Their A&R app said "I don't hear a single"

When music lovers don't like a pop song, they often use the word "formula" to express their disdain. If you have artistic integrity, you'll write from the heart instead of painting by numbers, dammit!

Alas. The music world is about to get a whole lot more formulaic. Computer scientists from the University of Bristol have invented an algorithm that can predict whether a song will become a hit.

The researchers used musical features such as, tempo, time signature, song duration and loudness. They also computed more detailed summaries of the songs such as harmonic simplicity, how simple the chord sequence is, and non-harmonicity, how ‘noisy’ the song is.

A ‘hit potential equation’ that scores a song according to its audio features was devised. ... The team found they could classify a song into a ‘hit’ or ‘not hit’ based on its score, with an accuracy rate of 60 per cent as to whether a song will make it to top five, or if it will never reach above position 30 on the UK top 40 singles chart.

(h/t Cracked.com.)

So far this is just a bunch of academics who asked an interesting question ("What specific variables give a song mass appeal?") and found an interesting way to answer it. But it has implications beyond the scholarly realm. Potentially troubling implications.

Less innovation

Big record labels will jump on this technology if it works. Why wouldn't they? Historically, they've chosen new acts based on what they think will sell, and what they think will sell sounds like what has sold before. Nothing new about that.

But every now and again, somebody bucks the trend. Bob Dylan and Nirvana weren't putting out what the labels considered commercial music, but they got their shot because an A&R guy sensed that there was something special about them and convinced the higher-ups to give them a chance.

The algorithm can't do that. One of its limitations is that it only makes correct predictions within a given era—a hit from the early '80s isn't the same as a hit today. So if a new sound comes along, something with the potential to catch fire with a large audience, the program has no way of knowing that.

In an ideal world, there could be A&R people who do their own research when a new musical trend sets off their Spidey sense, and then feed their software new data when they're right. Maybe that will happen. Or maybe the big labels, eager for short-term rewards, will just replace their expensive expert humans with software.

I'll leave you to ponder which option is more likely.

Songwriting software

With the ability to predict what songs will be popular, how long will it be until software is actually writing the songs? How long before my fellow songwriters and I are replaced by a machine?

This sounds like the stuff of science fiction, I know. Still, artificial intelligence is getting better and better. And it's not an either/or proposition—there are intermediate steps. Before we have AI that can compose music and lyrics unaided, we may have ...

• Hit-predicting software as an editing tool. Songwriters will create their own first drafts, then run them through a program to see what they need to change. This isn't the most attractive alternative if you want to express yourself and create something new, but it's highly useful if you're just trying to churn out a hit.
• Songwriting AI that creates the first draft. Early software won't be able to produce a radio hit on its own. The lyrics will probably sound like a bad Babelfish translation. However, it might hash together something a human songwriter can tweak and build upon.

Wild, handwringing speculation, you say? Well, yes. And it's important to remember that the music industry doesn't control all the music. Thanks to the internet and cheaper recording equipment, it's easier than ever for new bands to gain an audience without the help of a label.

But as far as radio play goes, I really do believe this is something to keep an eye on. Technology gets better, and all sorts of things that once sounded like sci fi have become possible. Someday we may have computer programs writing our greatest hits ... and we won't be able to tell the difference.

Hell, the article I linked to is over a year old.

Maybe it's already happened.

Breaking news: People like music!

A new medical study shows that music may have beneficial effects on cancer patients. For instance ...

The authors ... found evidence that music interventions may have a beneficial effect on several physiologic responses, including reducing heart and respiratory rates. These results are also consistent with findings from another Cochrane systematic review on the use of music with coronary heart disease patients, which also found a reduction in heart rate.

(Full Medscape article here. If you hit a registration wall, you can currently get around it by googling cancer music anxiety and clicking the first search result.)

This is interesting stuff, worth exploring further. The headline, though, is what caught my attention:

Music Lowers Anxiety and Boosts Mood in Cancer Patients

Really? Gosh, Medscape, that's fascinating! Who'd have thunk that people with cancer get the same emotional goodies out of music as everybody else?

The perils of background music

New research on music and cognition from the University of Wales Institute! Psychologists have discovered that listening to music may not help you study. From CNN Health:

They instructed 25 participants between ages 18 and 30 try to memorize, and later recall, a list of letters in order ... Participants were tested under various listening conditions: quiet, music that they'd said they liked, music that they'd said they didn't like, a voice repeating the number three, and a voice reciting random single-digit numbers.

The study found that participants performed worst while listening to music, regardless of whether they liked that music, and to the speech of random numbers.

I have to know. Did these guys expect a different finding?

My guess is that nobody puts on study music to help them study. The point is to make an annoying or tedious task a little more pleasant. That's all. They aren't expecting the Mozart effect to make them smarter as they go.

Say it ain't so, Mozart

Aw. Turns out listening to Mozart won't make your kid smarter after all.

While disappointing, this bit of news does represent an opportunity. If Mozart doesn't make you more intelligent, perhaps some other music will. Like, say, Cinder Bridge music!

Maybe if we include crossword puzzle inserts with our CDs ...

Gone fishin'

I will be traveling to visit family today, returning late Tuesday night. While I have people tending to the house while I'm gone, they won't be updating the blog, and I'll likely not access the Internet during the trip.

Here's an article about dancing babies to tide you over.

Have a good weekend. And remember, if babies can move to the music without worrying about how they look doing it, so can you.