. An artist gives you what you didn't realize you wanted."
This kind of hit-finding software will give music execs the abillity to perfect their entertainment while pushing them almost entirely away from art. For real artists out there, this could be a good thing, in the long-run.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
If you think of this in a positive way: Maybe the record companies will be more willing to give new artists that try something new a chance if this tells them it might be a hit. Ofcourse this is all dependant on how well this works, and the music alone is not always enough to make hit.
Maybe there's another application: I have been playing the same old cds for years, and prolly will do so for years to come, maybe they can make a version that can be trained to predict whether I will like it and recommend new songs/artists to me.
beauty is only a light switch away
Make a program that analyze the chords, make statistics on the 'good' combinations of chords. Do the same for rythm. If you go deep down, almost all music is based on the same basic ideas.
I believe a computer would be able to identify the essentially good parts. If you fed it music from different time periods, maybe you could even indentify som unchangable identity that makes all good music good.
Of course, everything is subjective, but maybe it's possible to go beyond that.How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
This reminds me of the Negativland album "Escape From Noise." The first track on the record is a parody of a radio announcement telling you that the next track you will hear has been scientifically tested and engineered to be a big hit. I guess this shows how parody often becomes reality. Spooky. Great album, by the way, if you haven't experienced Negativland yet.
IAAL
I'm not a hitness freak!
DROS - Open-Source Robot Software
No, it's Einstürzende Neubauten.
If the program can tell what's a hit and what isn't, why not create another program that randomly puts chords and words together, and pipe the output into the "hit finder" program. When process 1 writes a hit, save the file, repeat.
so what. it maximizes roi. you want "alternative"? do a little research, it's out there. too lazy? piss off and enjoy britney spears.
I suppose lyrics dont count anymore?
.ACMD setaloiv siht gnidaeR
One would think that the ultimate goal is not just a hit detector but a hit generator. Press the button generate a hit send it to some AI layer that renders it into vocals and music ... and there you are ... no artists needed at all. And eventually you can have it built into you stereo (patented of course) so that you can listen to as much 'original' hit music as you poor mind can bear ... for a monthly fee. All potential hits by any artists would then be considered products of the HitGenerator and therefore breach copyright. Ahh can you just see it ... what a wonderful world !
Bitter and proud of it.
What if this program starts finding patterns in music that someone attempts to copyright? Would they then be able to sue people whose music has a similar mathmatical pattern behind it?
Why do I have the feeling that no matter how this turns out its the listeners that are going to end up being screwed by it.
Well, it has never been successfully tested.
It should be an easy matter to apply the system to a collection of hits songs of the past. How well could it have predicted historical hits and flops? A pretty basic test; has anyone performed it?
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
I actually prefer the sound of my favorite tracks when played on the radio to the same tracks played through my CD player.
Is this because:
a) I'm broken.
b) I've got a cheap CD player
c) Frequency Modulation actually does something to sound that makes it more pleasing.
Any thoughts?
I don't know how much of her current work is actually her writing. Nor do I know whether she will turn out to be some kind of musical genius. The point was that the musical zeitgeist has changed, and angst and rock are back in again.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
The company is working with major labels in both the US and the UK and expects to play a major role in reversing the downward music sales trend.
Definitely not, it has been suggested (tentatively perhaps) - that it just might be the culture of mass-produced bands that is killing sales.
If this does not reduce the downward sales they'll make a stronger case for anti-piracy measures. Mathematically, the music is perfect, obviously they are being subverted by terrorists.
Seems the only way out is to live through music/human rights hell for a few years until the whole beast collapses under its own weight? Economic downturn - billions lost... yeuch. So avoidable, just like global warming.
Johns: Well, how does it look now? Riddick: Looks clear.
Who the hell is Norah Jones? She managed to win a Brit award (British Music Awards), yet no one who I have spoken to here in England has ever heard of the woman. So how the hell did she win an award? What did she do in Britian to warrent an award?
Let me guess, in a couple of months time, she'll be all over the radio. What a surprise.
Once that riddle is solved, I'll start trying to work out how the flying fuck an R&B trio (SugaBabes) managed to win the fucking Dance catagory.
Bullshit.
Its her damn sister Danni Minogue you have some serious apolgising to do for!
One of the problems is that everyone moans about the homogeneity and lack of good music and then instead of going out and buying it they download MP3s fromthe web. Now that is fine *providing* you give something back to the artists and the musicians writing the stuff... sadly this is often not the way...
The majority of buyers of music are in the young teeny market or the older back catalogue and new music is squeezed between these two camps. And hey guess what, most people into new music don't buy, my record label (LOCA sells very small amounts of CDs and Vinyl *even though* we get emails and good press telling us how good the music is.
And we have had a donate to artists for their MP3s available for twelve months and ONLY ONE PERSON HAS DONE SO... even though we have had thousands of downloads.
Now, perhaps everyone hates the music - fair enough - but I think much more likely people can't get their head around paying for something they have already got on their walkman. That is certainly one of the main reasons I do not copy albums off people, the moment I do, no matter how good my intentions, I do not go and buy the CD. Sure if I grab an MP3 off the web I will as then the quality is poor (for instance I recently went out and got the Electric6 single Danger! High Voltage! after a download).
So what do we the tiny independent labels do about this? Well I'm truly not sure.. The market is sewn up by the majors to extents you would not believe. Generally people *do not like* buying unknown bands, and certainly not if they are not stocked in the major record stores, and lastly if they get the MP3 they seem mostly happy with that...
I would love for an alternative business model to start to emerge on the web but it seems that for all the talk its the same everywhere, the majors can advertise and buy their way into the web review sites by blitzing them with promos, they plug like crazy and they already control the external print market. Goodby heterogeneity, hello homogeneity.
This new 'scientific' method of calculating music singles is the result of laziness and shallowness by the buying public and quite frankly history will judge us that way...
But not too get too depressing, will that stop us writing music and running the label? Nah.. we love music too much..
---- The Open Source Record Label : : LOCARECORDS.COM
This is all good and well, but I'm very sure that lyrics are a big factor in determining the hit factor of a song. And what artists wear. And what they say. Which social group they address them too. And if they got airtime on MTV or not.
So, while an interesting theoretical experiment, I don't think this will change the way hits are made at all.
It's been around for years and I've always called it "cookie cutter" music.
No originality, every song sounds just like the last song, and boring as hell.
Somebody takes a recipe, gets the required ingredients, and bakes a shitty song.
The trouble is that a lot of people don't have any taste when it comes to music, and they buy whatever is hyped the most just so they will look "cool" or "with it". No surprise that most dance and pop music falls into this category.
Top 40 means the top 10 songs played 40 times a day. Aaarrrrrrgggghhh!
Goodbye, Mr. Rogers. We'll miss you.
They can eliminate recording artists completely and make 100% profit by having a machine pump out songs every now and then that are in 4/4 timing with a computer generated voice of a hot
20-something girl singing about sex.
for the pop crap city folks listen to, then is the country verson called hitabilly?
They weren't called The Hit Factory for nothing...
OTOH, Pete Waterman is *still* churning out acts that are hits (and has been a judge on two major UK Popstars talent shows along with his old mate Simon Cowell). And still happily copying classical structures.
And if you think this is a phenomenon of the last 2|5|10|20 years, bear in mind such formulae as the 12 bar blues and the 4 chord trick (I, VI, IV, V, repeat).
But much of the gloss of pop music is (as suggested by parent post) in the arrangements, not the composition. Look at the number of covers in that compilation. Covers from the 50s, the 60s, the 70s. I would guess that much of the software we're talking about analyses arrangements and applies collaborative filtering based on what's selling at the moment.
In the end though, it doesn't matter. Pop music is primarily entertainment, defined by commercial success. Don't mistake it for Art.
The only thing you can accurately describe as "Scotch" is a sticky tape made by 3M. And it's
Launch.com currently allows you to vote on a scale how much you like/dislike a song - then based on that it recommends other songs to you.
But it doesn't analyze anything in the acutal music.
For that, I would recommend FFT and backprop Neural Nets being added to the existing ranking methods that they have - but in the end, your own brain is likely better at it.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
This announcement from the producers of this record contains important information for radio program directors, and is not for broadcast.
The first cut on this record has been cross-format-focused for airplay success. As you well know, a record must break on radio in order to actually provide a living for the artists involved. Up until now, you've had to make these record-breaking decisions on your own, relying only on perplexing intangibilities like taste and intuition.
But now, there's a better way.
The cut that follows is the product of newly-developed compositional techniques, based on state-of-the-art marketing analysis technology. This cut has been analytically designed to break on radio. And it will, sooner or later.
For the station that breaks it first, the benefits are obvious. You lead the pack. Yes, no matter what share of this crazy market you do business in, no other release is going to satisfy your corporation's current idea of good radio like this one. On this cut, we're working together, on the same wavelength, in scientific harmony.
But remember, this cut is constructed for multi-market-breaking NOW. Don't waste valuable research with needless delay. We've done the hard work of insuring your success; the final step is up to you.
SPECIAL DESIGNER SONG FOLLOWS IN 5... 4... 3... 2... 1...(click)
Imagine using it back in the 80s with all of the hair bands. In the early 90s you feed Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" into it, and it'd easly reject it as a hit. But, it became a HUGE hit and all of those hair bands became (even bigger) jokes over night. Even though I only see it working at destroying music as we know it, I'm sure it'll be widely used.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
I recently used this same formula in picking a new radio station, except in reverse. I don't like the idea of getting mired in the 70's, no matter how good I thought some of the stuff was at the time, and still may think it is.
I found a radio station that plays mostly stuff I've never heard. Some of it I like, some of it I really like, and some of it goes the opposite direction. But I spend my commute bouncing between radio stations, anyway. You can only listen to NPR for so long before hearing about what Dubya's up to, so it's time to go back to the local BBC echo or music. On a really bad day it gets down to Howard Stern.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Excelent I wasn't sure if anyother person in the world understood that good and enjoyable are two seperate issues. There is a lot of music that is good that I don't like and music that I like that definately isn't good.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
If music is automatically rated, they don't need my opinion anymore and I can switch my radio off. Bugger, and I just bought a new one too.
Similar to a weather forecasting method my statistics prof presented. It goes like this:
Or an alternative method:
And what's right for the weather can't be wrong for music, right? Both suck and no one really gives a damn. You just have to dress right. Raincoat and earplugs.
Fight hunger. Filet a politician and send him to a 3rd world country of your choice.
Hitability testing program?
I'd hit it!
From the sound coming out of the radio most days, I thought they were already using it... Anyway, as to the idea being backwards, I agree. It's hard to wade through all of the crap that's available to find new music. Trusting bands to describe what they sound like (mp3.com) is dicey at best, so we need an honest alternative. I hate to try to interject a word like "honest" into any discussion about the recording indu$try, but it sure would be nice. It could also be used as sort of a pre-crime device to prevent another Macarena from seeing the light of day.
Someday a real rain is gonna come...
It would be great if they installed that program to run on mp3.com or a site like that, and used that to discover new "talent"... at least the playing field would level out for people like myself versus Master P's kid or connected insiders like that.
stuff |
This is just more evidence of the growing irrelevance of record companies. As technology moves forward, the record companies seem determined to find ways to decrease creativity and thwart musicians, not promote artistry. This will prove a fatal approach, in my opinion.
Musicians can now create and engineer music in their own homes with a relatively modest investment. They can advertise and distribute on the web. By charging a modest sum to download the music, they could quickly out-earn the average 35 cents a cd they now make. When someone (Napster?) comes up with the appropriate delivery vehicle for this scheme, the music-as-big-business era will have come to an end.
Record companies ought to recognize this now and stop treating their talent as noisome middlemen. It seems like they start with packaging and marketing, and add in the music as an afterthought.
But all is not lost --- great musicians want to create great music, and people will want to hear it. You can't keep the two apart.
http://ob-la-blog.blogspot.com/
Quick--someone dig up a copy of "Disco Duck" and see what it does with that.
That's just what I need... a computer telling me what music I like.
Yvan Eht Nioj!
-EB
Do you ever walk alone like a drifter in the dark?
The Polyphonic site says:
Well, much of what attracts us to a particular song is found in the basic structure of the music. Particular rhythms, changes in key and certain
HSS visualization of an album superimposed into the recent "hit universe" melodic patterns define the psychological and very human response we all have to music.
This seems to imply that the reaction to hit songs is universal. I'm not ashamed to say that I absolutely abhor most of the hit songs on the charts nowadays. Um, "we all have" this "very human response"? My response is to change the station (which rarely actually happens, since I almost always just listen to my MP3 CDs anyway).
My point is, how can some software like this transcend people's individual tastes? I mean, sure, it wouldn't be hard to recycle some music to sell it wholesale to the masses, but it's pretentious at best to assume that some sort of program can accurately reflect my tastes at the same time as the average 12-year-old boy band fan.
--------------------
"Time is an illusion.
Lunchtime doubly so."
-Douglas Adams
David Borowitz
it would have spotted Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody or Radiohead's Paranoid Anroid if it had been around when they were release?
Greg Egan wrote a very good short story based on this very premise, only using neural implants as market-research devices.
:-)
It also has some of the best non-Smiths Smiths lyrics ever seen in print.
I wish I could get access to the program and feed it the songs from the Golden Throats series of CDs. Which would it rate higher: Sammy Davis Jr.'s cover of the theme from Shaft, or Mae West's cover of "Twist and Shout"?
"Let's feed the Black Page in..."
>spitz-n-sparken< smoke, etc..
Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
It would be interesting to see how(if) the software takes into account people getting bored with the current trend of music - will it be able to dub a hit to the next big thing to come along that's completely new and sounds nothing like what's been a proven hit in the past (and doesn't follow traditional chord progressions, time signatures, etc ...)?
Maybe they should rank songs in the Top 40 by how many times it is downloaded on Kazaa. I mean, the idea is to rank how POPULAR the song is, what better method than to measure how many people are getting using the most popular method for getting new music?
Yea, I know, its illegal, but at least it would be more accurate. Then again the purpose of the Top 40 is to SELL CDs, not to inform you on what is really most popular.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
... if Boston was in the learning algorithm.
I'm surprised A&R guys need crap-o-meters to identify hits. They just force-feed the pap until the audience gives in.
Yes, so long as "what I will like" = "what I like now".
Personally, while there may be some relationship between the two, I'll happily use my own brain, listen to stuff and DECIDE if I like it. It's actually pretty effortless.
-Styopa
I'll just with Black Metal. There's not much of a chance that software will ever "allow" any black metal song to be a hit, so I won't have to worry about all those preppy poser crapheads to start imitating me. Good.
Ok.. The conecept is a great CompSci project, in its own idea. Determining and matching patterns in music. GREAT! The bad part is they applied EVIL statistics to the game. Statistacs can be manipulated in sooo many ways. My problem is ok for this to work.. they'd have to survey all the top hits and make a Master pattern. Not only top hits from now.. but top hits from as far back as human archives have recorded, and stratified as popular. Then look and see what common ground you find. Remember.. taste changes over time.
Now my concern personally about this is.. I don't like mainstream music *most* of the time. There is a lot of crap out now, and has been out before that I am completely boggled as to why its popular. I'd say 90%. Mostly I many of the bands I like haven't seen much pop top 40 play. I don't try and be snobbish about it.. its just what I like. If its popular I don't mark it automatically off the list. I mean I'm ashamed to admit it, but I really like that Pink song, Party started.. or whatever it was called. That was a great pop song, and dance hall song really. On the other hand I really like listening to Mike Doughty solo and from his days with Soul Coughing.
My point is everybody is different.. I hate it when everything is playing to the lowest common denominator. I guess thats a cruel fact of life though.
Oh well chances are everbody will get bored of what the program determines as pop.. and they'll have to reprogram it.. thus the industry will still be behind the trends.. as always..
Who makes you Sig?
To my shame I use this book at home. This was a step in the same direction and makes a useful source book. Music, especially popular music borrows constantly...
On y va, qui mal y pense!
The way to write a hit song is to imitate what you here on the radio. So said Frank Zappa, in an interview shortly before his death. Listen to the current hits, and imitate them: nothing more, nothing less.
-kgj
KEY. These tools are for 'suggestions' not gospel. Seems they have the use reversed as well.
You just don't know how good she can sing yet.
I remember when I thought the same way you think.
Making faces at the radio, covering my ears...
Then I saw a picture of her. She can sing to me now!
-Jason
...but still NEVER be able to BUILD ONE. This will never work.
Doesn't anyone relize that in the eyes of the corporate music industry giants its not even about music anymore. They could care less about what the crap they pump out sounds like, which is exactly why all these fools signed on to this "hitability" thing so fast. It's ALL about profit now. They take one band who they think will create a huge profit and dump millions of dollars into them, so they can make billions on the return. Why not promote multiple artists with the lesser funding? Because if you promote just one band that means that there's only one cd for several million screaming teenage girls to buy, which in turn creates the want for concerts, tshirts, and all the other crap they stick the band on the months face on. The music industry is like a crack dealer, they hook all the suceptable ones on the crap and then pump them for all there worth, until the band get older and breaks up. Then the next band comes in, and it starts all over again. To quote Porcupine Tree (an excellent band which i'm sure few to none of you have heard of) in the their song Sound of Muzak, "It's one of the wonders of the world and its goin down i know. It's one of the blunders of the world and no cares" I love music - from Louis Armstrong, to Velvet Underground, to Tool, to Led Zeppelin, these are influential people, these have been influential bands in the real world of music. Not this junk top40 sorry excuse for music (let alone sound) crap which all sounds the same with recycled lyrics of pseudo-love crap and psuedo "heart felt" emotion, these morons don't care, regardless of the "talent", its all about the money now. As for the filing sharing stuff? don't even get me started on that, because thats the least of music industry's worry.
It's called a suggestion dumbass. Such a database could sift through much much more music than your brain can. Why are you such an elitist MORON?
Sounds like a recipe for food poisoning.
Actually most people learned of these records the way I did. O Brother is a soundtrack. People saw the movie, realized Bluegrass was way cooler than they thought and bought the record.
Norah Jones is young and attractive - and someone at MTV2 decided to play her video. The song stuck out from the glossy stuff usually played and people sought the record out.
Movies and MTV are industry channels. While the internet is a huge force, especially for non-mainstream genre's, most people learn about music the same ways they used to.
Now for the punchline.
Why is the industry (CNN, MTV, NARAS) wanting to push stuff like Norah Jones? If you look at the demographics, they are realizing that there is lots of money to be made catering to older listeners, who have more discretionary income and who are more likely to BUY a CD instead of "share" a file. Look for more and more "grown up" music. While the demise of teenage pop is unlikely, don't be surprised if funding priorities change a bit.
Oh wait, I thought this was . Sorry.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
Heck, just by reading a Slashdot story I can instantly predict what most of the comments about it are going to be. So geeks love repetition as much as the average Mariah Carey fan.
By following the Golden Rules, you too can achieve top 40 success.
(of course, these are the Rules for the UK. Maybe the US market is different? Possibly the formula is different by a constant somewhere...)
The algorithm's premise is damning indicator of what we've all suspected: the lyrics of a top-40 song have little to do with it being a hit.
It thus suggests that Top-40 listeners are primarily uncomprehending chimps desiring only a hook-like melody and motion-inducing bass line.
Well, at least I'm closer to understanding the appeal of Matchbox20.
Provided those "new sounds and styles" sound something like Britney Spears, N*Sync, Justin Timberlake, Limp Bisket or Eminem.
As long as musicians are being forced into draconian contracts and a majority of the radio stations are owned by two megacorporations, music will be neither creative or free.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
The divide between popular and good music happened a long time ago. The connoisseur has nothing to fear from this machine. The legions of MTV viewers will have to settle for a shiney-thing that looks strikingly similar to the last shiney-thing.
A&R "scouts" have been doing this forever, using their ears to find and sign bands that have songs that may be hits. Using an algorithm to accomplish this task will likely lead to much of the same recycled top 40 trash we've always heard.
A large point I was trying to get across is that many of you out there are responsible for this kind of behavior. I am thoroughly convinced that if a song is catchy enough (and most are) and then played on the radio often enough, it will hit big. In the article, it says "Most people don't know why they like a certain song," and the fact is that a good deal of you out there do what you're told. There has to be *someone* buying those millions of albums, and the people that are buying those albums are people who don't know what they like. I remember back in junior high school, before I became a musician, I had no clue whether I liked a song or not if it was played on the radio. But played often enough, I found I could grow to like nearly anything.
Economically, the record companies are doing a great thing - selling you a proven product that they *know* you will like. Artistically, they are stifling music innovation, and this article is a perfect example of such. Sure, Norah Jones won best album, but look who else was nominated: Nelly, Eminem, THE DIXIE CHICKS?! How many other Norah Joneses are out there that didn't get a fair shot this year because someone didn't discover them by some lucky stroke?
What needs to change is not the record companies. It's people's involvement in music that needs to change, because record companies react to people's taste, and until people decide for themselves what they like instead of allowing a radio station to control it, the record companies will control what people's tastes are. This is another reason why things like "music pirating" is a Good Thing. People can decide what they like more easily if they can try things out without wasting hard-earned money on CDs they won't want - the radio certainly isn't helping offer any variety.
What can you do? *Pay attention.* Really listen to songs. Think about them more. Dig deeper. And don't just do this with music, do it with any sort of art that you feel inclined to pay attention to - most people that go to art museums do this, why shouldn't everyone who listens to the radio do the same thing? Many of you out there are far more critical of say, literature than music. Start listening to music critically. Also, go ahead and use Kazaa, but don't get stuff you hear on the radio - that's what the RIAA cares about anyway. Get those songs on a user's playlist that you haven't heard of if you like the mainstream songs that they've picked out.
Don't let this computer program be able to calculate what we like.
--Stephen
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
It's an art, a craft, it's not even a damn business.
It just amazes me that record companies are watching their sales drop like a bucket down a well, yet not only are they still forcing the same mediocre pablum at us, they're developing software to make it MORE of the same.
Lord. This software should actually be called "More Of The Same."
Give us something worth f*cking listening to, and we'll buy it. Keep feeding us the same crap over and over again and you'll have noone to blame but yourselves for your losses.
That subject should have been "Yeah right..." Initally I was going to put some witty piece of code like...
If(artist (sounds like) britney Spears) then
send (artist) to (every radio station)
else
shitcan (artist)
end if
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
I'd hit it!
stale bag of chips. boy what the heck are these record execs smoking? Is it some hydroponically grown, super weed or just some pure uncut columbian powder. What ever it is, they must be hording it and snorting 24/7.
It would be quite nice for me to use a program like this to scan a handful of songs that I like and then have the program query an online database and tell me what other songs I might like. This would be especially nice for songs that never played on the radio or I otherwise missed.
Jenna Jameson has serious hitability.
</fark>
I'd rather have a computer picking hits that some fat balding white guy whose taste I *know* I can't stand.
-- Boycott Shell
Ha, trying to catch that into an algorithm is just as difficult as trying to catch "human intelligence" or "creativity" or "emotion" into a program. The music that it analyses as a "hit" won't have anything new in it...
...for my new lyrics to that stupid nora jones song, came up with this on the subway... "why do i have to hear this song" "sounds to me like it goes on and on" "what a simple melody" "nora jones thinks she's jazzy" "wish that i could pick a grammy" "i'd decide what is good and crappy" ... and on and on and on...
Considering the proportion of garbage on the air, it would be a fair trade. Still, a better use would be as a "Junk Filter", to decide ahead of time what I *wouldn't* like. (And remember, you need to check the junk filter every once in awhile to make sure the settings haven't gotten bollixed up.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
soon enough, the music industry will discover the formula for making music the majority of people can't help but enjoy. we're simple animals when it comes to music and music that is irresistible isn't impossible. look at avril levigne (sp?), her songs suck, but you still can't help to bob your head a bit after a few drinks at the bar. computers are just going to dehumanize the music making process. that's why we should all support indy labels and bands. the music industry/machine will be the end of culture in america, as culture is deeply rooted in music.
I'd mod this up if they'd let me (but I already commented). Yes, looking at it as a music-spam filter, that's probably a very useful way to use it. (Especially the part about cjecking the filter occasionally.)
My music tastes run from Judas Priest, to Devo, to Mozart's Requiem, to Bach, to Sade, to Blue Man Group, to a capella, to a number of indie groups that do everything from Fusion to Russian Jazz. About the only thing I don't like is Country, but there are still a few songs there that I like a lot. So I'm just very dubious that the process of using this would end up netting me any time savings.
Kind of like using speech-to-text software. You spend so much time editing, it would have just been easier to type it yourself.
-Styopa
Of course it can't work. Duh... you may as well write a program that predicts lottery numbers. At least you'll make money off the people dumb enough to buy it from you.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
'will allow new sounds and styles to flourish.'
.0000003% and stop paying to have it played on the radio. oh, this other one does well! their royalties will be .0003% and we'll have the shit played out of it! we're gonna be billionaires!"
so let me get this straight...program judges a song based on how much it sounds like the other "hits" (read: crap) already out there. if it sounds enough like the other stuff then it is judged to be a potential hit. so tell me, how exactly does this promote new sounds and styles? especially if this is accepted by any major labels! "gee, this song doesnt do very well on our hitability software. drop their royalties to
Gentlemen...BEHOLD!
-Dr. Weird
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
1. Theoretical system. This, I sense, could actually be a great technology. If there is a solid basis behind what we like and why we like it, I feel it would provide some great insights into culture. The record industry would issue music based on what people really do want to hear.
2. Empirical system. This would use data from previous hits and misses to predict how a current song will do. What I don't like about this is the prior database: it will be made up of the generic music the industry has been pushing for years. So it will not be making a decision based on how the masses really would like a tune, rather it would make a decision based on how the masses liked the other stuff they sold. In this way, innovative new styles will still take a long time to pry their way into the mainstream.
No I'm not trolling.
From the interview:
.. just without the beepbeepbeeping!
I was like "What are you talkin' about? I'm not sick." Then someone explained it was a computer virus and I'm like "Oh."
She's, like, the new Ellen Feiss
Food for thought:
(The songs I list here are my examples, you may disagree, just substitute appropriate songs for you...)
When I think back to the first time I heard particular songs, even without knowing who the artist was, I recall certain times I loved the song right away, for example:
Enter Sandman- Metallica
Still the One- Shania Twain
(I still enjoy those songs today.)
Then there was some songs that I thought were interesting, for example:
Informer- Snow
I'm Blue (ah ba dee aba dah)- still don't know by whom
These songs were interesting, not great but the third or fourth time I heard them I kind of liked listening to them.
(Now I hate listening to them.)
Then there's songs like Abercrombie and Fitch girls, which I always hated, and still do. I think there's an obvious marketing trend. The Abercrombie and Fitch song was hyped so much, that they "MADE" you like it, or at least they "MADE" the people like it who would call up and request it to be played, thus making it a hit.
The first group represents good songs that stand the test of time. The middle group represesnts something somewhere in the middle. Now all of these songs were top hits. How do you suppose a computer program will differentiate them? (Or does it matter? A hit is a hit.)
I assumed computers were already responsible for top 40 music.
This announcement from the producers of this record contains important information for radio program directors, and is not for broadcast.
The first cut on this record has been cross-format-focused for airplay success. As you well know, a record must break on radio in order to actually provide a living for the artists involved. Up until now, you've had to make these record-breaking decisions on your own, relying only on perplexing intangibilities like taste and intuition.
But now, there's a better way.
The cut that follows is the product of newly-developed compositional techniques, based on state-of-the-art marketing analysis technology. This cut has been analytically designed to break on radio. And it will, sooner or later.
For the station that breaks it first, the benefits are obvious. You lead the pack. Yes, no matter what share of this crazy market you do
business in, no other release is going to satisfy your corporation's current idea of good radio like this one. On this cut, we're working together, on the same wavelength, in scientific harmony.
But remember, this cut is constructed for multi-market-breaking NOW. Don't waste valuable research with needless delay. We've done the hard
work of insuring your success; the final step is up to you.
SPECIAL DESIGNER SONG FOLLOWS IN 5.. 4.. 3.. 2.. 1.......
(gotta credit Negativland for this tasty nugget)
"Look, Smithers! I'm Davy Crockett!"
Now if only they could come up with software to find underlying patterns in our TV, movies, food and politicians, we could get over the plague of originality that is threatening to divide us!
I too am a man of constant sorrow.
Good God ... there goes any chance for bands/musicians that aren't T40 clones.
Hell, at this point they may as well just create software that will WRITE T40 hits too.
Ugh...
If the songs are compared to current "hits" ... how exactly will the software fulfill the claim that it will "allow new sounds and styles to flourish"??
Who doesn't like free music?
OK.
If she'll get nekkid with me I'll listen to her sing.
I hope I'm not posting a dupe, but there is a really neat use for this software.
Let's say I download a few Foo Fighters songs off Kazaa. Now, I know who the Foo Fighters are, but I can't think of anyone off the top of my head who sounds similar. Would it be possible to use software like this to find more music by different artists that I would probably want to listen to? They mention top 40 crap in the article, what if I'm into unsigned alternative stuff? How do I find these artists on Kazaa if I've never heard of them? Maybe this software has a nice potential for finding new talent that fits my taste in music.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
Muff Winwood? Muff? Win wood? That name sounds like one of the foxes from a James Bond flick. Heh heh...
Just thought I would point that out...
-AP
investors whose strategy is to chart past trends and try to divine the future...and while some have had luck doing it that way, it isn't really a proven strategy [past performance is no indicator, blah blah].
Although I'm sure it will pick a few 'winners', it's doubtful that it will do it any better than an A&R rep. Seriously, you need a computer to tell you that n'Sync would be a hit, after hearing Backstreet Boys? [not that I like either, but a lot of teenyboppers did].
And it's been mentioned before here...how's the 'puter going to identify the next 'new thing' [which really is what drives incremental sales in this stale industry]? By analyzing Journey and Loverboy hits, would it have predicted Nirvana and Soundgarden?
Who put this thing together? Me, that's who.
launch.yahoo.com is what you are referrring to I believe. It's really amazing. It will recommend songs that were liked by other people with similar ratings to you. It will also let you listen to "sounds like" stations so that you can hear tracks that sound like george carlin or a certain album. In my opinion it's worth the 30 second commercials every few songs.
...what your bloody intentions were. The "joke" wasn't funny. It was factually wrong in a severe and unavoidable way - and it WAS NOT FUCKING FUNNY. Stop trying to be cool by jumping on the anti-DMCA trail, and stop fishing for karma. He obviously had a clue because he recognized your error - why don't YOU get a clue and realize that you're a reject dweeb who has never, and will never, have a girlfriend. Learn social dynamics, fucker, and maybe you'll find your angst isn't so justified.
We wave the flag of freedom as we conquer and invade.
I wonder, can aspiring, clever groups of artists and hackers reverse engineer HSS to tell them what components of hit songs make those songs popular? If so, they could use that info to create hit song after hit song, simply by reusing and re-mixing the best parts of popular songs. Easy money.
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
If the music publishers owned by the major labels (aol, umg, bmg, sony) cross-license their songs, there is no infringement. However, if you're not already affiliated with a major music publisher, and you write a song, you will be sued. And if you don't already have millions in the bank, you will lose in the end because any victory will be Pyrrhic.
Especially since 4 bars is enough to constitute a copyright violation (was it 4? Can't remember).
G. F. Handel's publisher won a lawsuit over four notes.
Ronald Mack's publisher sued George Harrison's publisher and won, despite the fact that both sides agreed that George Harrison was not aware that he was copying anything.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Slashdot does not allow HTML entities other than <, > and &. How did you manage to remember the Alt+code necessary to write umlauted vowels on a U.S. keyboard? And how are you going to correctly spell a word that uses a character that isn't in ISO Latin 1?
Will I retire or break 10K?
In the "old days" it was done pretty much the same. If you wanted a hit you took Neil Sadaka and/or Carole King and locked them in a room with a piano and didn't let them out until they wrote a hit. Worked every time.
Then you handed it off to Little Eva, or whoever.
Before that even there was "Tin Pan Alley" which gave us such wonders as "How much is that Doggie in the Window." Crap like that resulted in the folk scare of the 40's and 50's.
I still buy the odd CD now and then, but it's "niche" stuff. Willie Dixon, Silly Wizard, I need to complete my Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span collection, Ry Cooder, that sort of thing.
Don't get me going of the AI aspect of this whole thing. Does the program know that people are fickle and get bored? Does it know how to predict what they're going to turn to when they bored? Could it have forcast the folk scare, the advent of swing and jazz?
Feh!
KFG
"If we only promote identical music to what's on the radio now, that will promote the rise of new, different music."
I check out PolyphonicHMI's website. There's no "products" section, no "download" section... There is a "partners" section, which implies that they have no money and an incomplete product - partners is business speak for "I need a sugar daddy"
Hrmf. No toy to play with.
Hmm... So they're wondering just how hittable the RIAA really is? I'll gladly hit them *grin*
This space for rent, inquire within.
-Typhon
You mean that is not making sure that music follows some sort of patern A A B A or A B A B etc structure and tring to make the B structure in Dominate mode. I feel compleatly ripped.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
--
Simon
Okay, back on track. The results you're gonna get are directly related to the information you pump into this Hit-Maker Doohickey. GIGO. From their website, they are starting with a base dataset of over 250,00 songs. This encompasses way more than "pop".
Remember, a "hit" does not necessarily mean "pop".
Compare Brittney Spears' sharp spikes in sales and popularity with Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, which has the distinction of being on Billboard's Top 200 Albums continuously for over twenty years! For every Macarena abortion, you have groups like the Beatles. For every boy band, The Beach Boys. For every crotch rock band, Led Zeppelin and Rush.
For every Unt ts Unt ts Unt ts dance tune, you have DJ Shadow and Thievery Corporation. For every Christina Aguillera, you have a Tori Amos and Loreena McKennitt. I could do this all day.
With The Machine in fine working order, you can pretty much guarantee a Platinum record. That's only one million suggestible morons out of the US population of 350 million. Strap The Machine to any horse's ass and you will get a damn fast horse. But it won't last.
IMNSHO, I think that the results will begin to show that the Labels have been backing the wrong horses. Music today doesn't suck, just the stuff they are trying to force down our gullets. It's a classic case of sacrificing the future for immediate satiation. Nothing would please me more to see all those marketing dollars going to good bands (and DJ's, the turntablist kind, not the radio personalities). The one's that will be around for a while.
We will see a change for the better, but only if the tool is used correctly. Confucius say, "He who use tool well, will dominate in the long run. He who use tool poorly have big horse ass."
"No, no, no, you don't understand. Toby got worked!"
Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius. -- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Someone is using the wrong organ to "listen" with.
KFG
So, the idea of AIs cooking up songs was predicted by Gibson himself. I just hope this one doesn't go haywire killing cops with a microlight...
/joeyo
2^5
Method for you: Just walk into any record store and buy a random CD, you might like it.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Now we only need to let computers listen to that crap so we dont have to.
"only then will I retire as a musician." That's noble. I'll one up you, however --- Once they have attained that level of genius in pattern recognition, i'll try my hardest to make a level of greatness in music above what they are capable of. Even if i do not have the "genius" required, i'll still make a go of it. And i'd hope that musicians such as you, and everyone else out there would join me in this effort. hell we could get the pattern recognition to help us in some way shape or form! but honestly, just because we got stairway to heaven, does not mean that all guitar players should have given up learning to play the guitar, becuase there allready existed a "near perfect" song, and therefor no need to persue music much more forward than that. so what if the next epoch of music is going to be started by a computer? it's just the next one. there will be one after that. right?
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
P-A-Y-O-L-A??!!
as long as they're close enough to the geometric mean of the old hits and styles.
I run an independent record label, and being involved in independent music, I can tell you that the only people that would actually care about this are the people who are lost anyway (suits at ClearChannel, for example). They never cared about whether a song was good, original, or interesting. They only cared about whether it would make advertisers pay them money. I'm sure they've been using basically the same formula as this silly program in their heads for determining whether something was going to be a hit or not for the past 50 years.
My taste in music that can be decribed is that for originality.
I've listened to a heck of a lot of stuff and it's becoming harder and harder to find new stuff.
I usually really like every one in 300 songs now, possibly more. So that's alot of listening.
Because of this I'd love to try this method of finding new music out.
But I wouldn't rely on it. Friends with similar tastes can be a good source, especially for trying something new. I have a freidn into Emo, he can introduce me to the best of that, another newPunk and another into 20's Jazz. They're the experts so I like to listen.
A blog I run for the wealth
New muzack on the radio truly can't get much crappier. After the Beatles and other 60's bands had run out of ideas, the 70's brought in its share of what could be best described as "borderline homosexual" AM pop (setting standards in awful lyric writing for future generations to follow). The early 80's went from (infamous) disco to the briefly interesting new wave and then gave us Madonna, who was more interested in making the headlines than making music, not that she could carry a tune without lots of overdubbing. She was accompanied by a series of left-wing Irish performers who were good at looking cool while they took turns singing about how angry they were and how persecuted they were. The late 80's went from bizarre to repetitive, brain-dead tripe (Milli Vanilli and just about anybody who shared the charts with them) and, far worse, introduced us to the boy bands and pre-teen female vocalists, who were quickly forgotten to be replaced by more hype, more boy bands, and more pre-teen female vocalists. Large numbers of talented, reliable artists from previous decades started to run out of ideas and show their age but were still popular because they had no real competition. The 90's started out with 80's studio-session rejects but quickly was replaced by grunge bands from college campuses. You know, the unemployable, self-absorbed types who write their very own 2 chord songs, which they perform with their amps up loud enough to completely cover up both the vocals and the musical for that matter. And here we are now, with also-ran grunge bands, more boy bands, and Madonna copycats going strong, putting out top-40 hits that sound just like a poor-quality copies of what they released 2 months before. We haven't quite gotten sick of grunge yet, but the latest craze is vocalizing in the most nasal, annoying way possible. Such songs bear an uncanny resemblence in terms of content to the campfire shit of the early 60's, the sort of stuff they played before the Beatles banished them from the charts. Do I expect another British invasion any time soon? Not really. It's more likely that people will abandon FM radio in the same way that they abandoned the TV networks and made the entertainment execs scramble to put game shows and reality television shows on in order to save their ratings.
I've noticed the same thing happening around here in eastern Massachusetts. We have a pretty good following here of the classic rock format. Boston's WZLX is the only decent station, they tried putting one up in Worcester (WWFX), but apparently there wasn't enough people to justify two stations, so WWFX changed over to a generic rock format. Strange part is, the playlists between the two were very much alike, by artist but not by particular song. For instance, one station would play Gimme Three Steps, then if you switch to the other station, a minute later Freebird comes on. Really bizarre. WZLX still plays slightly more rare tunes on occasion, but most of it is the tried-and-true 'hits'. The problem is that you quickly reach a plateau that you never get off of, in terms of hearing the works of a particular artist. I'm a big Steely Dan fan, and occasionally they'll play 'Reeling in the Years' or 'Hey Nineteen', but you will probably never hear 'Charlie Freak' or 'Parker's Band' on the radio.
Now, this might not apply to everyone, but it's an idea. What I've been doing lately is trolling used record stores in the area. Often, once you get friendly with the owner, they might let you dig through stacks of albums in the basement or back room, or wherever they pile stuff they haven't gone through yet. Most of the things they know will sell easily get picked out, but quite often there are some true gems in the middle of a stack. It's like a treasure hunt, and can be pretty fun, especially when you find something interesting. What you want to do is write down a list of some artists and bring it with you (it's terribly difficult to remember what you're looking for once you've looked at a few hundred albums.) Pick a few albums out that you think you might like (maybe it will have a track on it that you know), pay the $3 or so for the record, bring it home, and throw it on the turntable.
It's much cheaper than buying a new CD if you're on a budget, it can be somewhat adventurous in a weird sort of way, and I don't know about other people, but if I take out phyical vinyl album and put it on the player, I'm far more inclined to listen to the WHOLE thing, or at least one side. I do this to a lesser extent for CDs, and I almost always jump around randomly with mp3s. Listening to the whole album will possibly open you up to some new songs that were not considered hit material and didn't make it to the airwaves, or aren't as prominent (or even available) on the file sharing networks.
I won't even start up the argument over whether vinyl sounds better than any other format, suffice to say that if your album is in good shape, and you have a halfway tolerable turntable and cartridge, it will definitely sound good enough to enjoy. If anyone's interested, I'm using a run-of-the-mill Technics SL-1200 MK2 turntable (dj variety, very solid, direct drive), with a Grado 'red' series cartridge/needle. I'm not trying to be an elitist here, but I just want to let you know that your grandmother's zenith console turntable probably won't be quite up to par with the quality expected by people bred on CD players. Find yourself a decent used direct drive turntable (such as an old marantz, perhaps) so you don't have to worry about belts, and buy a new cartridge if it's in question. Shouldn't run you too much money.
Another thing is if people know you like to listen to albums, you might find that a lot of people will just GIVE you stacks of records, and possibly record players. Millions of people keep these things around but don't listen to them anymore for some reason, but they don't have the heart to throw them out. If they think you'll get some enjoyment out of the music they grew up on, and would treat the records with respect (i.e. no scratching you djs!), you just might get a bunch of great music AT NO COST, and COMPLETELY LEGALLY!
Hey, there's always the added bonus of possibly making some of your mp3 tracks slightly more legal....if you do own a copy of the track on some form of media, it's probably not as bad as just having the mp3 and no 'real' copy to back it up in case the FBI comes and busts down your door.
man tunefs | grep fish
The American Idol show does that too. And they make much more money at running the show than running a computer program.
FFT? There's a band called Fast Fourier Transformation? It must be the geekiest band ever, with their hits, Algorithm Time and Polynomial Evaluation.
Sigs are like bumper stickers.
peek not peak
All the records that have been bestsellers for years, the ones that keep on selling not just years, but decades after their initial release, have one thing in common which clearly separates them from mainstream popular music.
They're not hypercompressed. They've got room for the rhythm to breathe rather than squashing the sound so much it feels "flat" and hard on the ear.
Have a look for yourself:
Dynamics of Hit Records
Just follow "The manual" (how to have a number one hit - the easy way), written by the Timelords/the KLF. It gives you instructions on how to top Britpop charts in just six weeks and has a money-back guarantee!
As soon as we started programming, we found to our surprise that it wasn't
as easy to get programs right as we had thought. Debugging had to be
discovered. I can remember the exact instant when I realized that a large
part of my life from then on was going to be spent in finding mistakes in
my own programs.
-- Maurice Wilkes, designer of EDSAC, on programming, 1949
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