Can Scientists Predict a Music Hit? Probably Not, Since They Can’t Predict the Weather

Ah science. Used for things such as medicine, planetary explorations, creating robotic women who don’t talk or love but I’m okay with that and now, possibly music hit predicting (via Canoe).

“Based in the University of Bristol’s Intelligent Systems Laboratory, the team claims it has developed a formula that can predict whether your tune will hit or miss. Their paper, to be presented at an international workshop next week, argues that state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms powers their prediction. The group says it looked at the official UK top 40 singles chart over the past 50 years to distinguish the most popular songs from less popular singles.”

The formula is to find someone attractive, give them generic, rubbish lovey lyrics, and a simple 4/4 beat, and BAM, hit – amiright? The ‘actual’ formula looked at tempo, time signature, chord sequences, song length and volume, etc. They then used “magic” and weighted a score for the songs. The scientists hit a 60% accuracy rate with predicting a song hitting the top 5 in the charts. Doesn’t that phrase sound a bit like Sex Panther cologne, in which 60% of the time, it works every time.