Hit Song Science is a term coined by

Mike McCready Michael David McCready (born April 5, 1966) is an American musician who serves as the lead guitarist for the rock band Pearl Jam. Along with Jeff Ament, Stone Gossard, and Eddie Vedder, he is one of the founding members of the band. McCready wa ...

and trademarked by the company he co-founded,

Polyphonic HMI Polyphonic HMI is a music analysis company jointly founded in Barcelona, Spain by Mike McCready and an artificial intelligence firm called Grupo AIA. Its principal product is called "Hit Song Science" (HSS) which uses various statistical and signal ...

. It concerns the possibility of predicting whether a song will be a hit, before its distribution using automated means such as

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence. Machine ...

software.

Scientific background

The scientific nature of Hit Song Science is a subject of debate in the

music information retrieval Music information retrieval (MIR) is the interdisciplinary science of retrieving information from music. MIR is a small but growing field of research with many real-world applications. Those involved in MIR may have a background in academic musicol ...

(MIR) community. Early studies claimed that using

techniques could capture some information from audio signals and lyrics that would explain popularity. However, a larger-scale evaluation contradicts the claims of “Hit Song Science”, i.e. that the popularity of a music title can be learned effectively from known audio features. Many other reasons, including the well-known ''cumulative advantage'' or

preferential attachment A preferential attachment process is any of a class of processes in which some quantity, typically some form of wealth or credit, is distributed among a number of individuals or objects according to how much they already have, so that those who ...

effects deeply contradicts the possibility of practical applications. Nevertheless, automatic prediction techniques are the basis of hit counseling businesses (HSS Technology). Recent work by Herremans et al. has shown that audio features can indeed be used to outperform a random oracle when predicting top 10 versus top 30-40 hits.

Commercial applications

A technology proposing to exploit Hit Song Science was introduced in 2003 by an artificial intelligence company out of Barcelona, Spain, called

. Polyphonic HMI has since spun off a new Delaware C corporation, Music Intelligence Solutions, Inc., which used to run uPlaya, a site geared toward music professionals. In 2006 however one of the company's founders,

left to pursue another direction in the digital music space. The idea of Hit Song Science has generated response from many in the music industry, including

Chuck D Carlton Douglas Ridenhour (born August 1, 1960), known professionally as Chuck D, is an American rapper, best known as the leader and frontman of the hip hop group Public Enemy, which he co-founded in 1985 with Flavor Flav. Chuck D helped creat ...

Robert Lamm Robert William Lamm (born October 13, 1944) is an American keyboardist, guitarist, singer and songwriter best known as a founding member of the rock band Chicago. He wrote many of the band's biggest hits, including " Questions 67 & 68", " Does ...

Stratton Leopold Stratton Leopold (born 1943)"100 Years of Delicious Memories"
- ''South Mag'' ...

, Gregg Scholl of

The Orchard The Orchard may refer to: * The Orchard (company), American music and entertainment company * The Orchard (band), Canadian country music duo * ''The Orchard'' (Lizz Wright album), 2008 * ''The Orchard'' (Ra Ra Riot album), 2010 * The Orchard (t ...

, and officials at The Sync Agency as well as Blue Infinity Music. Prior to McCready's departure, Hit Song Science was profiled by

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an Television in the United States, American English-language Commercial broadcasting, commercial television network, broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Enterta ...

BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board ex ...

and various major news outlets. The plotline of an episode of "

Numb3rs ''Numbers'' (stylized as ''NUMB3RS'') is an American crime drama television series that was broadcast on CBS from January 23, 2005, to March 12, 2010, for six seasons and 118 episodes. The series was created by Nicolas Falacci and Cheryl Heuton ...

" was inspired by the technology. Music Intelligence Solutions, Inc., is using Hit Song Science as a basis for several contests done in partnership with organizations such as

AllHipHop.com AllHipHop is a hip hop news website founded by Greg Watkins and Chuck Creekmur in 1998. History The website was founded in 1998 by Greg Watkins and Chuck Creekmur. In 1997, Watkins registered the allhiphop.com domain to promote the artists on ...

Urban Latino ''Urban Latino'' magazine is an American lifestyle publication and website geared toward male and female Hispanic and Latino Americans ages 18–34. It was started in 1994 by a member of an art collective called Sol Concepts and a New York Universi ...

and ''American Songwriter'' magazine, and claims to have predicted the commercial success of

Norah Jones Norah Jones (born Geethali Norah Jones Shankar; March 30, 1979) is an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. She has won several awards for her music and as of 2012, has sold more than 50 million records worldwide. ''Billboard'' named her the ...

's debut album, ''

Come Away with Me ''Come Away with Me'' is the debut studio album by American recording artist Norah Jones, released on February 26, 2002, by Blue Note Records. Recording sessions took place at Sorcerer Sound Studio in New York City and Allaire Studios in Shokan, ...

'', (which won a Grammy for Best Album) and Ben Novak's debut single, "

Turn Your Car Around "Turn Your Car Around" is the second single released from Blue member Lee Ryan's debut solo album, ''Lee Ryan''. The track peaked at number 12 on the UK Singles Chart, also reaching the top 20 in several other European countries, including number t ...

", which reached the number 12 spot in the UK Top 40 charts. Similar technologies are now emerging with companies such as Mixcloud, MusicXray, and BandMetrics who are using their technologies. Mixcloud is working with Queen Mary Technologies.

References

{{reflist Music industry