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AI Bots Pick The Hits of Tomorrow
Wolverine Inspector writes "The Music Industry uses a product called HSS (Hit Song Science) made by Spain's Polyphonic HMI. According to The Guardian "while no one's talking about it, it seems that the whole record industry is already using AI to choose hits. From unsigned acts dreaming in their garage, to multinationals such as Sony and Universal, everyone is clandestinely using a new and controversial technology to gain an edge on their competitors."
Even though it costs about $5,200 US/$6,500, many artists are starting to buy it to help them write succesfull songs."
That's just great.
Remember how video card manufacturers were tweaking their drivers to perform well in benchmarks? "Musicians", and I use that term loosely, will be tweaking their songs to score a "hit" on this service. Right, but it will be harder than ever to produce something out of the mainstream when a record exec will look only at the score on HSS and potential effect on the bottom line. Art for art's sake is virtually a thing of the past. Prepare for more of the same on the FM dial! (thank goodness for etunes.com)
Trolling is a art,
Remember the good old days when the listeners picked the hits?
Next up: bots that generate pop music.
It would appear that the music industry is not ailing as much as they would like us to believe.
Air Supply and Ashlee Simpson.
No mod points, no meta-moderating/Firehose/all the other free work Slashdot wants me to do.
So instead of people blaming the HUGE record industry that produces crap, they can blame a machine! Sounds like a scapegoat to me. Either that, or the record execs are SO STUPID when it comes to music, that they have to get a machine to help them out.
This is not AI. The music companies are using clustering technology.
The basic idea is that you measure certain characteristics of a song,
such as voice quality, cadence, etc. I'm sure the actual
characteristics used are much more complicated, but the idea is the
same. Once you have your characteristics you can build a three
dimensional vector out of a song. After you have your three
dimensional vector, you can then use many different algorithms, one
such is the Bi-secting K-means algorithm to group the songs together.
After you have built your cluster, you take a new song, run it through
the process and check to see how close it falls to a "hit" cluster.
We use this same process for document classification at my work, and I
don't think it bears any relation on AI. As I stated above, it's a
rather simple grouping technique.
There is a downside to this technology though. By measuring how close a
song is to previous hits, you are guaranteeing that all new songs will
be similar to old hits. This type of system tends to minimize or
eliminate fresh new types of music.
(why the word wrapping? Emacs auto-fill-mode)
Doug Tolton
"The destruction of a value which is, will not bring value to that which isn't." -John Galt
many artists are starting to buy it to help them write succesfull songs."
Comercially successful != good
---
"I can't complain, but sometimes still do..." Joe Walsh
Is it just me or did the article quote music industry folks as saying the software must work becuase 95% of the hits of the last decade scored highly. The software is a mathmatical model based on the hits of the last century.. so of course it scores them highly.
The program works by applying the formula. It takes three variables.
Boobs
The artist must have boobs. The larger they are, the higher this value.
Blandness
The blander it is, the higher this value.
Beat
The stronger the beat, the higher this value.
These are multiplied together.
B * B * B = X
If X is greater than or equal to the Olivia Newton-John quotient, a recognized standard throughout the popular music business, the song will be a hit and we release an album.
If X is lower, we don't do one.
Q: Are there a lot of these kinds of artists?
You wouldn't believe.
Q: Which record label to do you work for?
A major one.
Unknown host pong.
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.
In a related story, the IRS has recently ruled that the cost of Windows upgrades can NOT be deducted as a gambling loss.
This was discussed last November, which was a repeat of the same tech from February.
A quick search for "polyphonic" in the music category would've easily picked this up, they're the only 3 matches!
- The first step in the process for our technologies is to analyze a representative sample of music (up to date we have
- analized more than 1 Million tracks)
Analized? Analized? - what dedication these folks have. Brings tears to my eyes.The label's marketing department are promoting him to the Norah Jones audience. But Polyphonic's analysis has shown that the crooner's song patterns are more similar to Linkin Park, Aerosmith and JayZ.
future HSS developer: You know who I really hate? The record industry.
future HSS collaborator: Well, you should do something about that.
future HSS developer: You're right! Recording execs are really, really, stupid. I bet it'd be easy. I've got a plan.
future HSS collaborator: Sigh... fine, what's your plan?
future HSS developer: They pay us $6000, and we tell them if their song will be a hit or not, then give them some printouts with, you know, clusters of dots on them, random numbers, whatever. Then we say "Artificial intelligence! The magic boxes say this will be a hit because it resembles Tupac Shakur and Wagner!"
future HSS collaborator: You know, unlike your plan to hack people's PVRs to make them think they're gay.... this would actually work. Let's do it. Get me a dartboard.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
I just use a bot to listen to the music and tell me if I liked it or not. It mostly says "no", so I assume it's working fine.
Producing something for a desired effect like that is not art, it's a manufacturing process if you make it this automatic. Any monkey can produce such regurgitated music, so why should I pay them, I can buy the software myself and make such music. There is a way to make use of this kind of principle without automating and dehumanizing it, for example, Neil Sedaka wrote Oh, Carol by studying the number 1 hits in a number of countries around the world for weeks and then he drew on that to come to some conclusions which helped him shape his creative output.
This automated way described in the article takes away that creative role from the artist by providing the output as well. Why do you need such monkey artists? If you really want that kind of music just set up a system that automatically generates songs which would be free to download to the first 2,000 people who would be required to rank the song and then at the end of each week make the top ranked song available for sale to everyone else.
I can't help but think this (and similar issues) is in some small way a lost opportunity for academia, which likes to pretend that popular music (i.e. music that people like to listen to) is somehow less valuable than "serious art music." Here, we have thousands of people who could be leading intelligent discourse on music, many of whom like popular music but won't dare say it because of an unwritten stigma that popular music is "low brow". Because of this, a potentially vocal, educated population that could be smacking RIAA execs upside the head now and again, or at least crying foul, instead relegates itself to the "classical" niche, often the "new music" sub-niche. Said people actually do speak out from time to time, but are so isolated by genre that they seem rarely to be noticed.
As one of said people, please excuse me while I return to my clarinet practice and writing my string quartet.
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
This sounds a bit familiar... I think the RIAA stole this idea from Southpark. Cartman dressed up like a robot (AWESOM-O) to get secrets from Butters... but he ended up in Hollywood creating blockbuster movie ideas. Here is how it went down:
...golden retriever, or something. ...boxer, or something. ...Yes, it's flawless!
Mitch: Punch-Drunk Billionaire!
Producer: Gentlemen, this little boy was kind enough to let us show you his robot. The AWESOM-O 4000. [approaches the robot, who's seated at one end of the table] I've already seen what he can do.
Staffer 1: Uh, excuse me sir, but uh, that's not a robot.
Producer: It's not?
Staffer 1: No, it clearly had bipedal movement, so the correct term is "computerized automatron."
Mitch: Oh, very nice, Mitch.
Staffer 2: You are the smart one.
Producer: Well, regardless, I believe maybe this automatron can help us come up with new movie ideas.
Staffer 2: How can a robot come up with better ideas for movies than us?
Producer: Watch this: AWESOM-O, given the current trends of the movie-going public can you come up with an idea for a movie that will break a hundred million box office?
Cartman: Um... okay. How about this: [the staffers take pen to paper and anticipate the ideas] Adam Sandler is like, in love with some girl, but then it turns out that the girl is actually a
Staffer 2: [thinking over this idea, then write it down] Oh, perfect!
Staffer 3: We'll call it "Puppy Love"!
Staffer 2: Give us another movie idea, AWESOM-O!
Mitch: Yeah yeah!
Staffer 3: Let's hear it!
Mitch: Yeah, we wanna hear it!
Staffer 3: Come on, come on!
Cartman: Okay, how about this: Adam Sandler... inherits like, a billion dollars, but first, he has to, like, become a
Staffer 3: [the producers start writing again]
90% of being smart is knowing what you're dumb at.
Living near New York City, I consider myself lucky to have access to the New York Times Classical Music station. I am so sick of the garbage that has been produced in the last 10 years (Except Eminem, for some retarded reason I like his crap) that I barely ever change my radio tuner off 96.3
As for what I listen to at home and work... Ironically it's all old school stuff from Black Sabbath and Beasty Boys earlier music, plus.. more classical
I wonder if I'm the only guy who's so totally jaded to new music that I touch nothing new, period.
"It's not stealing if you don't get caught!"
I seem to remember a Piers Anthony series called the "Apprentice Adept" in which there was a game where you could play music. It was judged by a computer, so while your music may have sounded like utter crap to humans, it would be given a high score because it was "technically" right. This reminds me of that.
Does this remind anyone of the Monty Python skit where they use mathematicians to create the world's funniest joke, and use it to get Nazis to die laughing?
The music industry might turn itself around; they go ahead and do something this stupid. Music is art. It is not objective. It is not rational. It is not definable. It is not quantifiable.
This system will destroy popular music. It will define the elements of a "hit" song, then it will only determine that songs with those elements could possibly be hits. That ignores the history of music where what's a hit changes from year to year.
I listened to punk rock for decades. In the 80s songs by the bands All and 7 Seconds would never have been recognized by any system as being hits. But fast-forward a decade and suddenly artists like Blink 182 and Greenday ARE having hits using the same formula.
Basically, this system will stagnate the music industry as it will lock it into a very narrow form of music and it will not be allowed to grow. People will get even more bored which will lead to decreases sales.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
In many areas of the US, we're seeing a rise in the demand for organic, non-trans-fatty, less-processed foods (e.g., Whole Foods). Actually, it's more acurate to say we're seeing a rise in the supply. The rise in demand necessarily preceded this rise in supply.
Similarly, if too many musicians over-process their music, we will see an increased demand for more "organic" music that will evenutally lead to an increased supply. The end result might even be better music.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Does this remind anyone of the Monty Python skit where they use mathematicians to create the world's funniest joke, and use it to get Nazis to die laughing?
Actually, there was a joke writer who came upon it by himself and died. There were some scientists later in the sketch, but that was later when they were in isolation to translate the joke.
Sales aren't down. Sales are up, even though the total number of artists releasing albums is down. The RIAA pretends like they would have made billions more dollars if not for file-sharing, etc. However, they're making more money than they ever have before. Seems pretty fucking greedy to complain about 'lost sales' when you're selling more crap than ever before. Also, people DO buy full albums. If no one liked pop music, it wouldn't be popular music. Just because you aren't getting what you want from record companies does not mean that no one else is. Damn, that's a pretty egotistical point of view, isn't it? That if you don't like something, no one else can either? Holy arrogance, Batman.
http://xkcd.com/386/
Does this remind anyone of the Monty Python skit where they use mathematicians to create the world's funniest joke,
o ke.html
"This man is Ernest Scribbler... writer of jokes. In a few moments, he will have written the funniest joke in the world... and, as a consequence, he will die... laughing."
http://www.jumpstation.ca/recroom/comedy/python/j
... are intricately related. Many AI techniques are forms of statistical inference or statistical classification techniques. Some neural nets implement grouping techniques not that different from k-means.
Any box which learns from a set of data in order to predict future data by implicitly extracting trends and patterns from that data is an implementation of some form of statistical inference algorithm and is subject to all of the general results statistics has to offer about such algorithms. Conversely, statistical inference algorithms are often implemented in ways associated with AI, for example as neural nets.
Given this situation, it's hard to define the boundaries that separate artificial intelligence, pattern recognition, statistical inference and classification and the rest. Of course, there is a legitimate question as to whether such techniques actually mimic genuine intelligence even in principle, and there are other approaches.
From the point of view of terminology, there is a huge range of techniques that can be called AI, and statistical inference is one of them. If you call a VLSI neural network implementing a statistical inference algorithm "AI", then why not call a normal computer implementing a statistical inference algorithm "AI"? Besides, AI sounds a hell of a lot sexier than statistics when you're trying to extract maximum dough from the ample coffers of the recording industry.
"The Milliard Gargantubrain? A mere abacus - mention it not."
The article says: ". . . [an] A&R director at EMI believes that HSS as a hit predictor merely reinforces decisions taken by A&Rs, those record company employees given the job of discovering new songs and artists. "A good A&R has a very accurate instinct for what the market needs," he says - and the fact that 95% of hit songs in the past 50 years are high scorers seems to back him up."
Um, HSS is using past hit songs to define high scores, so the fact that past hits have high scores is not some sort of vindication of the job these mysterious A&R guys have been doing. The real question is why that figure isn't 100% - I'm guessing this is probably because the clusters are fairly wide, so some songs manage to be far enough from the algorithm's definition of the cluster to be classed as non-hits, despite being part of the training set?
If??? IF??? My god, have you heard pop music nowadays? I can't tell them apart because they've become so formulaic. A lot of modern groups sound like they must be a dime a dozen; or at least carefully compiled to match some already known formula.
As to wether an increase in demand for innovators happens, it's happening on a small scale. It's just only a small percentage of people who go looking outside the mainstream.
I personally don't listen to music most people have even heard off -- I just don't expect that I make a dent in the total sales.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The differences were consistent. It was obvious that mainstream versions had african musical characteristics (rhythm based) whereas the popular versions were more european influenced (melody and harmony).
If you listen to what is mainstream music today, the same patterns emerge. Virtually all pop songs follow the same template. The chorus and verses are always in the same places, the breaks are always at the 3/4 mark etc...
The beats are also important. Pop music relies heavily on the 4/4 beat, with the accent on the downbeat. African influenced musics have a lot of syncopation (accent on the off beat). Syncopation is what makes something "funky".
Lastly, there is a great book called "How to Have a Number One The Easy Way" by the KLF. Its online here: http://www.tomrobinson.com/work/klf.htm
Just follow this to the T and they guarantee you a hit. Its really just a matter of following certain rules and watering down to the least common denominator.
But why do we really like the music that we like?
Becuase we're told to. The fiasco that is Ashlee Simpson verifies this: she came from nowhere, is obviously bad to even the most undiscerning listener, but all of a sudden she's everywhere because she got signed up for the "Star Treatment Package", $19.95.
They push crap like this down our throats because they think they have a "product" and don't care enough to think about it too hard; then they blame poor sales on pirates. Thank God for internet radio. Those bastards are going to sell out to irrelevance if they aren't very careful.
--
$tar -xvf
Does this remind anyone of the Monty Python skit where they use mathematicians to create the world's funniest joke, and use it to get Nazis to die laughing?
Actually, it reminds me of some of Bradbury's more gloomy predictions of the sanitization of the culture that was happening then and is continuing to occur.
How long until books are written the same way, or at least evaluated by the same kind of tool? I suppose the news media will have it happen to them first: "Sorry, Dan, that story about political hanky-panky rated a 4.5 on our offensive-o-meter, way above the threshold of 3. Put some kittens in it and maybe we can get it to a 2.5."
--
$tar -xvf
Like LAUNCHCast before the RIAA leaned on them, and then Yahoo! acquired it and ripped out everything that made it innovative and cool?
You'd rate songs on a scale from 'never play this again' to 10, and the system would select new songs based on what you'd already rated and insert them into your personal "station" rotation.
But the real killer feature was that you could search for other users whose tastes were statistically similar to your own, subscribe to their stations, and learn about new and different music and artists as some of their favorites were added to your rotation. Want to buy a song? Click on it.
Absolutely cool collaborative software. Unfortunately, if you wanted to expend the effort, you could abuse the system to constuct a station that could (gasp!) play a specific song at a specific time for free, and the RIAA wouldn't allow that.
So the only thing that had gotten me to purchase any new music in years was eviscerated, stuffed full of ads, and then sold to Yahoo! as a 'service' with all the collaboration gone. You could pay money to lose the ads. Whee.
Bitter? Me?
They can cluster Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears all they want. Just please, pretty please, don't kill any newborn Pink Floyds or Deep Purples with some junky software. This would make me fold little paper boats from my IT degree, that's for sure.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Sorry, but I subscribe to the "music's in your blood" theory of being a musician. You've gotta have the passion and the drive to get it out, as well as the desire to explore your creativity. At least that's the way I think.
When people pay several thousand dollars to have a computer tell them what kinda of music they should be making, they're no longer musicians in my book. At this point, they become money grubbing attention whores, incapable of original thought or expresion.
While the real musicians are out honing their craft, and improving themselves, these "plastic musicians" are out trying to find a shortcut to easy street via techniques as this.
The only bright spot for real musicians these days is the fact that as the Net and other technologies become more prevelant, there's many more options for the average listener (the one's who think that if it's not on the radio, then it's not real music). In fact I think that the growing success of podcasting, and shoutcasting is a direct result of people finally getting fed up with the crap that radio forces upon us! Once people realize that they too can easily "dial in" something other than the next Jessica Simpson lipsync'd hit, then this industry will slowly die away.
As proof of this, scan Shoutcast sometime, or hook up with some podcast feeds. You'll soon notice that there's hardly any cookie-cutter pop music being played on them.
If I were a musician, I'd tweak just one song to become a radio hit... and count on people buying my record so they can hear the music I really wanted to make.
"The advanced societies of the future will be driven by competing systems of psychopathology." -JG Ballard
Maybe the RIAA has decided that, since we've all downloaded the *good* music, they're just going to create crappy pop syrup that no person with two ears will want on his hard drive. If they put enough Ashlee Simpson records out, eventually the downloaders will give up looking new music, and the industry can go back to overcharging for silver platters with decent music.
Secret Industry Memo
From: RIAA
To: All artists
Don't forget- Every time a crappy song is played on the radio, a downloader goes to hell. So record CRAP!
Just out of curiosity, I'd like to see how some of my favourite songs score on such a system. I have a hard time believing that 'Echoes', 'Shine on..', or other great music fits their calcuations very well.
TZ
Otherwise, you could put a genetic algorithm and a synthesizer on the job. Use the HSS application as an evaluation function, and let it crank until it had composed an optimal song. Or just run every free MP3 on the web through. (Now that would be a good idea. Somewhere, there may be a garage band that doesn't suck.)
There's a similar program to predict Wine Advisor scores. If that were easily available, people would be synthesizing the optimal wine.
The boomers are all aware of this situation where the music from 40 years ago is being constantly pumped into public spaces and how much it annoys people (like younger people of so-called 'Gen X') who don't share a cultural identification with these recordings. Mostly though, they don't care if only because they happen to like this music.
The blame is not on the 'boomers' themselves but instead on the music industry. These 40-year-old recordings are the cheapest and most cost-effective way to fill public space with background music. Every time one of these recordings gets played in public, someone, somewhere gets paid off. Every time.
The only way to make these recordings disappear from public space is to change the financial framework of the music 'publishing' industry, which determines who gets the money whenever these recordings are played in public space. But that's simply not going to happen without forcing the disintegration of the music industry. One more argument to 'pirate' music recordings and swap music files without money transfers.
'Blaming the boomers' is too easy because even if all the boomers were to disappear tomorrow nothing that they are assumed to control would actually change. Boomers are just filling slots in a 'system of power' that itself needs to be changed for your life to get better.
All your points are well-taken and insightful:
Nevertheless,
Many people think that bars are horrible places to be in. If you don't like alcohol that much, hate loud, constant, unequalized sound and dark, smelly places, and don't have a lot of money...bars totally suck. People need to develop tiny amplifiers that are the size of paperback books with great sound along with inexpensive but expressive musical instruments and play in coffeeshops and fast-food places late in the evening when they are not busy.
- Instruments can be bought cheaply now on eBay and Craigslist. Music can be learned from the internet and music educational software.
- Basically the global music corporations Do have the legal resources to prove that they 'own' every melody ever written and every story ever told. That's why it's becoming increasing important to develop culture outside of the corporate framework and to continue to build (through file-sharing and 100 gigabyte hard disk swapping) vast individual private libraries of 'pirated' material in order to keep the public domain (which is everything that has been broadcast on a public media like radio and TV) available for ourselves and for future generations.
A short story by Arthur C. Clarke describes one possible consequence of this sort of thing. The scientist involved builds a computer to study the underlying theory of music, harmonic relations, wave analysis, frequency distribution, etc. and how it interacts with the brain on a physiological level. His search is related to the notion that all existing tunes are crude approximations of the fundamental melody that has eluded composers for centuries (basically a rehash of Plato's theory of ideals applied to music.) The scientist is later found in a permanent catatonic state in his lab (by his tone-deaf assistant) with the Ultimate Melody repeating over and over in an endless loop. Because the overwhelming power of the Ultimate Melody (the ideal form on which all melodies in the universe are patterned after), his mind is completely dominated by it--much the same as when a catchy tune gets stuck in your head for days, only much more powerful. The melody formed a fugue in the pathways of his brain, going round and round forever, obliterating all other thoughts.
You seem to have developed your own little universe where an "artist" is somehow above the common musician because of some hair-splitting difference in "intent". In order to help you deflate this pretensious tomfoolery, I'm now going to reveal a great secret imparted to me by my 10th grade English instructor.
All great literature was composed for one purpose:
To make money.
So drop the coffee house tone, already. Most of the musicians that "produce a piece of work intended to convey emotion and inspire" in a garage somewhere suck just as much as most of the ones hand-picked by record executives for the size of their breasts. Actually, more, because the hand-picked ones can usually comprehend at least common time.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
With some AI in there, the music industry can finally claim to have some intelligence.
Everyone seems to be saying (as was my first reaction when I read the story) that this will lead to everything sounding the same, being bland, etc - as if that wasn't already the case. However, I believe there is cause for optimism - because when something good comes along that really doesn't fit the "hit box" it will stand out so much above the background mush of the rest that it will be worth taking notice of. When I was growing up mainstream music seemed to be a lot more diverse, and you had to pay close attention to really keep up with what was going on. It was hard work (but usually rewarding) to sort the good from the bad. Now all you need to do is keep the radio on but turned down low so you don't actually have to listen to it, but loud enough so that when something interesting does get played, your brain suddenly wakes up and notices it. Thus it becomes much easier than it used to be to pick out interesting stuff. Thanks, lazy pigopolist music industry-type guys!
:) entering at number one was virtually unheard of - Slade's Merry Christmas Everybody did it in 1973, the next one to do so was about 5 years later! And back then you needed to sell hundreds of thousands if not millions of records to make No. 1. So basically the music industry has ruined what used to be a useful indicator of popular taste (within limits) into something that isn't even a useful indicator of how successful their marketing is, except in pure binary terms (number 1 = did OK-ish, not number 1 = flop). Basically the chart has been quantised down into fewer and fewer bits. I say it's time it was officially abandoned altogether, though those of us with any musical sensibility personally abandoned it some time in the early 1980s.
If you think I'm joking, consider this. The UK has just now "celebrated" the 1000th number one record in the charts. The track in question is Elvis Presley's tune One Night from about 2000 B.C. Last week's number one (the 999th) was Elvis Presley's Jailhouse Rock. Hrrrmm... could there be a marketing campaign around promoting Elvis records? Perhaps to help flll up the special "limited edition" (only 500,000 issues!) box sets of Elvis's Greatest Hits that were flogged off the other week, a bargain of an empty carboard box for only 10.99GBP. Marketing genius really, get the punters to stump up for an empty box, then get them to fork out 3 quid a week for fifty weeks to fill it! (Elvis fans - just say no!)
Every number one nowadays comes IN at number one, because of hyping and marketing techniques. But the 1000th number 1 needed only 29,000 sales to make it there. Of the last 530-odd number ones, all but 2 entered at number one. This makes the chart meaningless. Back in my day