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Is There a Formula For a Hit Song?
moveoverrover writes "What happens when two Rutgers grad students analyze 50 years of Billboard Top 10 hits with MIT offshoot Echo Nest's API and turn the data into visualizations for an assignment? Great looking visualizations for one, and a fascinating look at 50 years of Pop music at the data level. Posing the question, 'Is there a formula for a hit song?' the students write, 'What if we knew, for example, that 80% of the Billboard Hot 100 number one singles from 1960-2010 are sung in a major key with an average of 135 beats per minute, that they all follow a I-III-IV chord progression in 4/4 time signature, and that they all follow a "verse-verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus" sequence structure?' Using data extracted by Echo Nest on tempo, duration, time signature, musical key, as well as subjective criteria like "energy" and "danceability," the pair generated a number of visualizations with Google Motion Charts (warning: slow) and '(some) Tableau Results' for everyone to see and investigate. Curious about tempo and song duration trends in Pop music over 50 years? Correlation between record label and song tempo? Download the core data, the Tableau reader and look at it any way you want."
The music you kids listen to these days sounds all the same! BOOM-BOOM-BOOM - Goodness gracious! Formula?!? More like copying!
Get off my lawn and keep it down!
I remember reading about similar analysis long ago. Done in the 1970s IIRC. The programme that analysed also made a song from what I can remember and it was a hit of some sort (not sure which song that was, instrumental probably), but the article I read (1980s) noted that a second attempt didn't produce a hit song. So some variation is always needed beyond mere making a similar song. Does anyone remember/know which was that computer generated hit song?
R&B has a clearly worked out hit formula:
http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/4185/rnbcreator2tf9.jpg
Might be applicable to other styles such as pop, trance, rock...
Ha! I don't have the first post but I do have the first hit song!
So they got data from an existing database, plugged it into some graphs, said "look it is interesting" and got credit at MIT? Really?
Get a web developer
Hit Song Science has been around since 2003. See previous Slashdot story.
There are 2 ways to look at these results. One is that out of all the music produced this formula is what the majority of people want to listen to, or it could be that this is what the record companies flog us because it's what they think we want to hear. Either way this is all that bands will be producing from now on, meaning less variety in music. It's a case of data driven choices gone mad.
My next album title's going to be I-III-IV, should make me a million.
Of course there is a formula, here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I
Here is the entertaining version of this important discovery:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I
bad spellers of the world UNTIE
Anyone who "writes" music based on algorithms, market research, and what a computer tells them will be a "hit", needs to be deposited in the bottom of the ocean.
Rebecca Black's "Friday" meets the criteria the study listed in the conclusion and came in at #58 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Scary, yes?
Did they only look at the hits or also at the misses? There are bound to be enough songs that abide the "formula" but lack enough musicality to become a hit.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
All music currently in the hit parades are (at least partially) copied from songs popular years ago. So the fact that they have commonalities isn't that strange. You don't need to do a study to reach that conclusion.
Sig?
... and it was written ages ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manual
There may be historical patterns which can be followed, but there are many elements of success which have little to do with talent, style or proficiency. Just as in Japan, pop stars do not need to sing well -- they just have to be hot. You can follow that pattern all day long but if the performers are obese or have skin problems, they aren't going anywhere. (Wilson-Phillips anyone?)
So if you want to be on top and stay on top, you have to be able to do some kind of music, but it doesn't have to be great. The most important stuff these days is image and how much attention you can get.
Pretty much any genre of creation based upon personal taste is going to have some sort of a formula that's pure lowest common denominator. The more likely explanation is that it's what record execs think will sell and consequently it's what they push. Way too often the songs that get popular get popular because they're frequently played, not because they're good.
It used to be extremely unusual for songs on the radio to break out of a standard format and going beyond 2 minutes wasn't typically done.
Of course you can create a commercial hit this way.
Whether you can create Art this way is another question altogether.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Axis of Awesome, NSFW if on speakers
http://youtu.be/5pidokakU4I
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Popular music has always been formulaic. Good music, on the other hand, is not.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Jon Lajoie already figured this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijr4rwb2WbE
All music currently in the hit parades are (at least partially) copied from songs popular years ago.
If so many songs are being copied, why aren't there more plagiarism* lawsuits like the one over "My Sweet Lord"?
* Plagiarism here means infringement with unattribution.
Tits and Ass !! You can throw some simulated sex in there for the chicks, too !! The chicks love simulated sex in their music !! A chick thing but they do like that simulated sex !!
Yvan eht nioj!
Yes there is a formula and The Brain almost took over the world by using it. The formula also involves having three first names, like Bubba Bo Bob, being a certain height, and starting out in a particular bar.
Tomorrow is Saturday. So we better get down on Friday....
We've known this for some time, but it is nice to see it confirmed mathematically. Pop "music" is indeed getting louder over time. I suspect based on the loudness graph that the song they used for 2010 was that "you're beautiful" song that is practically whispered in comparison to other recent pieces.
Now get off my lawn.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
'What if we knew, for example, that 80% of the Billboard Hot 100 number one singles from 1960-2010 are sung in a major key with an average of 135 beats per minute, that they all follow a I-III-IV chord progression in 4/4 time signature, and that they all follow a "verse-verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus" sequence structure?'
We will have discovered the existence of 'artistic genres' and 'trends', which as they already have names I'm sure must have been discovered before...
A cynic is what an idealist calls a realist...
I do find it interesting: Hit songs got progressively longer, more "dancable", and louder.
Aside from what appears to be a very clear divide in key up to vs. after 1980, key doesn't play much role.
I find the "weeks on" interesting as well... The music in the 90's stayed on a lot longer than the more modern stuff. That doesn't surprise me, really, some of the recent hits do strike me as pretty disposable.
This sig has been enciphered with a one-time pad. It could say almost anything.
They could have just listened to Axis of Awesome and their 4-Chord Song and saved a lot of time . . .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I
There have been 'formulas' for hit songs for years. Any musician worth his/her salt can tell you that. And Mariah Carey's a prime example of what happens when you stray too far from the formula. Her first songs, though they followed the 'upbeat' formula, were great. She started going downhill after she went to the 'soul/R&B' style - she sounds more like a moaner than a singer now!!!
There was a Flintstones episode on this topic. More about the lyrics, though.
Unfortunately, they didn't compare against any control group. They showed trends of hit songs but didn't show the trend of all the songs. I would've liked to have seen comparison to general songs that got airtime on the radio but didn't make it on their selection criteria. Or if they split their hit songs into two better/worse halves. Without some comparison, it isn't as useful to determine what song would be a hit. You can eliminate which songs will not be a hit, but even if a song contains all these traits, with their analysis, the song can still be a dud.
There is the manual by pop/dance music pranksters the KLF (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manual). Which, of course, they put out after releasing the song "Doctorin' the TARDIS" under the name The Timelords.
Shoot a video of a skinny blonde in a slutty outfit doing doing slutty things while mouthing the words to the song... for bonus cash, surround her with other skinny blondes in slutty outfits doing slutty things, with the implication that two or more of said skinny blondes in slutty outfits might engage in physical relations with each other.
It won't matter one bit what the song is about, or if it's any good. It'll sell MILLIONS of copies.
KLF already wrote the book on this in the 80's
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manual
Since it is well established that familiarity is a safer return on investment than risk, this is a circular argument. Saturday Night Live has a successful skit, reworks successful skit again. Broadway has a successful musical, are they going to follow with a circus act or another musical? Do people want to buy tickets to see a different team play in their local stadium every time, or do they buy more tickets based on knowing the team and basically what to expect? This is as scientifically exciting as "people like to eat hamburgers". Music has always been about "acquired taste" going back to Beethoven.
Gently reply
I'm just going to leave this here:
Da Vinci's Notebook - Title of the Song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=734wnHnnNR4
1-record a non complex song 2-record company promoton 3-profit$$$$ The music industry has been doing it for a while now and they have the formula down pat. Then again maybe I'm just a snob because I was exposed to classical music as a kid. My father had a huge collection of tapes and played them all day long. I don't listen to classical but I tend to stray as far away from pop music as possible.
"We are just a war away from Amerikastan. When god vs god the undoing of man." Dave Mustaine
Anyone who "writes" music based on algorithms, market research, and what a computer tells them will be a "hit", needs to be deposited in the bottom of the ocean.
There's a lot of music industry producers out there. We're gonna need a bigger ocean.
Why would record companies have an opinion on what we want to hear? There is and always will be room from some "alternative" types of music. It is just that pop songs won't have much variety. That's the way it has been for decades. You have Top 40 and then a bunch of other stuff that satisfied various niches.
I'd argue that if they look at the "not-hit" songs they will find the same percentage mach their formula, or very close to it. What they've found is that most songs are written in a very similar fashion based on old Blues and Bluegrass riffs.
The formula for a hit song is 20cents per play on local radio stations. It's called payola, and they've been doing it since the invention of radio.
It isn't the size of your chords that matters; it's what you do with them.
Without an input variable on how much money was spent convincing the masses that it is music one should listen to, it lacks the full measurement. There is most certainly a large percentage of the measurement showing just this. By the sounds of it, this algorithm can help me pick out songs I don't want to listen to ;)
!
Huh? Do these geeks know anything about basic Western harmony? Yeah, this progression would definitely create a hit song -- in Central Asia. They must have meant "I - IV - V"
Yes, it's lowest common denominator. There's no way you could have widespread common ground among millions of different people, for something as hugely diverse and personal as individual taste in music, without recourse to the lowest common denominator. It's a race to the bottom of sophistication and variety in order to superficially appeal to the largest number of people possible, increasing sales.
Sometimes I call it assembly-line music. It's a rejection of the idea that music is about art and expression, that it has a message with meaning, because as soon as you recognize that you must also recognize that not all people want a particular message or appreciate a given meaning. To the execs this would mean reducing their target audience. It would mean lower sales. It is in their interests to view it not as art, but as a mass-produced product. They see it this way and it shows.
Making it as formulaic and cookie-cutter as possible just means they have a repeatable business process that yields a relatively predictable result. Every car manufacturer or chip fabrication plant wants the same thing. It's the rationale behind interchangable parts. The difference, of course, is that in manufacturing having consistent processes and relatively identical parts is an advantage to the customer; in music it's an advantage to the distributor.
Refined individual taste and a desire for uniqueness are the adversaries of this system. Those traits would mean the companies would have to do a lot more work to enjoy the same level of sales. They'd actually have to take a risk once in a while.
Really the only new development is that the Internet is challenging the record companies' position as undisputed gatekeeper. It is now much easier to learn about music that doesn't have a large marketing budget to promote it. At some point more people may decide that relying on a monied interest to promote something to you is bass-ackwards, that the industry actually exists to provide what you demand, that it'll start looking that way once individuals become easier to find.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
T+A
Depending on how you shoose to interpret it, this is either a very deep question - or a daft and superficial one.
If we take the extremely superficial line and look back over just the last 50 years, then perhaps, yes, there is a "hit formula", but I am not sure that the poster get close to it. Each decade has had its own style, and I think the most important common trait has been the alternation between a "revolution phase", where a new style has found resonance with something in the time: Rock'n'Roll and the 50es was about the "rough diamond" young male a la James Dean, and so on.
But looking further back, it seems clear that there is no simple formula for what became popular - one has to realise that what we call "classic", "renaissance" etc was the pop-music of that time.
Looking to the future, I think people are getting sick of always just more of the same old thing. Can anybody tell all those dance videos apart? It wouldn't surprise me at all if the next big thing came from either China, India or the Middle East - they have each their own distinct and very good music styles, just waiting to be discovered. And I don't mean the classical music styles - modern pop music. There is certainly something going on in China; in the last few years I have heard more and more Chinese pop that is really good - and different.
I think, at least based on the summary, the results are missing some things. For instance, maybe there is such similarity in the music because every time there is a hit song, a lot of people rush to create another song just like it. And there is no consideration of how many songs become hits because people think the artist is sexy, with no regard for what the song sounds like.
Please mod AC parent up - I - IV - V (not I - III - IV) is and has been the standard pop/rock harmony progression since the 1950s, with roots that go back to turn of the 20th century 12 bar blues from the Mississippi delta.
I - III - IV is practically unknown among pop songs (though I - III - IV- IVminor is a common enough phrase in some songs, but rarely if ever the main progression)
I have been writing songs for about 30 years. Just about every writer who has studied the topic knows these patterns and formulas. While it is somewhat difficult to identify a hit song before it charts, it is **extremely** difficult to write one. Unfortnately, knowing these formulas and patters will only get you pointed in the right direction. It takes skill and talent to write a hit song - and a hit is just as much about production values as writing. That's an entirely separate topic. Cool article, though. -JF
Hey everyone, just want to clear up a few things. First, we never claimed to have discovered a "hit formula". The media glommed onto our hypothetical opening paragraph and apparently didn't pay too much attention to our results. Please read the study observations, not the articles, for the full story. This was for a data visualization class and we thought it would be cool to mash up the Billboard data with the EchoNest data. There is no "control group" as we were only observing descriptive metadata from "hit songs". We are working on doing some statistical analysis to look at correlations. However, the data is available and we encourage others to play with it as well. Cheers, Shaun and Thomas
Since we came up with the genetic code for a good song, does this mean I mean have to hear a Rebecca Black song again?
Just because you are wrong and I called you out on it doesn't mean I am a Troll.
Some years back while mixing and mastering an album..in attempting to setup my listening room and to calibrate my monitors...I starting with a more quantified approach using audio visualization tools that were available from the Internet... I calibrated my monitors and identified frequencies that were dropped out by recording white noise with various microphones and found the sweetspot in the monitor field...in doing so I stumbled into looking at full songs and vocals and I made a observation that I felt was astounding...I analyzed numerous hit songs by running the song through a visualizer that produced a sonogram...I picked vocal artists who had a quality of voice that I found pleasing to listen to and were hit song singers...
I also analyzed some tunes that were great musically but lacked that vocal sparkle.
What I found is that great singers produce a sonogram that shows significant instrument like qualities with several bands of semitones working together to make the actual note sung very rich and full of harmonic vibration and natural dissonance....a thin voice is just that...it lacks the semitones or they are unevenly distributed semitones that accompany the main frequency of the note sung. When the voice lacks a instrument like sonogram...the voice is unpleasant. Of the voices that were the most rich, Mahlia Jackson had several evenly distributed bands of frequencies accompanying the base note both above and below. The distribution of the semitones led me to assume they were near perfect overtones and harmonies that to our ears made the voice sound full and rich. Even Bob Dylan showed the pattern...despite his broken, breathy, nasal singing style his sonogram was rich with character. I thought for sure his would not.
On hit songs from a variety of genres and eras one thing that stood out was the vocals exhibited the same semitone patterns...in varying degree...most amateurs simply do not have this. I though it might of been tape saturation of vocal effects processing but after looking at raw digital vocal tracks from accomplished vocalists those tones were present on unprocessed tracks.
For comparison I also looked at various instruments...cello, violin, saxophone and guitar and it was shown that the semitones were very pronounced and quite numerous above and below the base frequency....one of the tools I used was a simple iTunes visualizer plug-in that provide a horizontal real-time scrolling image of the music. I simply watched the music with a tool that biologists used for analyzing bird calls and various other sounds of nature.
from this analysis I determined a few things, 1. That my own voice is not pleasing. (lol) 2. The music and sound operate on our brains and in a very complex manner and that our ears and brain are perfectly adapt at understanding the sound of music (no pun) at a very minute level of detail. So the structure of a song, key and tempo I believe is simply a coincidence and if you look at the the vocalist and the character and quality of the voice as well as the sound and tonal balance of the instrumentation, that has a very huge influence on our acceptance of one song over another.. What was interesting is that great vocalists seem to be able to control the number of semitones produced and do so to illicit maximum emotional effect in the song itself...which is the artistry and talent of the musician to take the listener beyond simply listening and to create an emotional response..
All in all my few weeks of dorking around with sound from various instruments, vocal tracks, songs and tone generators I came away with a new found appreciation of great music and how special the people are that make music...and that we separate and celebrate these people and their ability because it is a very rare gift indeed.
No mention to Knuth's work of art?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Complexity_of_Songs
Isn't this slashdot?
I took a course in my university that was called "Introduction to music", which was pretty good. One day, our teacher showed us a BBC documentary that was narrated by George Martin. Sadly, I haven't been able to find it. It was a very interesting show, because he talked exactly about this subject. He analyzed some popular songs and related them to the way he thought music producing is, and shared some interesting ideas. For instance, he said that popular songs tend to be in the 120 bpm range because our hearts beat approximately at that frequcency, and we find it more pleasurable to walk at that particular speed. To illustrate that idea, he took a Bee Gees song and tore it apart (Stayin' Alive, IIRC), and said that we like to walk and sing-along with tunes that have some correlation with our heartbeats. On a personal note, I find that most songs in the popular repertoire have the same verse-chorus structure because, in some ways, it's easier for a writer to compose a song in that way instead of having to ellaborate in different key circles for each part that share a common idea. Think of Coldplay's "42" or Radiohead's "Paranoid Android" (Doug Adams should be proud!). Those two songs don't have a normal verse-chorus structure and are somewhat difficult to follow because of it. For a pop singer it's easier to write a catchy song if it has a very singable chorus to which people can sing-along. Sir George Martin really made me think about popular music, being an amateur musician myself.
Democracy: Crowdsourcing a country near you
Harry Chapin touched on that subject in his song "Bananas". It was a formula for a hit country-western song. In it it said you had to mention motherhood, infidelity (hurting songs), and trucks. He also said that you needed a fiddle, steel guitar and it also helped to have a choir ( the audience - aka he Mormon Tubercular Choir ). The resulting song was rather funny.
"Harry, IT SUCKS!"
If you look closely at the visualizations, you can totally see where Berry Gordy is giving payola to the DJ's.
the one and only chord progression needed for making money is: I-V-vi-IV :)
ALL modern pop hits are thoroughly analyzed and number-crunched before the producer makes any kind of investment. Pop music is big business, and big business is driven by one thing and one thing only: money. (I'm not saying this is a bad thing; I'm only saying that the majority of pop music is designed precisely to exract dollars from your wallet. The pop music of today is much more of a product designed to be sold, rather than an art designed to be enjoyed.)
When the formula was applied to generate a new hit, Rebecca Black's "Friday" was the output.
s/[stupid comments]/[intelligent discourse]/gi
What a great link!!! I didn't even have to enable flash to view the page! Finally, someone who knows how to program a functional web page!
You can use little "formulas" to determine chord progressions that will sound ok but you can't make a good song with formulas. It's not about having tempo x to be successful, it's about having the appropriate tempo for that particular song you're writing. Using statistics to make these sort of decisions will lead to mediocre results at best.
Also, about the study, if the tempo on most hits average out at 119.80 bpm, that could just mean that all songs (hits or not) average out at 119.80. The same could be said about all other variables in this study. The only merit I see in it is in studying trends over time.
This is a fascinating subject though. One day we may be able to generate new songs on demand with some piece of software that would mirror the kind of algorithms we use ourselves to produce music and to judge its quality, whatever they may be.
That is "lowest common denominator".
Just because it's "lowest" doesn't necessarily mean it's particularly "low", just that going any "higher" destroys the commonality. If you're talking about widespread common ground among millions of different people, then you're talking about lowest common denominator.
"The KLF" already wrote a manual (which is really called "The Manual" :-) ) on how to make a #1 hitsong. I think it was written in the late nineties.
:-)
They more or less mention the same things. If you want to read it, google is your friend
...You are over-qualified and under-paid. If we give you a raise, we will break the cosmic balance of the universe.
Exactly, it's circular. People like what they hear so execs give us more of it to the point that's all we ever get. The same thing's happening with hollywood, nobody is willing to go off formula so we are getting the same movie formulas all the time.
That is "lowest common denominator".
Just because it's "lowest" doesn't necessarily mean it's particularly "low", just that going any "higher" destroys the commonality. If you're talking about widespread common ground among millions of different people, then you're talking about lowest common denominator.
1. Decide that a term I used bothers you.
2. Miss the point being made.
3. Find a way to insert your offense at my term into the conversation.
4. Uh, profit?
Ever listen to much recent popular music? It's at around an 8th grade emotional level, usually about a failed relationship. That puts the low in lowest common denominator. I'm sorry if the correct way of naming things offends you.
This isn't like taking a survey of 5 million men and asking if they enjoy getting hit in the testicles. There will be an extremely common answer to that question. It's not a low common denominator because not getting hit in the testicles really is the superior choice when compared to getting hit in the testicles. This should be easy to understand.
Now then. Music is about art, expression, and personal taste and ability to appreciate. In other words, it's a very individual thing. The superior choice is what suits your tastes after you get to know yourself well enough to have explored and refined your tastes and preferences. What is the superior choice for you may not be the superior choice for me. You aren't going to get 5 million people to all agree on something unless you severely dumb down the available choices. Then you can get something approaching the either-or scenario of whether or not to get hit in the testicles. But to do that, you first have to take the incredible diversity and brilliant variety of real art and human expression available and reduce it to a few formulaic choices. This can be called lowering the available choices. It puts the low in lowest common denominator.
It doesn't get much easier to understand than this. Even if you still don't like it. Either tell me why my reasoning is unsound and be prepared to demonstrate why, or find some other agenda in need of an apologist and go defend that.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Go figure!
Is the artist young.
Is the artist cute (let's have a visualisation of that!).
Is the artist single.
From working class background or middle class (you'd be surprised).
Does the artist dress or act provocatively.
Does the artist have a manner about them which disaffected youths can identify with; surly, angry, thoughtful, suicidal, etc.
Who is their manager.
Does their manager handle other successful acts.
Does the singer indulge in absurd but page column filling stunts.
Does the label behind the artist have lots of money to spend.
Has the artist just died.
etc.
There is plenty more to a successful release than melody, duration and beat, and not much of it is connected with the music itself.
Hm, I suspect I actually misunderstood you.
See, this is Slashdot. When you said
There's no way you could have widespread common ground among millions of different people, for something as hugely diverse and personal as individual taste in music, without recourse to the lowest common denominator.
, I took for granted that you were being sarcastic, and were attempting to argue exactly the opposite of what you were saying, and were expressing anger at the use of "lowest".
That's what I was reacting to.
(And no, I have not ever listened to much recent popular music. Not sure what I might discover if I did. I haven't yet heard a single song by "Lady GaGa" or "Justin Bieber" or ... heck, that's all I can name.)
Is there a point to posting links to slashdot anymore? Firefox can't do a thing with them.
I could swear this was part of the plot to a "Numbers" episode.
Maybe it's me, maybe it's who ever wrote the summary pulling something out his ass. But I don't think I've ever played a song with a I-III-IV progression.
Then again I play blues and country which tend to be different variations of I-IV-V.
I want to shoot the messenger!
Believe me, you aren't missing anything worthwhile. There's only so many different ways a singer can whine about their inability to mature into an adult person with the self-knowledge to confidently select a life partner who's actually good for them to be with, and then invest the effort and patience it takes to form a healthy relationship. Apparently that's a complex and endlessly interesting subject for many. It's far from being inspiring or edifying or enlightening. You could hold your nose and call it "art" but you degrade the term by doing it.
It might not be sarcasm to suggest ritual purification after having one's ears tarnished with it.
If we valued EQ half as much as IQ we'd have a much better world.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Something from the summary really irked me: I doubt they'd find that the best songs use a I-III-IV progression. Pop songs practically all start with a I-IV-V progression. (Remember the lyrics to Hallelujah? "It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth...")
When the III is used, it's usually minor, though the minor vi is more common ("The minor fall.."). The I-vi-IV-V sequence has been the basis of rock and pop since the 50s. Learn those four chords, and you can play practically any top 40 hit. (You know the guy complaining about Pachelbel's Canon? Most of them are really just using the I-vi-IV-V, which happens to mesh nicely with Pachelbel's real progression: I-V-vi-iii-IV-I-IV-V.)
So I checked their data and discovered... nothing. Nowhere in their data do they talk about chord progressions. That's not really surprising, since figuring out the chord progressions is much trickier than figuring out the tempo. But they mention it in the summary. Why?
Because that progression is so universal, of course you'd see it in the top 40 hits. You're also going to see it in the songs you've never heard of. If they really had found that I-III-IV was a frequent hit, they'd actually have learned something.
This wasn't really intended as news. It's old stuff with new visualization applied. It's a student exercise passed off as research by people who don't actually know the state of the art, like the stories about "Students build 9,000 mpg car; why can't Detroit do that?"
It just irks me that they're talking a little music theory and betraying their lack of understanding of music theory in the process. What I've just talked about is something every, EVERY musician knows.
100% of them have an average of some number of beats per minute
If I look at my favorite songs, quite a lot of them are 6/8. I actually get tired of the formula verse, verse chorus verse chorus bridge chorus. Some of my favorites have no bridge at all. And I prefer songs that have at least some minor component to them, although not necessarily in a minor key. So I guess I am not pop music's target audience. There's a pop song out right now by Parachute called "Something to believe in (Jeremiah)" that I find pretty good. It has some commonality with the traits espoused by the study. It's in 4/4, the song structure is similar, though I am not sure if they technically have a bridge since at the end they background singers are singing the "bridge" lyrics over the chorus. That, by the way, is one of the things I really like about the song. Reminds me of the melody/countermelody singing at the same time in "No Sugar Tonight/New Mother Nature" by The Guess Who.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Another thing to remember is that the Billboard charts and other music industry charts are manipulated, to some extent, by the record companies. So the charts are not a scientific snapshot of what happened, they're just a general look at what was happening.
Actually, I just tried I-III-IV on the piano, and it sounds pretty good, but it is in no way complete. It seems it should go something like I-III-IV-V-I, likely with other excursions, but getting back to I. Anyway, I-III-IV is essentially the same as I-I-IV with a major seventh added to the second I.
On another note, the scatter plots in the linked article show absolutely no correlations, let alone any formulas. They basically only show the range of the parameters looked at.
And the only graph with a decent-looking (non-constant) linear correlation seemed to be the increase in loudness with time.
And how the heck do you quantify "danceability"? It seems like any correlations of danceability are tied up with the factors used to define danceablilty.
Analysis is interesting but given the data only comes from top-ten songs it's not useful for judging what makes a hit song popular (without a similar or larger sized data set of songs from the same artists that didn't make the Billboard). The study would be better titled: Differences between a ho-hum top-ten song and a number-1 hit.
I-IV-V-I and its' variations are probably the most popular progressions in pop music (as they are almost everywhere), but blues and rock very often use I-V-IV-I and derivatives. The standard blues progression is I-IV-I-V-IV-I. And rock sometimes uses variations on I-VII-VI-V-I (in a minor key).
It's called 'Mozart'. Also 'Beethoven', 'Handel', 'Chopin' are good formulas, too...
If you're interested in playing with the visualization live on the web, click on the link below. It'll take you to an interactive version we created here at Tableau of the Rutgers students' data.
http://public.tableausoftware.com/views/billboard_songs/AnatomyofaHit?:embed=yes&:tabs=yes&:toolbar=yes
This is all bands will be producing from now on? No, this is all shitty bands will be producing from now on, and have been producing forever. Believe it or not there are genres BESIDES pop that treat music as an art form not a money making tool.
Some researchers did a survey to find out what elements people like and dislike in music. They then combined them to produce the most wanted and most unwanted songs.
http://www.wired.com/listening_post/2008/05/survey-produced/
http://www.wired.com/listening_post/2008/04/a-scientific-at/
The most wanted song is bland and annoying. The most unwanted song is *hilarious*.
IIRC, they also did the same thing with visual art using survey data from different countries.
Visit the
Composed for nearly fifty years and has been decomposing ever since.
Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
Being a musician who plays live and has attempted to submit music to the industry I know exactly what makes a hit song. It's called pop. Pop music is the same regardless of what music you apply it to. It fallows the 3 chord formula. Use only 3 chords because it is easy to process. More people listen to Lady Gaga than Dream Theater because Gaga songs are all written using the pop formula. Dream Theater is a progressive band who uses the entire spectrum of notes, styles, and has a tendency to write songs that last for 28 minutes...most people who listen to pop listen to 1 song until they are bored with it, then they go to the next song. And said song is only 3 minutes long.... Chorus, lyrics, bridge, chorus, lyrics, bridge, chorus, (solo optional) chorus. This is the formula for metal bands wanting to be on the Jagermeister Tour. Your music must conform to a formula in order to be considered. Minimum of 3 chorus parts per song. Go back thru your fav music and count the chorus parts (usually the song will start with the chorus riff but does not count because of the lack of lyrics) if you hear it 3 times...you got pop on your hands and you need to listen to a wider range of music, there is always better out there. Now...this formula has not been around forever, it is just in recent times this has come to pass, but the record industry has always tried to find ways to sucker people into their wallets. Like any other business they have schemes and plans to wrestle your hard earned dollar (unless your a kid in which case get a job you lazy leech) from your hands.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XKDTOiNqdE&feature=related - almost a Rick-Roll.
Fandroids hate facts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manual
Then you still wouldn't be able to make a hit song. Some of the other parts of this "formula" aren't surprising. 135 bpm is a common tempo for letting people dance to the music (and being in 4/4, or common time as it has been called for centuries, helps as well). If you can or want to dance to a piece of music, then you will obviously enjoy it more and remember it, maybe even tell your friends about it and buy it, helping that song's success. The chord progression is common, too, because it resolves to the fifth every time, giving the music an easy and predictable feeling of completion, alienating no one and letting us all feel familiar with the track already.
Though, this study seems shortsighted. Music being written by everyone would likely fall into this "hit formula" as well. Hell, the rock genre is pretty much defined by it.
But because it's so broad, this formula really isn't useful. I'd be more interested in seeing them further it by examining riff and hihat patterns and trying to find a correlation there.
boobs
androgynous boys
Mod me down, I shall become more off-topic than you could possibly imagine.
Complete fail - they are all I-IV-V. Anyway it would be I-iii-IV.
when dealing with the short-attention span crowd known as the Fourth Estate - most of whom don't know what that means.
My cousin used to work for them but just couldn't take it anymore the level of greed and illegal scamming that goes on in that company. Take that viral song yet epic crap heap Rebecca Black - Friday... Her mom wants to make her daughter a pop star so instead of true talent or talent scouts finding new talent, her mother goes into Ark music factory office (not even a studio) has to pay $4000 and fill out paperwork.
Then they have 2 songs to choose from depending on male or female. Then the song is recorded by the person and they are done, sent home with a chance to get extremely low percentage on sales for 1 year only! No residuals ongoing, Ark only allows 1 year. So they have technical engineers who aren't really musicians clean up the singing with stuff like autotune and multitude of other filters, then using software like Ableton to record multiple music tracks there is never a real instrument played. They now have a track that they use corporate leverage to get radio stations to play.
Of course the Rebecca Black situation blew up in their face, but ARK and many other "canned pop" studios have been doing that for years now. Acts such as Lady Gaga, have also been done that way, gaga plays the part of some crazy eccentric person while all the time her music is just canned pop similar to Ark Music Factory.
it has come down to a formula for many "music studios"
In an interesting experiment, a couple of Artists hired a polling firm to ask people of various countries what they would like to see MOST and LEAST in a painting. Then they executed the paintings and the results are interesting. For the US, the most wanted painting was a landscape painting, with lakes and forests and deer. You can see the painting here: http://awp.diaart.org/km/usa/most.html. I think it's fair to say it's an entirely innocuous and forgettable painting. But it does illustrate (!) exactly what happens when you try to appeal to the widest audience - mediocrity.
You can see the rest of the paintings for other countries' responses. It's interesting to see that all the paintings are roughly the same, save for Holland. http://awp.diaart.org/km/painting.html
These artists also used the same methods to create a most-wanted song, and the result, again, is about what you'd find on your average pop radio station (at that time). The link to the song is also on their website
Assembly line music was literally what Motown used to run on. One person to teach the singing, one to teach the dancing, one to teach interacting with fans etc.
A semitone is a musical increment of pitch. Are you talking about harmonics?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manual
Status Quo have survived on it since the 1960s.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sECL5oNpsb4&feature=related
200 comments and no 1984 references?
Turn in your geek cards, all of you.
Because people are predictable, and programmable.
Sure, you wont catch everyone, but if you get on the top 40 and make 100 million, do you care?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
because it's what they think we want to hear.
What we want to hear? You don't seem to understand the music industry. It's not about music, it's about the visuals. You either need a rack, need to be black, or shock (wear latex, fishnets, be 150kg, etc)
If there is one common thing about pop music is that since the 1990s there hasn't been any actual music involved.
Or if you want a hit do what Mariah Carey did and married the Boss of Sony. He then treated her like shit and beat her all the time. She certainly got hit.