Hit Song Science

The whole point has always been to figure out what 'the people' want and find a product that's close enough for most. I, personally, think the music industry is far more about telling the people what they want.
Maybe I'm just to cynical.

They can try and tell me what I want,
but unless they know me better than I do,
they don't stand a chance.

KR2

Mass entertainment is just that, a product to entertain a large group of people.

That's true but...

What we had in the past was mass entertainment marketed by hundreds of lables (and thousands of artists). The public got to pick and choose what entertained them. If a label guessed right, they could make a fortune (Richard Branson, Alpert & Moss, Ahmet, etc)

What we have today is mass entertainment provided by an oligopoly - just a handful of labels with the ability to get their product effectively to market. (I'm talking top-40 market; some indie labels are doing quite well). So I think today's situation is a lot like hamburgers... there are still many mom & pop burger shops, but most people are eating at McDonalds. Not because it's better... but because we've been conditioned to buy them.

I, personally, think the music industry is far more about telling the people what they want.
Maybe I'm just to cynical.

Bingo! Give the man a see-gar!

Cat

I, personally, think the music industry is far more about telling the people what they want.
Maybe I'm just to cynical.
Here's a fairly lengthy Frank Zappa quote, from a speech he delivered to the American Society of University Composers back in 1984.
-----

Some of you don't know about Debbie, since you don't have to deal with
radio stations and record companies the way the people from The Real
World do, but you ought to find out about her, just in case you decide to
visit later.
Debbie is thirteen years old. Her parents like to think of themselves as
Average, God-Fearing American White Folk. Her Dad belongs to a
corrupt union of some sort and is, as we might suspect, a lazy,
incompetent, overpaid, ignorant son-of-a-bitch.
Her mother is a sexually maladjusted mercenary shrew who lives to
spend her husband's paycheck on ridiculous clothes -- to make her look
'younger.'
Debbie is incredibly stupid. She has been raised to respect the values and
traditions which her parents hold sacred. Sometimes she dreams about
being kissed by a lifeguard.
When the people in the Secret Office Where They Run Everything From
found out about Debbie, they were thrilled. She was perfect. She was
hopeless. She was their kind of girl.
She was immediately chosen to become the Archetypical Imaginary Pop
Music Consumer & Ultimate Arbiter of Musical Taste for the Entire
Nation -- from that moment on, everything musical in this country would
have to be modified to conform to what they computed to be her needs
and desires.
Debbie's 'taste' determined the size, shape and color of all music
broadcast and sold in the United States during the latter part of the
twentieth century.

------

It sounds like this software is an attempt to make an "electronic Debbie"

To say that Zappa's early exit was a loss is certainly an understatement. :(

He also said: "The key word in music industry...is industry!"

Cat

To say that Zappa's early exit was a loss is certainly an understatement. :(

He also said: "The key word in music industry...is industry!"

Cat
"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench. A long plastic hallway where pimps and thieves run free and good men die like dogs. There is also a negative side."
- Hunter S Thompson

So true.

I agree that there is a lot of conditioning when it comes to musical tastes but I wonder if there is anyway to escape from it. Say you like an indie band, signed under an indie label who also want to fight the mainstream. You share their music around, bring friends to their gigs, the band gets more and more popular. Eventually they get the attention of a major label and sign on. They get music videos on MTV, radio playing and are now the in the mainstream, the very same mainstream they were rebelling against.

This is where it becomes impossible to escape the mainstream. As much as a small indie band fights the mainstream, avoids paint by numbers music, liking them for this reason (or any reason) may lead to them becoming mainstream and all of the sudden you have thousands of bands doing what they are doing.

There are people who will refuse to like a band if they are popular. I think liking a band because they are NOT popular is the same as liking them because they are. I consider this a form of mental conditioning as well.

Back to the software:
Crunching numbers for a "hit" should work...but only to the point of coming up with another pointless AM pop tune. As far as aesthetics go...nope...only the brain's got that kind of software!

Most people are into the blues/classic rock here and you figure that out in musical space that has to be some hit clusters for that genre. So in theory, it could be applied to any genre. From what I can tell, this software does not help you create songs. You record the song and the software will tell you if you have a hit on your hands. It will not tell you "increase the tempo by 14bpm to get a hit" it will just say "it's a hit" or "it's not a hit." How to write the hit song is still going to be up to the artist. It would seem the best application for this software is picking which song should be your single from an album.

Some of the catchiest stuff EVER was written by Brahms, Mahler...yep, Beethoven, too. I've snitched Bach's organ fugues (the REALLY low heavy guts stuff) by using bari saxes to colour the bottom of things. Remember Edgar Winter/"White Trash"??? I mean HEAVY stuff thank you Mr Bach!

Hits is hits. But I can't see determining just what a "hit" is until the first earfull. I mean, the topic here is "hit song science" so the free-flowing stuff doesn't add up (at least for me) on that account.

There's been all sorts of ways people think they can come up with hits...not unlike "accurate" racing forms over at the ponies!

Cat

Hits is hits. But I can't see determining just what a "hit" is until the first earfull. I mean, the topic here is "hit song science" so the free-flowing stuff doesn't add up (at least for me) on that account.

The question that would need to be answered to determine if a hit can be predicited would be: are hits random or can they e put into a formula? It's debatable but I think they can. This computer would analyze a song break it down to tempo, rhythm chords and what not and compare it with songs that have similar qualities to see if they have been hits before. It's a computer that guesses by patterns which is something we as human beings do as well. We have music theory which is basically a roadmap of what sounds good. Chord structures, scales based on intervals etc. If we can construct a song on this, we can deconstruct a song the same way. Even the free-flowing music could be analyzed. Free-flowing stuff wouldn't be immune to this. Even improv made up on the spot usually sticks to familar chord progressions and scale patterns so it could be deconstructed and plotted in musical space.

The hit or miss part of it will come from something a computer can't take into account: the politics. If it were to say predict the next Britney Spears song will be a smash it, it wouldn't be taking into account that most of us have had our fill of her from her divorce, custody battles and etc. If we didn't love an artist for saving the rain forest or hate them for tearing up a picture of the pope, I believe a hit could be predicted with some degree of accuracy.

I guess I gotta jump into this...

There's "commercial" and then there's "COMMERCIAL".

On one hand there's pop music (IE: pop = popular). Yeah...yer right about the whole Brittney scene.

Then there's "real" commercial music...made that way to sell things like beer...and THIS is the stuff that seems to get the most ire from anybody.

One is sort of duplicitous because it's the music (itself) that IS the product...as opposed to the jingles...which is outright commercial...that sell a thing not related to music.

So here's a GREAT point to ponder:
...which one is "real" for a musician to consider doing? :lol:

Cat

They get music videos on MTV, radio playing and are now the in the mainstream, the very same mainstream they were rebelling against.

This is where it becomes impossible to escape the mainstream. As much as a small indie band fights the mainstream, avoids paint by numbers music, liking them for this reason (or any reason) may lead to them becoming mainstream and all of the sudden you have thousands of bands doing what they are doing.

Underneath absolutely EVERYTHING is the plain fact that writing/producing/marketing a GOOD PIECE OF MUSIC will transcend everything. You hold all the cards. They see your commercial potential...and know that YOU are well aware of that fact! So "the mainstream" industry can be made to work.

Good music will always "sell"...with little or no effort. An appreciative brain. That's what knows what a "hit" is...and can write another one. And that's where the software is! :wink:

Cat

Good music will always "sell"...with little or no effort. An appreciative brain. That's what knows what a "hit" is...and can write another one. And that's where the software is!

As long as you define 'good music' as 'music that sells with little or no effort'...

The hit or miss part of it will come from something a computer can't take into account: the politics. If it were to say predict the next Britney Spears song will be a smash it, it wouldn't be taking into account that most of us have had our fill of her from her divorce, custody battles and etc. If we didn't love an artist for saving the rain forest or hate them for tearing up a picture of the pope, I believe a hit could be predicted with some degree of accuracy.

The other thing that, I think, would be hard to program for is songs that are quite different from anything that has been a hit before.
Songs like "7 Nations Army" , or "Smells Like Teen Spirit", or perhaps "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree".

Among the reasons (IMHO) they became popular is that they sounded fresh, and stood out from the crowd. That makes them hard to predict based on history.



That's true but...

I agree with NoteBoat on this. You can put us geezers down for liking our old Classic Rock and Blues, but back in the 60's and 70's this was the very case, there were many groups with diverse styles. I mean, Creedence Clearwater Revival sounds nothing like Steely Dan whatsoever. Back then it was cool to be different. And if you were good and the folks called in, you got airplay. You can say there are many groups playing very diverse music today and that is true, but you are not hearing it on the major stations and that is the difference. Music today is very disjointed. It is not much different than TV. Back then you basically had NBC, ABC, CBS, and PBS (yikes!). On Sunday night you got to watch Ed Sullivan and nobody even knew what was on the other channels. It was just the better show and everyone tuned in. And that is where I and everybody else saw the Beatles. So, a group then would be heard by the whole country.

And TV today is not really better because you have 250 channels to watch. The vast majority of it is junk. When you had 3 channels you had to be good to get on TV. So, there was less quantity, but better quality. And music is the same. You can hear music from hundreds of different sources today, but most of it is junk, it really is.

There was plenty of junk music back then, we had our bubblegum, but man, you could tune into the underground FM stations and here the best music ever. It was awesome. I guess you can hear that kind of stuff on some of the college stations today.

But the point is, the more stations you have, and the more sources to hear music the worse it is. It is like Baseball. When you've got only 20 teams, every player is good. But when you've got 100 teams, you've got to get less talented players to fill in.

I don't really believe anyone can be forced to listen to bad music, hey, I just turn the channel.

Oh, and to answer the question, the problem for the last 20 years has been that the music industry has followed formulas. That is why the quality of music went down. And if they use programs like this to structure songs they will get even more dismal and all sound alike. What made the Classic Rock era so great is that the musicians were in charge of the music, not the business executives.