mental_floss magazine
SUBSCRIBE >
GIFT SUBSCRIPTIONS >
DIGITAL SUBSCRIPTIONS >
subscriber services >
“Some people describe a hit song as a brain itch,” reads the corporate literature for the Music X-Ray, a new service that mathematically analyzes songs for musicians and record labels (for a fee, of course), to determine how statistically likely it is that they’ll be a hit — and scratch that itch for the masses. The way the X-Ray works is this: most hit songs supposedly conform to a limited number of mathematical patterns — patterns so subtle that only a computer (and X-Ray’s fancy proprietary software) can detect and analyze them. The way it works is this: you submit your song to the X-Ray, and you get back a report that rates your song on a scale from Platinum (”Smash hit sound!”) to Copper (”No hit”), and for a cool $100 you can even get a (theoretically less robotic) A&R executive’s opinion. A disclaimer on their website counsels that a low grade doesn’t mean your song doesn’t “sound” like a hit — just that it would be “seriously challenged to perform well in the market.” For those of you who thinking that this all sounds a little absurd and very un-rock, beware: before long you can bet that our already programmed-to-be-popular hits will be X-Rayed, as well.
Comments (5)
Comment
- Follow mental_floss
I don’t know. This sounds like it would be fundamentally flawed for the single fact that most new hits, at least the kind that I enjoy, don’t sound like anything that has come before them. Otherwise, we’d just keep hearing reinventions of “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” all the time.
posted by Johnny Cat on 5-29-2007 at 12:58 pm
This software was created by a group called Platinum Blue, who will run your song through a basic version of it for a scant $10. They were profiled in an article by Malcolm Gladwell for the New Yorker a while back. He talks a lot about different means of quantifying seemingly subjective media, and goes into depth with the PB guys.
One important thing to note is that this software can’t write songs, so it won’t come up with “I Wanna Hold Your Hand.” If you happened to run that song through, I imagine it would do pretty well.
posted by Parker Higgins on 5-29-2007 at 1:56 pm
Add to that pitch-correcting software like Auto-Tune and software like Apple’s GarageBand. Soon we may be listening to music that has little to do with human creativity and performance.
As long as I still enjoy listening to it, I am not sure that it makes a difference to me. However, I don’t doubt that any number of artists would disagree.
posted by n2y2 on 5-29-2007 at 2:08 pm
hmph, not surprising. popular music today is all by-the-numbers robotized junk. this is another step in the distancing of music from human emotion in popular music, and will likely do well. naturally, the music industry, like all other industries, has an interest in maintaining the status quo as long as possible in all senses to take advantage of its predictable money-making opportunities (change can be adapted to, but to keep the status quo doesn’t require any energy to be put into adaptation, leaving more to be invested in advertising, promotion, etc–pure profit-making). the less intelligent, revolutionary, emotional, and ground-breaking the music marketed to the masses is, the less music can be a force for change in the world, and anyone who wants to keep things how they are as long as they can keep making a buck off of the way things are will support the cheapening of music.
in summary, this not only doesn’t surprise me, i expect it to be wildly succesful.
posted by ian on 5-29-2007 at 4:41 pm
Just what corporate music needed. Back when, labels gave bands several chances to make it. Some artists were carried for years with pretty minimal sales. Today, if you’re next release doesn’t hit, you’re dropped.
With this, they won’t even have to waste thier time with giving a band one chance. They can concentrate on what’s important: PROFIT.
We can all name several unlikely hits of the past that this software would have junked. But that’s already a thing of the past. We already have formulaic music for formulaic radio.
Good music’s still out there, you’ve just got to work for it.
posted by Bassman on 5-30-2007 at 6:19 am