Software Predicts Music Success

Frankenbuffer writes "The Globe and Mail today reports that MIT researchers have developed a computer program to analyze pop music and predict how people will react to it. The method, developed at MIT's Media Laboratory, analyzes the pitch, rhythm, and other characteristics of music. What makes the technology unusual is that it also takes into account social responses to hit music gathered from weblogs, chat rooms, music reviews, and other online discussions, and correlates this data to the music to guage the popularity of a particular sound. According to the researchers, the software has accurately predicted Billboard hits for the past several months."

Comments

great...

[esoteric0]

the record labels are going to get ahold of this and turn it around to actually produce the music. then it will all sound the same.

wait....

Indie Artists

[punkdigerati]

Can Independant artists who want to see how well their songs are going to do be able to use this software for themselves?

What does this mean...

[SeanMon]

for up-and-coming artists? Music companies will be able to use this to pay artists less because the computer doesn't like their music.

MAL (Music AnaLyzer): "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I don't like that."

I wrote one too

[ShakaUVM]

I wrote a predictor too. It's a neural net, actually.

int music_predictor(int artist_type,float rhythm, int genre, int tempo, int male_or_female, int quality, int singing_quality, int band_quality, int number_of_band_members) {
        if (artist_type == BIG_NAME_POP_ARTIST_WITH_STUDIO_BACKING)
                return true;
        else
                return false;
}

Ok, so it's a one-axon neural net. But it gets 99%+ accuracy.

The most stunning revelation

[Rolo Tomasi]

The secret to success is apparently: more cowbell.