High Tech Answer to Pop-Music Hit Factory.
Company says its science cuts back on guesswork.
April 21, 2003
Record executives have long relied on their golden ears, gut reactions and luck to pick the hits.
But some music producers are trying to take the guesswork out of this quasi-mystical process by resorting to supercomputers, artificial intelligence and algorithms.
Hit Song Science, a high-tech system that electronically compares newly recorded songs with a database of thousands of old Top 40 tunes to identify common attributes, is being used by Sony, BMG, EMI and other music giants to help them predict which pop sounds will ultimately soar.
“Songs have hundreds of distinct mathematical similarities,” said Tracie Reed, vice president of North American operations for Polyphonic HMI, which has developed the novel note-crunching system. “We analyze those underlying patterns, including melody, tempo, harmony and pitch, to determine a song’s hit potential.”
The use of science to unlock the secrets of smash hits comes as the recording industry and radio stations are being slammed by some critics for promoting what they say is a glut of derivative, homogenous music containing little artistic impulse.
So will 50 Cent’s next chart-topping hip-hop tune sound suspiciously similar to an old Randy Travis country ballad?
Several songs that were put through Polyphonic’s elaborate testing have since become ensconced on Billboard magazine’s Hot 100, Reed said.
She declined to name the hit recordings because of confidentiality agreements the company has with labels, some of which are apparently sensitive to allegations that they are manipulating the public’s taste for profit.
However, two record industry executives said they lean heavily on Polyphonic’s pre-release reports to weed out probable sonic duds.
The information “helps reduce uncertainty” about a tune’s prospects, said Muff Winwood, a Sony UK vice president and singer Steve Winwood’s older brother.
Producer Peter Swartling, whose projects and artists have won him more than 20 Grammy awards, said he uses Polyphonic’s services in the pre-production process to keep him and studio musicians on the right track.
“We as producers have an ability to hear what sounds right and what doesn’t,” Swartling said. “However, I think we can always become more precise.”
Certainly, producers and songwriters have long tried to decipher the formula for cutting best-selling records, occasionally creating tunes bordering on plagiarism.
As early as the 1950s, Elvis Presley and Pat Boone were accused by some listeners of ripping off Little Richard and other black singers.
Likewise, George Harrison was successfully sued for “subconscious plagiarism” over his huge hit “My Sweet Lord” because it has the same melody as The Chiffons’ 1963 classic “He’s So Fine.”
Science fiction
But music industry observers say Polyphonic’s initiative takes the practice of breaking down songs note by note into the realm of science fiction, where computers become the primary creative force.
“This has an ominous sound to it, and I can understand some people having a negative reaction,” said Paul Williams, the legendary editor of the rock magazine Crawdaddy and the author of “Back to the Miracle Factory,” a book analyzing 1990s-era rock ‘n’ roll.
Yet while Polyphonic’s technology has the potential for creating music with a “boring sameness,” Williams said, it also could be “a stimulus for some appealing and enduring recordings. . . . Making music is a mysterious process which often comes up with works of art, so I wouldn’t rule out any peculiar circumstance involved in that.”
Polyphonic, which has a U.S. office in Harleysville, Pa., maintains a supercomputer containing more than 250,000 CDs, as well as a subset of about 700 of the top 30 songs from Billboard’s Hot 100 during the past five years.
The company’s proprietary software purportedly isolates dozens of sonic patterns contained in past hits – including brightness, tempo and chord progression – which likely influenced music consumers’ purchases.
Hits are also evaluated on the basis of total sales, highest chart position and date of release.
“These songs form distinct (statistical) clusters” in the data, Reed said, noting that a Beethoven symphony could have at least some of the same hit components found in a U2 song. “New releases, potential releases and even unsigned acts can then be compared with the database to allow a record label to see how well songs fit into the current market.”
Polyphonic issues each new song a final grade based on a numerical scale of 1 to 10. “A rating of over 7 means the song has a very strong hit potential,” Reed said.
Labels are paying Polyphonic $3,000 a pop to evaluate potential releases.
Intangible factors
The company said its high-tech system isn’t completely foolproof because it has no control over such intangible factors as a record company’s ability to promote a song or the inherent charisma – and sales power – certain recording artists possess to push a song, any song, to the top.
Moreover, Polyphonic’s computer does not assess a song’s lyrical content.
“Besides our rating, a record still needs a professional’s ear and promotion,” said Reed, noting that the company’s rating system has occasionally given a song hit-bound status even though it was clearly a long shot.
One such tune was a six-minute instrumental, which was “a really good song, but was inappropriate,” she said. “We told (the client) to shorten the song, add lyrics, and it might be a hit.”
Polyphonic said it plans to soon provide its service online to amateur artists and garage bands that need a quick read on their prospects for the big time.
Artists will be able to get a Hit Song Science rating for an as-yet-undetermined price.
The company is also talking to music retailers about installing computer kiosks so customers can quickly compile playlists containing hundreds of songs reflecting their personal, quirky preferences.
“They may indicate that they like ‘Smoke On The Water’ by Deep Purple and that they want five songs similar to it,” Reed said.
Reed said Polyphonic has no intention of using its musical X-ray machines to write and produce music, as some cynics have suggested.
“While we help show producers and songwriters what’s working and not working in their compositions and production work, this technology does not do the work for them,” she said.
Here is the link to Polyphonic HMI if you would like to read more about it/them.
http://www.polyphonicHMI.com Best regards,
Mike
PS: As you can tell by my thumbs down on the post header, I am leery about all of this. It seems to take the soul's expression and emotion out of making good music and puts it into the power of a machine. They say that they have many Top 100 hits by using this Super Computer, but it appears to be nothing more than profit, ie., "greed" driven. Whatever happened to good ol' artistic talent and producing beautiful music because of your love for it? Not because all you want to do is make money out of it. Something like this is a step backward imo. I mean, if everybody relied on computer algorithms to determine if they will have a hit or not pretty soon there would be plenty of lazy musicians around full of greed and no inspiration/perspiration and no sense of self fulfillment or enjoyment by creating beautiful music the old fashioned way: They earned it! By putting their heart and soul and their love for music into it.
My 2 cents
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