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Statistically Optimal Music

Posted by michael on from the pop-rock dept.

ShinyPlasticBag writes "'Eigenradio makes its optimal music by analyzing in real time dozens of radio stations at once. When our bank of computers has heard enough music, it will go to work on making more just like it. Since we listen to so much music all the time, Eigenradio is always on and always live. What you hear on Eigenradio is the best of the New Music, distilled and de-correlated. One song on Eigenradio is worth at least twenty songs on old radio.' Listen up here or here (SHOUTcast)."

2 of 296 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Interesting name... by adrianbaugh · · Score: 5, Informative

    Eigen is a fairly well-established prefix in quantum mechanics (eigenvalues, eigenvectors, eigenstates etc.) An eigenstate is one of an infinite set of orthogonal solutions to a set of equations, an eigenvalue is a unique value (often energy) corresponding to a particular eigenstate. Thus I suspect in this case the term is supposed to mean something like "unique radio", which seems at least reasonably appropriate, if rather skewed. I suspect you're wrong about it being a comment on the state of the music industry, at least primarily. It seems like they're just using radio stations as a source of material 'cos it happens to be readily available. 'Course, the fact that it can't be much /worse/ than commercial radio is pretty ironic ;-)

    --
    "'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
    - JRR Tolkien.
  2. Re:Interesting name... by phliar · · Score: 5, Informative
    "Eigen" in german means "essence of", "characteristic", "similar" etc. The term comes from linear algebra, not quantum mechanics. If x is a vector and A is an operator, and A x (A applied to x) has the same direction as x, then x is an eigenvector of A. For example, if the operation is "reflect in the xy plane", then any vector parallel to the z-axis is an eigenvector of the operator. The scalar that x gets scaled by is called its eigenvalue. For the reflection operator, -1 is the eigenvalue for any eigenvector. QM extended this concept to other objects like states.

    So the term eigenmusic could be used to describe the underlying defining characteristic of a music. You could say that all Britney Spears' music has the same eigenmusic.

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    Unlimited growth == Cancer.