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How Songs Get Popular
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers created an artificial music market of 14,341 participants split into two groups to pick music from unknown musicians. In one group, the individuals had only song titles and band names to go on. The individuals in the other group saw how others had rated the songs. Turns out popularity bred popularity, which explains why there's so much crap on the radio."
I think we all understand this. For instance here on slashdot this is the way the moderation works--things either don't get mod points or get the extreme value (not that I am hinting, dear bearer of mod-points, the you in particular lack independent judgement) . Pretty soon somebody will come along and mod this post down -1 as a troll. Seeing this, the next person with mod points will quickly mod it down as well--a kind of kick in the ./ groin if you will. If, on the other hand, the first person with points happens to have a wit worthy of Falstaff he will see the genuine insightful nature of this post and graces it with a +1. The result will be an avalanche of +1 placing this post among the few of well-meaning ineptitude that rises to empyreal absurdity. I'll leave it to the reader to determine which case illustrates the "Britney effect" mentioned in TFA.
"It's the law of physics that states that if one girl screams for something, it will make other girls scream ... until all girls within a five-mile radius are screaming. Once you get girls screamin', you can't stop 'em! They're crazy!" --Chef, South Park
"... like a crowd."
Air Supply?
I wonder how much the degree to which today's world is "connected" compared to the days and emergence of the Beatles and Stones (much less Beethoven, et. al.) contributes to the "lesser quality" of today's popular music? I have to think this is a significant factor, and an unfortunate one.
So, today stars are foisted, created, presented to the consuming public by fiat, not a great surprise. It's too bad though. I even wonder a group as good as the Beatles, or a composer as great as Beethoven (Ludwig, my opinion) would have much of a chance for recognition for their real talent -- probably not so much. Too bad.
For those of this generation, food for thought. (and, sorry for all of the sentence fragments.)
(Also, readers should visit the links at the bottom of the referenced article, there are some pretty interesting additional articles about human nature and music (and I have NO interest in that magazine).)
I now sure there's a patent on a business process of promoting junk as solid gold.
or does the tailor who sold the king his clothes have prior art?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I blame the recording industry and its marketing. Popularity might breed popularity, but unfortunately marketing bypasses "real popularity". Unfortunately there are still artists making music which isn't spoiled by even if the system tries its best.
Until relatively recently, the barriers to entry of the music business were sky high because of distribution costs. Now that distribution costs are going into a tailspin (iTunes & Bitorrent...Gracias!), the studios are scared out of their wits. Not because they're so worried about piracy, but because they can be cut out of the game entirely.
So I'm quite content to have actual listeners help shepherd in popular bands rather than have mediocre cookie cutter crap foisted on me by megacorps.
When I want a new book and don't know which one, I go to Amazon and read reviews from others who have bought. It works for the most part. Oh well.
Most people don't listen to music in a bubble, they talk to other people about the music and ideas get implanted in their heads. Also the way people talk about music makes a difference. If you say to me, that you LOVE this song and I HAVE to hear it, and download it and listen to it all the time, I'm going to look at you funny. But if you tell me in a laid-back, smooth and cool manner that this song is cool, I'll be more inclined to listen to you and less likely to write you off. It also works backwards. "I'm used to really like that song too, now I'm getting kinda sick of it..." Now you start to feel the same way, even just a little bit.
There are some really interesting studies on how people react in certain situations, responding to peer pressure and all that. Good stuff.
Hence the Top 40 stations and lists
Has anyone actually listened to today's music? It sucks!
- Just my $0.02, take with a grain of salt, your mileage may vary.
We'll, like, oh my god, you didn't know that?
Now that I've posted, everyone is going to get in on this thread.
If they follow group think they get modded up. If the go against the grain they get modded down.
Sorry to disagree with you, but I've seen many pro-Microsoft (particular cases of course, or maybe just points of view) or anti-Linux rants get a +5 Insightful.
Of course, true statements often get moderated as insightful. Is it our fault that most statements against microsoft happen to be true?
Disclaimer - I'm not a mod.
Although it's not spelled out, this study tested whether those songs highly rated by group A, would become more popular in group B, WHETHER OR NOT the ratings were actually true; in other words, the truthfullness of the ratings was the variable.
The acticle doesn't really dwell on this, but if that's not what they were doing, then what's so surprising about the fact that both group A and group B found the same songs to be "good". (d-uh, they're actually better songs!)
"Is this just useless, or is it expensive as well?"
If all you had to go on when selecting music out of a massive list was the artist, title and ratings from other people - wouldn't you start by looking at what other people had rated most highly? I think almost everyone would.
It took all the work to realize that. Just take some Music Theory Classes and it would make since. The key to Music and popularity is the familiar. It is brings up elements that are familiar then you tend to like it more then ones that bring up elements that are less familiar. So we grow up listening to music we tend to link it as familiar, to our ears so whenever we listen to other music we judge it based on what we know. So if you grow up listening to Pop, Pop is what sounds good and listening to classical will just feel wrong to you. Or even if you have a more broad range of music you enjoy there will be stuff from other cultures that will sound sour to you ears because they use a different key for music. So if you like listening to Brittany spears you will tend to like other Brittany spears songs because you connect to the music and her voice and other voices may not match. Because Brittany Spears is popular you will tend to listen to her more thus like it more, then say some lesser known band.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
What about a group who picks music based on what is sounds like?
Without that option, did anyone really expect people to pick music based on the names of the songs and artists?
If people use either of these methods, it's lame.
But, obviously, picking based on popularity makes about a billion times more sense that picking a song based on it's title. DUH!
What a retarded measure of nothing.
In other news, water is still wet.
... is smart. People are stupid, panicky, dangerous animals, and you know it.
I think the person that patented the method by which disease and pestilence are spread, beat them to it.
I don't see what's surprising about this. Every smart customer checks what other customers have had to say about a product before purchasing it, whether it's in-depth written reviews or a simple rating. A product most other users liked is more likely to be investigated further and purchased, and a product most other users didn't is likely to be avoided.
Yet another condescending comment on /. on how geeks are so much superior to mere mortals - this time because their taste in music is so much better.
"The White House is not an intelligence-gathering agency," -- Scott McClellan, Whitehouse spokesman.
I tend to go by user reviews quite a bit, especially if it's in something I'm not familiar with. If I want to listen a genre of music I'm unfamiliar with, I'll look around and see what other people think. If a lot of people listen to it and rate it high, then it has a good chance of being pretty good and I'll buy into it. I mean, I dunno how many times I've chosen a product over another on amazon.com solely because one had better user reviews/ratings. I don't see how this pertains to crap being played on the radio though. That's whoever has the more money to market their musician the better chance they have of getting played. The more it's played, the more people hear it. The more people hear something, the more likely they are to buy it. I find smaller stations, especially ones that are on a college campus are way better for finding better quality music. Because they select their tracks based on their own good tastes and not who is bringing more money into their station.
The trick is to open with "I'll probably be modded down for this" "Here goes my karma"
"Participants could then browse through a collection of unknown songs by unknown bands... In the social influence group, participants were provided with the same song list, but could also see how many times each song had been downloaded... They also found that as a particular songs' popularity increased, participants selected it more often."
Is this really that surprising? Given a big list of unknown songs, you listen to the ones that other people thought were good. Kind of like reader reviews on Amazon. I would do the same thing.
I can stop watching American Idol?
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
Others will mod me up, too.
hear the same songs over & over & over & over & over ?
Do people really not remember a song ( or never get sick of a song ) after they've heard it five thousand million billion times ?
The results aren't very surprising considering their "virtual music market" consisted of teenagers.
IMAGE VERIFICATION IS EVIL!
This phenomenon is not surprising. Sure, Popularity begets popularity.
I see several comments pointing to how this shows that popular music is doomed.
Disillusionment about a musical era past aside, in general, why is this bad? Something (whether it's a song, vacuum cleaner, or graphics card) can't become immensely popular if it doesn't have some merit that has widespread appeal. That appeal is never based solely on marketing. In the case of a song, marketing helps, but it must be catchy to some people or it would never sell. Regardless of your own view of a popular song, enough people find it appealing to make it popular.
So, can you blame people for trusting popularity as being one of the factors that affects what they pay attention to? They can always trust that there is some appeal of that item (be it product or song or whatever) if it's popular.
There was some study years ago that found that "hit" records and popular artists were the result of a mostly arbitrary process. In other words, there are probably as many good artists, if not many more, than the popular ones that dominate the airwaves and music sales.
There are other factors that account for popularity, of course, such as the concentration of the music industry, payola, real talent, sex appeal, and so on.
What mystifies me is the popularity of classic rock stations on the radio. Why is the crap of the 1970 and 1980s considered "classic" today? Just because those bands and those songs were popular 25 years ago? Journey? REO Speedwagon? Come on. Much of that "classic" rock was crap. It was popular crap. And why are certain popular songs "classic" when there may have been better songs on those albums?
Go to most any store, supermarkets especially. Now stand and stare at an item on the shelf. Even if the isle was empty before within a minute or so at the most some one will be looking at the same shelf. I've quite often had people muscle me out of the way or at least stand in front of me. They will tend to stand there as long as you do and quite often won't pick something from the shelf. It's pretty common to draw a crowd. Marketing companies have known about this effect for years and used it to market products by hiring people to stand and look at displays. Humans are very territorial and are by nature very concerned that they will miss out on something or some one else will get the bargin and not them. If you anounced on the radio that sales were exploding for an album by an unknown group and that the stores would be sold out before the end of the day people would line up so they wouldn't miss out knowing no more about the group than everyone else wanted the album. Advertising works for a reason. You create a craze by convincing people they are missing out. Remember Beanie Babies? People were desperate to get them yet they were nothing more than a small stuffed animal and effectively worthless.
This has become such a science, there is just too much at stake for people who routinely invest 6 and 7-figure sums of money into a new album. (And I am not necessarily speaking about record labels here, it could just as well be about the associated release tour, which by now generates far more income than the actual CD sales). Focus groups, endless studies of people's buying patterns, major pressure from the 'top' (i.e.: management) to conform to a predictable sound, etc...
/. and do a research on what posts get rated and modded the highest, and how this does influence the writers to conform to a certain style that they know will get them modded? ... and does this make their style more boring and predictable?
Here's a funny one, on a recent flight I was sitting next to the manager for some very well-known heavy metal and rock acts, who flatly declared that if U2 was a new band today, they wouldn't have a chance in hell of getting signed the way they did in 1983 when their breakthrough album propelled them into stardom. The people he deals with both at the label and promotion level would never take a chance on something that original.... Which of course means that after years of this kind of behavior, the general public's ears do not have a desire for anything new or unusual.
I could very well see a broke Jimi Hendrix today, still playing $100 fill-in gigs at Cafe Wah in the Village (still around too) and no one giving a rat's ass about his life-changing guitar playing because it would be too strong and outside of the norm....
Here's another example, last year a major game developer allegedly saw an increase of sales of their flagship PS2 game to the tune of 5,000 more units per week when they tweaked the music on their current TV campaign and featured background music that was more familiar to their target audience.....
This if doesn't seem like a game of chance and talent anymore, that's because because it isn't. Like P-Diddy said, it's all about Da Benjamins.
Still, it comes down to this: if you are going to do it, do it because you like it, not because of the expected returns.
If you actually have talent, you might go a lot further on that than the empty promises and broken stardom dreams most end up shelving when they get their girlfriend pregnant.
On another (closer) note, maybe someone should transpose this study to
How Darwinian!! Z.
Death by Snoo Snoo!!
That is true, but, how many of those moderations are metamoterated as 'fair' as opposed to 'unfair'?
Oh you mean statements like 'Microsoft is a monopoly because they were convicted as such' as well as 'Windows is so unsecure and unstable'?
The first one, the have never really been a monopoly, as they have always had competition in the form of OS/2, Linux, and MacOS. Comparing OS/2 to Windows 95 or even Windows 3.11, it was much simpler to connect to the internet as OS/2 could not handle dynamic IP addresses, only static. Linux is only now maturing into a real product, and even then it's still in its early stages
Microsoft also has competition in the form of Openoffice.org. They also had competition that wasn't nearly as good because wordperfect and lotus both wanted to stick with 'tried and true' dos. Netscape ended up going nowhere whereas Microsoft was continually improving their browser. The reason Microsft came up on top is they knew how to compete viciously in the market. That is what Capitalism is. Then when they thought they had little competition to worry about, the Mozilla project was building up underneath their radar, now they have competition in the form of Firefox, Thunderbird, Openoffice.org, and Various Linux distributions.
As for the second statement, I haven't updated in a while and I have not had to reboot in a while and I have not had any security attacks on my system at all. The deal with security is mainly with attachments. I do not open unknown attachments and yes, I use Internet Explorer and Outlook Express.
IMHO, I think there is moderations and metamoderations that are based on what a person believes rather than whether or not someone makes a good point. Maybe cmdrtaco could implement a metamoderation system where 8 users can metamoderate one moderation, and base whether it fair or unfair on the majority of metamods so that it can be a little more fair.
On music, I have heard several song on the radio that I don't care for, but my taste is different than someone elses. I believe that there are some song that are popular just because it's popular, others are popular because it's good.
Part of the problem with media conglomerates is that you can buy a LOT of media outlets in a single transaction. Clear Channel, I believe, owns numerous radio stations in every State in the US. Cross-media ownership (eg: radio, TV and newspapers) rules have been relaxed, so the problem will likely get much worse before it gets better.
The easy answer would be to limit media ownership. One outlet in a city and/or two outlets in a State (for the US) or County (for England) should be ample and would make it much harder for labels to purchase airtime. Or, at least, more expensive and more tedious. It would neither inhibit freedom of speech nor commercial viability if "playlists" were banned, as well. "Top 40" charts and emphasis on those songs is fine, but essentially banishing all others (or banning artists for political reasons, as has happened) has little to do with any definition of freedom I'm aware of.
On the other hand, it might be easier to just clone the late John Peel and require all music stations to give him an hour's airtime per day. That would definitely work wonders for bringing the real talent out there to the listeners.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I don't mean those posts where people are taking lesser of two evils (say, MS vs Patents or MS vs Hollywood, etc.), I mean GENUINELY pro-Microsoft rant that is rated +5 Insightful.
I just can't for the life of me, can remember a single one...
I hate 'em
Canada has Canadian content rules for music played on the radio. It has been in place since the 1970s and has worked very well. People hear Canadian music being played on the radio and buy the CDs. Canada thus has a very strong music industry. One of the founding assumptions of Canadian content was: "Most of the music on the radio is crap. We can make crap that is just as good as American crap." So, I have to agree. Most people have a poorly developed musical taste and respond largely to what the other sheeple are listening to. Bah. er baa
The Big music companies and Radio stations have been doing this for years.
You really believe that Top 40, is the listeners Top 40? In some cases they might be close, but I listen to 20on20 (XM) frequently, and all of a sudden a new and unpopular song shows up as #20, and that's all it takes.
Thinking of Good Omens?
I did like the bit about " MEALS was CHOW with added sugar and fat."
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Following the crowd probably evolved as a pretty good way of shortening the decision making process. If someone else ate a berry or mushroom and didn't get sick or die, then there was a pretty good chance that I could eat it too and would be ok. This saves a lot of time and energy instead of having to sort through everything by yourself.
FREE - Java, J2EE and Ajax Audiobooks for Software Developers - www.DeveloperAdvantage.com
So... has popularity not always bred popularity?
Or are we to conclude that the radio has always been crap?
I think this theory is missing something, somehow
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
did they take into account the dyed black hair, dickies wearing non-conformists that only listen to the most obscure music they can find by searching though the blogs of 14 year old girls on myspce!? //POPCORN!
NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.
Connie Willis's novel Bellwether, which is about the science of fads, deals with this phenomenon in depth.
The title comes from a middle english word used describing a practice in sheep farming. Sheep tend to follow each other. But farmers would sometimes use a castrated ram with a bell around his neck to lead the rest of the flock. The ram would tend to move first, but in a very subtle, nearly undetectable way.
At the center of any cloud of popularity must be a seed of initial impulse - the bellwether.
This is how Bruce Springsteen's fame came about. He was pushed heavily and given false ratings by his record company (NBC iirc)...he was made popular because he essentially won a bet.
:P
The Boss, my ass.
Sorry if you like his music, but it's the truth
What else can happen when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
If you've got limited time to pick music from a large pool that likely contains a lot of crap, you're going to get more decent songs by making use of previous people's attempts to do the same. It's a pyramid scheme where you benefit from all the people who came before you.
In my case, I found that since I switched to listening to "free" music (offered by unsigned artists to download for free), that after listening to what sounded "okay" started sounding great...even though my friends consider it to be garbage ("How can you listen to that off-key, under-produced cr.p?").
After two years of listening to pretty much the same 40-50 songs, they sound pretty good to me - much more "real" than "commercial" music...I feel more like the artists are present rather than in a recording studio.
I'm a software visionary. I don't code.
...and mod this down ULTRATROLL
I mean GENUINELY pro-Microsoft rant that is rated +5 Insightful.
/. about that.
I just can't for the life of me, can remember a single one...
here is one. I agree, it took me a while to find it. Generally the pro-Windows comments modded insightful are about user-friendliness, and there aren't many stories on
I go to a gym and this gym plays a "90's and today" station over their loudspeakers. Now, I've been at this gym nearly two years now and the radio station is playing -- I kid you not -- nearly ALL OF THE SAME DAMN SONGS they were playing when I first started.
What is this? Do people really like this much repetition? Really? I have so much trouble wrapping my head around this. Why on earth would anyone want to listen to something over-and-over again for years, never exploring new ideas, never poking at new tastes? This is really what normal people want?
This study be damned. Have people become so fed up and stressed out with their lives that they just want anything that's familiar? They won't try anything new? They want "Since you been gone" over and over and over and over again?
Sigh. Yet another example that I'm just not normal.
People want to hear the same songs over and over again.
People want their "geeks" to show up in uniforms, flashing badges (Geek Squad).
People like computers that break within two years.
People love wacky laws and think litigators are sexy.
If Nalgene water bottles are outlawed, only outlaws will have Nalgene water bottles.
The human brain does not have the capacity, or time, to properly process all the information it receives, so it uses all sorts of aids to free it from information overload. Thus it forms habits, learns from repetition, and relies on other peoples opinions. For the average person, finding the "best" music would be a mental task which is not worth the effort, (they've got other things to do) so they use public opinion to find music which is "good enough". Just like buying cars, or software, clothes, or food. Our brain uses "conformity" in most things, to free it to make personal decisions in the things which are most important to us, whatever they may be.
I'm a software visionary. I don't code.
The post you link is not pro-Microsoft, it is pro-graphics UI and it refers to Mac as well as Windows. And we all know that /. is DEFINITELY pro Mac. How about a truly pro-Microsoft post?
Your contention was that there are "many" pro-Microsoft posts on ./ rated +5 Insightful. I am guessing there are at least a hundred or so +5 rated posts a day. If you were truly correct, you should be able to find at least 5 to 10 posts from just today.
If not, I think that kinda proves my point...
"People are faced with too many options, in this case 48 songs. Since you can't listen to all of them, a natural shortcut is to listen to what other people are listening to" basically summarizes the article.
I think the result is pretty obvious. The same is true for almost all other social networks. Take Slashdot Comments for example - higher rated comments are read more often. This does not imply that "crap" content can become popular - since most social networks have a "feedback" mechanism - which can be as simple as a user rating down the "crap" song. So if a crap song becomes popular initially, its popularity is controlled by sufficient number of "rate-downs".
Mod me up for proof!
When Ashlee Simpson tops the charts while a critically acclaimed ex-Beatle's album fails to crack the top 200, eyebrows go up in the marketing world. This is called starting with you conclusion and finding evidence to match it. You take one of the most loved bands, that has stood the test of time, and arguable has some artistic merit, and compare it to what is arguable trash. Is every new artist trash? Were there any fewer trash artist 40 years ago? I think not. So much for bad reporting.
The bad science is that music is intrinsically a social art, and always has been. Normal people in a society have the same expectations, and when those expectations are met normal people are satisfied. Those expectation change over time, but are rather consistant during short periods. So, what this study actually shows is that taste among normal teens is consistant, and they are more likely to enjoy songs that also enjoyed by thier peers, rather than a somewhat random collections of songs.
The objective reality is that a suffently cultured person can enjoy a range of music, from classical, to jazz, to rock, to rap, to hip hop, to country. The fact that teens are not sophiticated is not surprising as they lack experience. The problem is that some so-called adults are not sophisticated either, and seem to be proud of that. On the flip side, the difference between bad music and good music, outside of they psuedo-intellectual world or music reviewing, is slight. Anything that is going to get recorded is going to basically meet some minimum standard. Anything that is going to be targeted to teens, even by an indie band, will meet certain expectations.
A valid experiment could be designed. Take teens from distincly different culture, ask them to sample each others music, music that is already popular in the other culture, and see if there is statistically significant impact of the popularity factor.My guess is there might not be. I have seen total rejection of even different forms of hip hop, seperated by a scant few hundred miles. The issue is not whether we follow the herd, as we clearly in many cases do. The issue is whether we just follow any herd.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
One: How about a third group, where participants were paid money to generate the positive comments to be viewed by one of the other groups (payola)?
Two: I think this hypothesis applies to everything, not just music. There's a lot of crap on the radio, yes; there's a lot of non-musical crap out there, too.
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
Movies and books have reviews and awards on the back cover, the poster, package, etc.
You rarely see any kind of review or award mention on CD packaging.
Except maybe some silly sticker, but come on.
This one is arguably pro-MS (at least, strongly and intelligently supporting them on an issue). Indeed, in that article there were many random random other posts (example). Now, maybe this topic doesn't quite count (and okay, these aren't rabidly pro-MS rants, but you don't see many purely pro-anything rants per se that aren't modded off-topic, n'est pas?).
/. are more likely to be touting?).
There are more examples, but I suppose most of that page is critiquing the headline. There are some ones that are more forcefully on MS's side, but that's further down the page and thus less mod points.
Things get a bit clearer with that Gates VS. Jobs article, now granted this is nothing to do with software. But then again, liking a company or not is hardly going to be 100% software, one way or another. Here's a good pro-Gates one.
I don't really feel like spending time looking any further, but you can see that even from this cursory investigation (I just looked at some recent MS-themed articles for a few minutes) that people say pro-MS things and get modded up . . . yeah, none of these were simple, foundationless rants. But then, the format of slashdot discourages such! They were all topical, and topically they supported the MS side. Some of these cases it was even on a subject that slashdot is more likely to be biased for the opposing side, too (like, Steve Jobs versus Bill Gates, hmm, who do you think people on
In other words, I think it's demonstrated that pure versions of the rants you're referring to are likely out there, awhile ago. Same way that fossils show that there were giant reptiles, yaknow? Not direct evidence, but I think proves the point anyways. Reasonable reason to believe, at least.
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
I see some big problems with testing popularity this way because there is no way that I'd choose a song if it sucked. Maybe I missed the point, but isn't the idea to find out what's popular? Or are you trying to figure out how things gain popularity (without being listened to) or how the population will see if a song is any good based on previous user input?
No matter, I will hate a popular song just as much as a non-popular song if it sucks. I don't think they are testing this appropriately.
M.T.
"Support Bacteria - Its the only culture some people have" - Circa 1985
yeah... You realise that this is what people have always said?
"Music in the [20's, 30's, 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's - select as appropriate] was way better than the nonsense nowadays"
Think about how many songs from those eras are actually still popular today. 99% of music has ALWAYS been crap, and we only remember the good 1%.
Seriously... the mob rules.
However, people like music a lot, and it is important to most people in some way or another. (By the way, have you ever seen a movie you really liked that didn't have music in it?) Look at a bunch of folks (folks that were hidden in a jungle for centuries without outside contact) and you'll find that they make music in some way or another. Music seems to actually be something that is important - whether or not it is mainstream, popular or "pretty bad."
I REALLY like B.B. King. My kids couldn't be bothered with him - they think he's good at what he does, but they'd rather listen to Ozzie or Green Day. They take their clues from many sources, mostly their peers. On a different tack, my 67-year-old mother likes Queen, Alan Parsons, and ABBA. Why? None of her peers are the same way, none of the radio stations to which she listens play that kind of mix. She listens to them because they bring back memories of her kids and her husband (in that order, believe me). She's not generally subject to mob rules.
My point is, no surprise here, that some folks follow the crowd, while others could care less about the crowd's opinion. I like to listen to music from folks I've never heard - and I generally get my best (recent) music from the oddest places on the Internet. I don't, however, tend to listen to pop radio because it seems less genuine and from-the-heart to me.
Now if we could just get the super-producers and studios to spend their time and money on music, and not album sales.
A Passionate Independent Musician
First, the research seems to assume that there is no connection between the band and song names and the music. You can get a pretty good idea of the type of music from the band's name (compare industrial rock bands like Skinny Puppy, Fear Factory, and Nine Inch Nails to boy bands like N*Sync and The Backdoor^H^H^H^Hstreet Boys).
Second, songs get popular because they are played on the radio and MTV. Pop radio stations will mostly stick to playing songs from a list of the 50 most popular new songs, mixing in a few songs from the lists of previous years for variety. This list is compiled by paying a bunch of people to listen to a bunch of new songs and asking them to rate them. These will be songs they have never heard before, and they don't get to confer with anyone else to see what they thought about it.
I think a better method would have been to rate the songs randomly and tell the second group (there wouldn't need to be a first group) that they were rated by others. If there was a high correlation between the random ratings and the subjects' ratings, that would provide evidence in support of the hypothesis.
If you can read this sig, you're too close.
They didn't prove what they say they proved.
Humans tend to understand that popularity is determined by quality; we learn that good things are recommended and bad things are not. So, absent other quality information, we use popularity as an indicator of quality.
Which means people are actually smart for making such an induction, not simply stupid for following the crowd.
The record industry has known of this heuristic for decades. In launching an unknown product, they pretend it's already famous and popular, as well as insisting it's good.
Of course, the only reason they even bothered with Ashlee Simpson is because they were paid to.
So it's more like going to Amazon and buying based on the sales rank. Or, for that matter, buying whatever's on the "bestseller" shelf at Barnes & Noble or Borders - which I'm sure a lot of people do, too.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
Everytime someone utters "This will probably get moderated -1 troll, but here I go anyway" ends up getting +5 Interesting or Insightful. I'm not trying to get off topic here, but I've seen this happen on numerous occasions.
Oh well, this will probably get moderated -1, Troll but it had to be said.
That's not the way music gets popular. Here's how it happens:
1. Hold auditions at local malls, car lots, county fairs, etc. to find hot young white jailbait
2. Tart up aforementioned jailbait and teach them some slammin' dance moves
3. Get a committee of marketing people together to craft some lyrics that are as sexualized as common decency (read: FCC) will allow. Bonus points if corporate sponsors can synergize their product into the lyrics somehow (if not, don't worry, the product placement people will cram as many soft drinks, cell phones, and designer handbags into the video as possible later)
4. Get some underpaid, under-recognized sound engineers (read: geeks) to put together a cathcy little number on the sequencer. Don't worry about horrendous vocals, those can be corrected in the final mix.
5. Shoot video. Don't worry about making it creative, just fill it with Bentleys, Prada, diamonds, and lots of writhing, Cristal-soaked booty. Bonus points if the video is so over-the-top that a controversy ensues (don't worry, MTV doesn't show full videos anymore anyway-- they'll just show the 20 seconds of the video that isn't offensive on TRL and we can make a mint by selling the "uncut" version on iTunes.)
6. This is the most important part: PAYOLA, PAYOLA, PAYOLA! How will your song ever get popular unless all the top-40 stations play it once an hour, every hour? Make your check out to Clear Channel, and they'll take care of the rest.
7. ???
8. Profit!
I began to suspect this might be the case when I realized (many years ago) record companies were flogging music from "hot" bands that didn't have any record of popularity, i.e. no record sales and no radio play. There are enough sheep out there to turn that into a self-fulfilling prophesy if they hype it enough.
The point was, Group B didn't download the songs that Group A rated highly. They downloaded the ones that were downloaded the most times, regardless of how highly they were rated. Songs rated lower were just as likely to become popular as songs rated highly. And in different Group Bs (there were B.1-B.10), different songs became popular, always independent of the ratings given. There were a few songs that never did particularly badly or well, but no song was always really popular or always really unpopular, no matter the quality.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
The whole point is that the ratings (ie, quality) of the songs had little or nothing to do with their popularity - low-rated songs became popular as often as highly-rated songs! And in different test groups (there were 10), different songs became popular, still independent of ratings.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
Because the mod ratings are (ostensibly) based on quality, which in this article was shown to have nothing to do with popularity. Group B did NOT download songs based on the quality ratings that Group A gave them - only based on the number of times the songs were downloaded. Popularity was totally independent of rating/quality.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
I went to NYC a few years ago and, being my first time, decided to go to Time Square that evening. When I got there I thought I'd made a great choice, because the streets were teaming with people and it was packed. "Wow, this must be the place to go". As I slowly made my way around, and I mean very slowly because the crowd was just a lingering zombie akin to an early Chaplin movie about the worker, I began to realize that nobody was doing anything at all. Rather, it was just a crowd of people wandering around in a slow circle. But the impression left is that Time Square must be a place to hang out at night, because there's so many people there. And the cycle repeats itself ad naseum. Crowds beget crowds.
-THE END-
Well... let's see if it works; somebody mod this +1 Funny!
Invisible to moderators.
Barry Manilow has now hit #1 on the charts with 1950s tunes.
Really.
I feel sorry for the last guy in the study. He just wanted to listen to some music and got split in half.
So, it's group think? Big surprise ...
I read +6 Troll, Flamebait, etc... A lot of mods don't know what the hell they're talking about and if it goes against groupthink, it goes down in Flamebaits. When it does, there are people there like me to pick it up and give it an informative, insightful, or interesting boost. Not everyone runs on default mod settings here at /. Genuine flamebaits and trolls are getting much rarer. I see a lot less GNAA and WIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIDDDDDDDDDDEEEEEEEEE crap here these days. (With the exception of Apple Trolls. They never go away. They even get Cover Storys in Forbes. "Likely to top 4 Million units" for iPods. Dipshits... they sold 14 Million) Most of the down mods go to people who simply think differently lately.
Now, so that I'm not totally off topic... the article describes a system where one group could only listen, see track title, artist name, and download. The second group could see all that and could see download counts as well. Wow, the ones that were downloaded most got the most attention and additional downloads... Duh. That's not scientific. There's no F'ing experimental group! Why didn't they have a third group that could see everything group #1 saw, and *randomly generated* download counts? If I see a song has been downloaded numerous times, listen to it, and it's crap, I'm sure as hell not downloading a copy to save if it sucks. I don't care how many people listen to something, but I would consider download counts an indicator of what I should try first... At least until I realized the download counts were meaningless. If they repeat the experiment with the third group and that group downloads random crap like lemmings then maybe they have something worth reporting... Otherwise, they've proven nothing.
This effect is much more obvious with wine.
Numerous blind tests have shown that there is almost no correlation between expensive wines and taste.
Yet the expensive brands keep winning the awards....
And does it explain why there's so much crap on the internet? Well, I mean PageRank.
Nobody has made this joke before! Also, nobody on slashdot is married, with children, or have otherwise even seen a girl!
Nobody has made this joke before! Also, nobody on slashdot is married, with children, or have otherwise even seen a girl! That is, can we stop the self-perpetuating stereotypes? I think it's pretty dumb, especially if you look at it in the context of this story.
Note: I do in fact have a girlfriend. Also I know a guy who's actually pretty gross and even he has a girlfriend. For Christ's sake, just go talk to people. Fuck!
True, up to a point. There's a network effect here, since groups of people use common cultural touchstones as a means of relating with each other (e.g., talking about a movie, an album, or a sports team). A teenaged girl will buy Britney's album because her friends bought Britney's album. A system administrator will rent Office Space and will understand the references to "PC LOAD LETTER" and the red stapler when they come up in conversation (or in posts on Slashdot).
But none of these works would make it into the collective culture if they hadn't gotten past a gatekeeper.
The gatekeepers of our culture are the people who manage movie studios, publishing houses, and record labels. Producers, editors, and A&R people are risk averse people in risky businesses. Every album that's recorded, every book that's published, every movie that's produced means that hundreds of thousands, millions, or tens or hundreds of millions are risked in a venture that might not even break even. And even if such a venture does break even or run a modest profit, these people look upon such a return as a lost opportunity for a best seller, platinum album, or blockbuster hit.
So, they hew to the lowest common denominator. They play it safe. They run endless focus groups, listening parties, sneak previews. They catch the sequel disease: witness the Harry Potter phenomenon, the bidding war for Seattle grunge groups after Nirvana's breakout album Nevermind, multiple Lethal Weapon movies. Two movies about asteroids obliterating the Earth, two movies about monster volcanoes, two movies about Mars missions, all released within months of each other. Could the two Matrix sequels hold a candle to the first movie? Do I have to invoke the crawling horror of Star Wars I, II, and III?
It's rare that a unique work emerges from our popular culture, something so distinctive that imitating it would be a sacrelige. A Schindler's List, a Don DeLillo novel (I'm hard pressed to find a major record label example, since I mostly listen to indie acts -- that's where the unique talent has fled).
It's telling that Spielberg gets to make a work like Munich or Schindler's List because he's made billions for Hollywood. George Clooney said as much about Syriana and Good Night and Good Luck; after these films he'll owe the studio an Ocean's Thirteen. Sequelmania is Hollywood's answer to risk. Hence the crap that's clogging our culture.
Twenty years in the music industry taught me a one of many hard lessons: the risk averse A&R guy loves to know that your band sounds like someone who's made money for them. "We wouldn't know how to market you guys" is not what you want to hear from them. "You're in the business of marketing bands. Fucking learn." is not what they want to hear from you.
I ended up forming an indie label. It made all the difference.
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
At the end of the day, you have to remember that record companies are like venture capitalists. The money that is spent to record, produce, market, promote and distribute an album is fronted by the label as a loan to the artist who in turn has to pay that loan back to the label from his/her cut of the sales. So, in that light, the music industry, like any other venture capitalist firm, is very much concerned with ensuring that the money they dish out in advance has a reasonably good chance of coming back to them and later end up being tallied as fat profits. The real reason why popularity breeds popularity in the music business is because when one act becomes successful, record companies work hard to find other acts which exhibit similar traits so they can be quickly brought to market and capitalized on before the fad dies out.
I love their early stuff all the way to Enthrone Darkness Triumphant (my favorite album). After that, once they started winning Norwegian Grammys and the like they started forgetting their intial reasons, etc. for more popularity. A "selling out" perhaps?
I've also noticed a one man band named Falkenbach who has some damn good tunes, and the guy isn't in it for the money. As he said, "The aim of Falkenbach is not to be popular, but relevant." If many other bands could only do the same.
Fighting over religion is like seeing whose imaginary friend is best.
I fully agree with the article but then i also think that thsi music gets pushed by producers and record companies. sometimes its "cool" because it keeps airing on MTV and the crowd will follow to watch. But I think that's only for a short time. what is popular sometimes doesnt correspond with what the majority actualy listens to. I was just lookign at the LastFM charts and bands like Radiohead and Beatles are always on top. Sure MTV might push Britney Spears on top but it will never replace the music that is better by quality. I will rush to download a song that's popular to hear it and listen to it for a while but if the music is bad it will eventualy get off my playlist and Beatles will stay.
I for one am thankful that no matter where I go in the nation, I can be sure that every station of the same genre (assuming there is more than one) will sound just like home. Thank goodness for consolidation of radio.
I used to really get bent out of shape when I went up and down the radio dial and heard different music and different artists throughout the day. So much variety! It was so hard to figure out what was good and what to choose! Now, thanks to Clearchannel, Congress and the FCC, not only do radio stations sound the same up and down the dial, but they play the same songs all day long, day in and day out. Life is so much simpler this way; I no longer have to make decisions, since they can just tell me what is good by virtue of playing it all day long. Plus, all the commercials make for great content, too.
Mega radio knows exactly what I like: Shake 'n bake/Cookie Cutter Radio. Play a song until it is *beyond* dead, and then only play what they think the public will like, based on what other radio stations just like them are playing. And then there is payola in its various guises, to keep the playing field "predictable and stable" (i.e safe) for the major labels.
By the way, who are these "Sirius" people ayway?
uR iGn0ranc3, Their Power
Some people like to listen to rock, some like country. Others like "contemporary" or whatever. Others still, listen to NPR and some listen to Rush Limbaugh. Not many listen to all of the above.
Radio is not about pleasing you it is about making money by attracting enough listeners. MP3 downloads not withstanding, you are not entitled to free entertainment that you like.
Just as there are not enough listeners for an all-opera-all-the-time station. Maybe there are not enough listeners to support your odd taste in music (maybe you want all-opera?). If you think most people have crappy musical tastes, what do you think most people will think of your choices in music?
If you don't like the radio, buy your own music. If you don't like the normal labels, try "independent" sellers. I have purchased several albums from "cdbaby.com" - but, you know what? Much of the music is unremarkable... maybe the labels do know something about picking music that people will like?
Sometimes you do find a gem; one indy album I bought was the www.solvingforx.com album. At least I like it, but that's the problem - there is no objective standard to test music. So, you are left with markets, marketers, hucksters and hype. People like what they like, or what they think they like; What's the difference?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
The implication is not really that the good bands will get most popular so much as that bands that reflect broader ranges of appeal and reflect the average person's taste get popular. Your own taste can be very uncorrelated (or even negatively correlated, though I think people too heavily negative are more likely snobs) with what is generally popular. And a relatively inoffensively acceptable song, that many people can listen to and think, "Yeah, I'll listen to that," can snowball in popularity once it catches on. There are also more factors at play in the real world, such as the greater difficulty in finding unpopular bands (anyone can turn on the radio and hear U2, but the Bad Brains are a bit harder to find).
On a side note, I do think that people are way too disdainful about popular music being crappy. There's a serious survivor bias at work. I've listened to a decent amount of more obscure stuff and there sure are a lot of really bad obscure bands out there, unknown for good reason, applauded by some silly people even though they sound like a less-slickly-produced version of the Top 40.
....is get popular.
The average intellegent person uses the work of others to build on when attacking a task. If I where presented with a ton of songs to download it would take quite an investment to download and listen to them all to find out whats good. I would use the songs number of downloads in an attempt to lighten the load. Of course I would prefer to sort by ratings...like I would at amazon or newegg...but if ratings are unavailable I would go with downloads. This has nothing to do with being affected "socially". I am using others time to lighten my work load. Unless there are a very limited number of songs I don't see any other way to go...who is going to base there pick on artist or song name? That correlation sucks compared to downloads. Not that I think downloads is perfect...but it makes a nice razor.
C'mon you don't get away that easily :)
OK ok... mea culpa. I meant to say pro-Microsoft-Products (i.e. Windows), not pro-Microsoft per-se.
And well, anti-Linux goes in the same way...
HEY LOOK! is that a demonic duck over there? *runs away*
If you're looking at a list of songs, and some are rated as being very good whereas others are rated as not, which ones are you going to listen to? Will you listen to the lower rated songs simply for being low rated? Of course not, you're going to give the high-rated songs a shot first, because when a mojority of people like something, there's a good chance that peoploe will like them. Not that this has any bearing on the actual quality of the songs, which is based solely in opinion.
By now you should have guessed...I'm your magic negro.
Popularity breeds popularity because it's easy: someone else has done the work for you. If someone else likes something, there's a much better chance that it's good than a random sample of all the music (or whatever you're rating), because 90% of everything really is crap. It takes someone determined to find the jewels to wade through it all to find the new stuff that really is both original and good. If you think something is crap because it's popular, aside from the arrogance and elitist attitude that implies, the same principle still applies, because it scales down to the people who like the same type of that you do: when one of your subgroup finds something, you'll probably like it too (and the multitudes will probably think it's crap in return). And popularity will breed popularity in your subgroup.
This is a classical case of a Woot Effect. The reason people by stuff on woot.com is that they are afraid that others will buy all of it and they will face the dreaded 'out of stock' message.
A sure sign of the endtimes: Barry Manilow is back on top!
a y.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001993401
WTF? He's not had a song in 20+ YEARS....and he's outselling rappers?
Billboard has the story:
http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/news/article_displ
Now mark THIS an "off-topic"....
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
I've taken my precious time to study the reasons to why songs get unpopular. It has taken me very much effort and time to figure it out, but here it goes: They just simply suck. A very scientific moment.
And, thank heavens, there are still people with taste in music these days; as such, good music gets popular. Just not mainstream--and yes, there is a distinct difference between what is popular and what is mainstream.
Take, for instance, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Go 'head. Click the link and give them a listen. Truly a different sound (some have compared them to the Talking Heads). What's special about this band (besides their addictive rock and that singer with the crazy voice) is the fact that they are UNSIGNED. Totally unsigned. No label. They put out their debut themselves, to wild popularity and praise. They might not reach audiences of tens of millions the way mainstream musicians do, and they might not play shows to crowds of 20,000, but hey. They're making money--for themselves, not for a big label. They were in a blurb in Rolling Stone a few months ago that said that they produced their record for about $10,000, and at the time of that writing, had made $150,000--all of which they get to keep, instead of paying off some label. They just got back from a tour in Europe. I wonder how much they've made now.
Point is, there's lots and lots of really great music out there that doesn't need the deep pockets of a huge record label to get heard--because of the Internet--and that music awaits listening ears. The good stuff acquires plenty of ears, which does NOT necessarily mean mainstream. A listener is a listener, and anymore, artists don't need labels to get them. You, the listener, just have to know where to look to find the good stuff; people are learning not to trust what's farted out by ClearChannel.
(That said, the major labels have an aging and cracking business model. They're losing business to smaller, grassroots movements--fueled by easy (near-free) distribution of music and young people with specific sets of interests. I don't think the Internet is going to be the death of major label music any more than I think blogging is going to be the end of mainstream news, but there is something to be said for the popularity of grassroots media, and music is no exception. Kinda makes me wonder where those huge, multinational multiplatinum albums are going to be in, say, ten years, when the mainstream has the knowledge and skill to seek things specific to their interests and to reject the music that's fed to them over the airwaves.)
More proof that stupid is as stupid does.
I knew that one post would inevitable lead to a breast reference, and this is the one.
Studies showed that we like "sweet and creamy" because it takes us back to drinking mother's milk.
Musicians don't die. They just decompose.
Just use Pandora, it's an amazing service.
If you don't know where to start, listen to Grooove http://www.pandora.com/?sc=sh12211603
...when it exists in politics and religion. You can't make a more dangerous mix than that.
Music gets popular 'cause it's made popular. Some music corp "discovers" (or, which is getting increasingly more likely, creates) a popstar or group, hypes him, her or them, stuffs them into shows like Top of the Pops where they are labeled the "newcomers of the year" or similar crap, then they sorta-kinda sing some song (which is 50% a cover version of a once-popular song nobody in the age range of 14-20 knows anymore, 30% some basic vanilla popcrap and 20%, depending on the song, mindless basedrum or the violin line of a classic song) and we got a new star.
Now the CDs of this star are being sold (with this song being the only one on the CD worth listening, if at all), about 2-3 months later, before everyone forgets who that guy was the system gets repeated with the "new smash hit" (on another CD, with other fill-crap to boost the content of the coaster to about 30 minutes).
After that, nobody ever hears from the guy anymore. Because we have a new "newcomer of the year".
And all the mindless music drones buy the crap. Because they need it to be up to date with music. You don't know (insert singer drone)? Where are you from, some other planet? Ha ha ha.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
A long time ago I tricked shoutcast into listing my station at about #7 on the charts no matter how many listeners there really were. After about a week I really did have that many and didn't need to cheat anymore.
I felt kind of bad about it, but i knew that all i needed was to have a top 10 station for a small amount of time to gain traction, and it worked.
..Reading these "perhaps'es," I grow more-and-more assured of what are the most-probable reasons some people should cease "thinking" (so/too) much, and why "research" takes so bloody damn long in many aspects.
ok:
The reason people write "I'll prob. get mod'ed down.." etc., is because they assume everyone will fall for their quasi-psychopathic -schemes, and followingly, that every mod-point -holder is a bona-fide sucker, just because there's a massive (visible) precense of mee-too'ers on here, -think again; people aren't all idiots just because the idiots are the easier to spot.
-It works _too often_, even though it obviously shouldnt. -That kind of "reward tactics" shouldn't _ever_ be rewarded, if for nothing else; in case the same scheme-maker applies this style to other aspects in life; which would suck for the real people caught up in the tide. -The "following the wind"-ism, when it comes to "hate MS", (etc.,) doesn't matter that much, but this kind of crap _really does_.
A horse can't be sick, you know, even if he wants to.
did the researchers account for payola bias?
Music Publishers have paid their ways to the airwaves for a long time....
pay for airplay, get popular, sell more CDs, make a profit.
If they dont execute these steps effectively, then no profit.
No wonder CDs cost so much....
-E
absolute shit.
Most of the 'meteoric rise' is due to the facts that
1) rap is extremely CHEAP to produce,
2) most rappers are talentless youth,
3) most rap audiences are in love with the throb of the bass line,
4) it helps if they pay no attention to the lyrics.
There's the occasional shooting of some unknown, who is immediately elevated to stardom, or some hanger-on, to keep the name of the studio/record company in the 'news' and to make some buzz with the advertisers.
As long as it fills in the gaps between the commercials, you're caught in the crap trap with rap.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
a non-creative job. And that is fine for 99.9% of humanity 99.9% of the time.
Success is so personal elusive and fleeting that if you don't happen to use the same metrics as everyone else, you can be a success and not even be noticed by anyone else.
Jane Siberry is a prime example. She is a success writing an album for her dog if her dog happens to like it. If it doesn't sell, so what? She wasn't writing it for your wallet.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
So there I was, a DJ at a pop station way, way, back, and the same issues and discussions would arise. There were the "elite" who listened to "progressive" rock and thumbed their nose at those who mindlessly listened to "pop". But I've realized that it's the same everywhere--those who attend Ivy League schools vs. the great unwashed, people from either coast vs. those in the "flyover" states, those who golf vs. those who bowl. It's class warfare! It's the generation gap! It's the human condition.
The study grouped people into two groups "Independant" and "Social Influence". The problem is, they have no control group, as BOTH groups are real people, and thus have social influence already.
The way the study worked (from my understanding of the article) is that one group could pick songs by title and artist and the other could search by title, artist, and popularity. The results were that the same songs were popular in both groups! Wow, Amazing! All you did was prove that the outside influence on the study was the same! People don't need a list of "most recently downloaded songs" to know what they heard on the radio. I imagine that a lot of the people in the study (when given the opportunity to legally download as much as they wanted) went to another site to find what music is popular and looked all of them up. Or asked their friends "what should I download?" thus reproducing the same effect.
What would have made an interesting test is to have NO artist or title information at all (Artist 123 - Song 6) and run the same test. The problem would still exist (when people recognize a song, they would rate it higher or download it more often), but you would have to listen randomly and rate songs based on actual quality, not on popularity. It would be like a radio station but random instead of being force-fed the popular songs 5 times per hour.
I found the link http://www.phule.net/mirrors/unskilled-and-unaware .html to be a great read.
I hate to admit it but it really makes the scary people on American Idol start to make sense
The record companies are familiar with this. That is why they pay for play.
They get people to hear the songs, the DJs say they love them, the sheep
buy - Profit$. The companies only push the artists that they have
favorable contracts with. The companies are run by accountants not music
people.
I thought it was the soft-core pr0n masquerading as music videos that made c**p music popular. That's the only way I can explain the popularity of such tallentless individuals such as Britney Spears, Christina Agualera, and any number of other "pop bubblegum, appeal to 12-year-olds with raging hormones" artists.
I could be wrong, but somehow I can't see many (any?) of the current popular artists having longevity in the same way that The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Queen, and any number of others with actual tallent have managed.
What's wrong with liking "My Humps" in the shower? Would that make me bad?
I dunno... a lot of religious groups would say so. Used to be they'd say it'd make you go blind and insane too.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
I guess my point is, radio really is crap. Not just because we potential audience members are condescending, but because the radio stations are.
There are still good radio stations. You just have to listen to the ones that a) still have some presence in the local community and b) play older music. I don't have a nice "law" to refer to, but I hold with the quote from Stranger in a Strange Land about how the reason classical music is, well, classic, is that they've spent a hundred years getting rid of all of the crap. Just go back thirty years and you'd be amazed.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
brand name clothes are cool because they are cool!
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
this article has been posted on /. so many times ive lost count.
great, so being skilled means i'm even more self-defeating.
nuff said. now stop posting this.
> School taught you to ape what you are told.
:P
>>By that logic, you are an ape as well.
I didn't go to school.
KFG
C'mon, everyone else is doing it... you don't want to be a loner, do you? Don't be left out! It's the hot new thing!
F'ing lemmings. Of course, the irony is that this is so ingrained in our behavior that it works even for counter-culture subgroups, too, people just end up picking small subgroups to conform to.
This is the same with comments on Slashdot. If you said, "This is the most insightful post you will read all day," you would get modded -1 Full of Yourself. But when you say, "This will probably be modded as a Troll," this allows the audience to say, "No, let's wait and see what he has to say."
See if you caught my mismatch.
--Chag
Maybe I read the article wrong, but it doesn't seem like there's a group in the study who just listened to songs straight without either being preempted by knowing the band/song name or what other people thought of it - ie. the group of people who listened to the song with no knowledge in any way about it before hand? Wouldn't the correct control group have been that one if you're interested in figuring out how the experience of a song's quality can be effected by external elements (title, other peoples' opinion)?
I guess my assumption is that the people running the study are (or should be) interested in figuring out why songs which people thought actually sound good (in the absence of preconceived notions whatever they may be) aren't as popular and conversely why songs that people actually thought sound not so good are popular. Could be a wrong assumption on my part - of course how the song sounds is all that matters to me, I couldn't care less what its name is or what other people think of it.
I suppose I'm not the target demographic of the study, but I find it ver y telling (and disturbing) that straight appreciation of how the song sounds doesn't even garner a mention in regard to why people liked the song for the purposes of this study.
But since these "scientists" have figured this out, I'll now use an appeal to popularity. If you're looking for tunes you might not have heard before but that might be good (works for me anyway) try grabbing a podcast from www.kcrw.org. My favorite show is metropolis, but there's usually at least a nugget or two in each show. It's public radio, which doesn't hurt either.
Ok...so this point system thing...say i mention a site in parenthesis (http://cdusa.com/) - good show actually) and then in the title i mention the site...will i lose points? But what if i explain what the site/show is about? Like it has live performances (KoRn next week!) and interviews wit hpopular music artists (Kelly Clarkson...etc)...will i gain points?
Can't see any mention here of or in the article of the appeal of the fictional names used for the bands. A good name can make people like a band more. Names like Guns'n'Roses, Nirvana, Gorillaz etc can be appealing to some people but there are certain names that will put a lot of people off, like Creme Bule, Anal Cunt or Test Icicles (personal bias ahoy!) Some of the names in the test are: GO MOREDCAI, NOT FOR SCHOLARS, PARKER THEORY, RYAN ESSMAKER, DANTE, A BLINDING SILENCE, SELSIUS, SILVERFOX, HYDRAULIC SANDWICH. KNowing nothing else but that I have a bias already that 'Hydraulic Sandwich' are going to be bad. Hydraulic Sandwich? Shit sandwich.