Harker: Is a Hit Song Just An Algorithm?

Formula For A Hit?

In its most recent posting on its Radio Insights blog, HARKER RESEARCH masterminds RICHARD HARKER and GLENDA SHRADER BOS ask, "Is a Hit Song Just an Algorithm? Is there a formula, some special combination of sound codes, that can tell us whether listeners will like a song?"

"Apparently some people think so," they continue. "They feel humans are inferior to computers and artificial intelligence in determining what songs you should play. There's a tremendous effort going on to build large song databases, coding each tune with such things as tempo, key, and instrumentation. Perhaps the best known is PANDORA's 'Music Genome Project'. Musicologists coded PANDORA's 800,000 songs with up to 400 distinct characteristics, everything from chordal patterns to such things as instrumentation and even something called 'motion inducing'.'

HARKER notes, "At least PANDORA enlisted the help of humans to build their database."

Read the full blog here.

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