How Songs Get Popular

An anonymous reader writes "Researchers created an artificial music market of 14,341 participants split into two groups to pick music from unknown musicians. In one group, the individuals had only song titles and band names to go on. The individuals in the other group saw how others had rated the songs. Turns out popularity bred popularity, which explains why there's so much crap on the radio."

Would the Beatles have made it today?

[yagu]

I wonder how much the degree to which today's world is "connected" compared to the days and emergence of the Beatles and Stones (much less Beethoven, et. al.) contributes to the "lesser quality" of today's popular music? I have to think this is a significant factor, and an unfortunate one.

So, today stars are foisted, created, presented to the consuming public by fiat, not a great surprise. It's too bad though. I even wonder a group as good as the Beatles, or a composer as great as Beethoven (Ludwig, my opinion) would have much of a chance for recognition for their real talent -- probably not so much. Too bad.

For those of this generation, food for thought. (and, sorry for all of the sentence fragments.)

(Also, readers should visit the links at the bottom of the referenced article, there are some pretty interesting additional articles about human nature and music (and I have NO interest in that magazine).)

A key to music is the familiar.

[jellomizer]

It took all the work to realize that. Just take some Music Theory Classes and it would make since. The key to Music and popularity is the familiar. It is brings up elements that are familiar then you tend to like it more then ones that bring up elements that are less familiar. So we grow up listening to music we tend to link it as familiar, to our ears so whenever we listen to other music we judge it based on what we know. So if you grow up listening to Pop, Pop is what sounds good and listening to classical will just feel wrong to you. Or even if you have a more broad range of music you enjoy there will be stuff from other cultures that will sound sour to you ears because they use a different key for music. So if you like listening to Brittany spears you will tend to like other Brittany spears songs because you connect to the music and her voice and other voices may not match. Because Brittany Spears is popular you will tend to listen to her more thus like it more, then say some lesser known band.

What else did you expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

What about a group who picks music based on what is sounds like?

Without that option, did anyone really expect people to pick music based on the names of the songs and artists?

If people use either of these methods, it's lame.
But, obviously, picking based on popularity makes about a billion times more sense that picking a song based on it's title. DUH!

What a retarded measure of nothing.

A social experiment

[Belseth]

Go to most any store, supermarkets especially. Now stand and stare at an item on the shelf. Even if the isle was empty before within a minute or so at the most some one will be looking at the same shelf. I've quite often had people muscle me out of the way or at least stand in front of me. They will tend to stand there as long as you do and quite often won't pick something from the shelf. It's pretty common to draw a crowd. Marketing companies have known about this effect for years and used it to market products by hiring people to stand and look at displays. Humans are very territorial and are by nature very concerned that they will miss out on something or some one else will get the bargin and not them. If you anounced on the radio that sales were exploding for an album by an unknown group and that the stores would be sold out before the end of the day people would line up so they wouldn't miss out knowing no more about the group than everyone else wanted the album. Advertising works for a reason. You create a craze by convincing people they are missing out. Remember Beanie Babies? People were desperate to get them yet they were nothing more than a small stuffed animal and effectively worthless.

Buying airtime

[jd]

New York is investigating scams in which hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent in buying extra airtime for specific songs. I did not know this, but this is actually a crime. There are a lot of companies involved, apparently, but two very familiar names stuck out... Clear Channel and Sony. Sony has apparently settled, not sure if Clear Channel has.

Part of the problem with media conglomerates is that you can buy a LOT of media outlets in a single transaction. Clear Channel, I believe, owns numerous radio stations in every State in the US. Cross-media ownership (eg: radio, TV and newspapers) rules have been relaxed, so the problem will likely get much worse before it gets better.

The easy answer would be to limit media ownership. One outlet in a city and/or two outlets in a State (for the US) or County (for England) should be ample and would make it much harder for labels to purchase airtime. Or, at least, more expensive and more tedious. It would neither inhibit freedom of speech nor commercial viability if "playlists" were banned, as well. "Top 40" charts and emphasis on those songs is fine, but essentially banishing all others (or banning artists for political reasons, as has happened) has little to do with any definition of freedom I'm aware of.

On the other hand, it might be easier to just clone the late John Peel and require all music stations to give him an hour's airtime per day. That would definitely work wonders for bringing the real talent out there to the listeners.

Bellwether

[jbum]

Connie Willis's novel Bellwether [amazon.com], which is about the science of fads, deals with this phenomenon in depth.

The title comes from a middle english word used describing a practice in sheep farming. Sheep tend to follow each other. But farmers would sometimes use a castrated ram with a bell around his neck to lead the rest of the flock. The ram would tend to move first, but in a very subtle, nearly undetectable way.

At the center of any cloud of popularity must be a seed of initial impulse - the bellwether.

Re:A key to music is the familiar.

[happymedium]

If "the key" were actually this simple, we'd still be listening to Gregorian chants. Referencing a music theory class seals the absurdity of this argumnent. Where did the theory itself come from?

In music, an element of familiarity is important, of course, especially for mass audiences, for whom music is little more than its social context. But familiar elements (chord progressions, instrumentation...) can be recombined endlessly. Combinations that once seemed incongruous become normal--e.g. OutKast's use of acoustic guitar in "Hey Ya!" New techniques are made to coexist with old ones, achieving substantially new effects--Radiohead's integration of electronic music into Kid A and Amnesiac, anyone?

Moreover, innovation is the key to longevity. Think of how long Radiohead and OutKast have been popular, especially by comparison to [insert top 40 hack here].

At the same time, derivative music sucks up market share like a crazed idiot teenager chugging energy drinks; by nature, it lends itself to intense but brief enjoyment. There's so much of it because the labels have to keep churning it out; all they can do is throw money at problems, and you can't buy creativity.

--hm.

Re:Crap Rock

[vux984]

Why is the crap of the 1970 and 1980s considered "classic" today?

The nostalgia trip; Regardless of whether the music was intrinsically good it still conjures up our past, at least for those of us who lived through it. We're all familiar with the example of being transported to childhood with the smell of baking bread, for example. Same with music.

I have oddball memory associations with all manner 'utter crap' music. Friends, parties, dates, stags, road trips, summer vacation, concerts, etc etc...pop is the soundtrack to our lives. Listening to it we relive bits of it.

Hell, its even true for songs I despised at the time. I hated "Don't Worry be happy" when it was big, but hearing it now is a nostalgia trip; I seem to have fond memories of hating it. ;)

Re:Just like /.

[farrellj]

So, could one say that music, and Slashdot is a "social disease"?

ttyl
          Farrell

Whoever modded this up didn't RTFA

[porcupine8]

The point was, Group B didn't download the songs that Group A rated highly. They downloaded the ones that were downloaded the most times, regardless of how highly they were rated. Songs rated lower were just as likely to become popular as songs rated highly. And in different Group Bs (there were B.1-B.10), different songs became popular, always independent of the ratings given. There were a few songs that never did particularly badly or well, but no song was always really popular or always really unpopular, no matter the quality.

The Lemming Effect...

[ktakki]

Turns out popularity bred popularity, which explains why there's so much crap on the radio.

True, up to a point. There's a network effect here, since groups of people use common cultural touchstones as a means of relating with each other (e.g., talking about a movie, an album, or a sports team). A teenaged girl will buy Britney's album because her friends bought Britney's album. A system administrator will rent Office Space and will understand the references to "PC LOAD LETTER" and the red stapler when they come up in conversation (or in posts on Slashdot).

But none of these works would make it into the collective culture if they hadn't gotten past a gatekeeper.

The gatekeepers of our culture are the people who manage movie studios, publishing houses, and record labels. Producers, editors, and A&R people are risk averse people in risky businesses. Every album that's recorded, every book that's published, every movie that's produced means that hundreds of thousands, millions, or tens or hundreds of millions are risked in a venture that might not even break even. And even if such a venture does break even or run a modest profit, these people look upon such a return as a lost opportunity for a best seller, platinum album, or blockbuster hit.

So, they hew to the lowest common denominator. They play it safe. They run endless focus groups, listening parties, sneak previews. They catch the sequel disease: witness the Harry Potter phenomenon, the bidding war for Seattle grunge groups after Nirvana's breakout album Nevermind, multiple Lethal Weapon movies. Two movies about asteroids obliterating the Earth, two movies about monster volcanoes, two movies about Mars missions, all released within months of each other. Could the two Matrix sequels hold a candle to the first movie? Do I have to invoke the crawling horror of Star Wars I, II, and III?

It's rare that a unique work emerges from our popular culture, something so distinctive that imitating it would be a sacrelige. A Schindler's List, a Don DeLillo novel (I'm hard pressed to find a major record label example, since I mostly listen to indie acts -- that's where the unique talent has fled).

It's telling that Spielberg gets to make a work like Munich or Schindler's List because he's made billions for Hollywood. George Clooney said as much about Syriana and Good Night and Good Luck; after these films he'll owe the studio an Ocean's Thirteen. Sequelmania is Hollywood's answer to risk. Hence the crap that's clogging our culture.

Twenty years in the music industry taught me a one of many hard lessons: the risk averse A&R guy loves to know that your band sounds like someone who's made money for them. "We wouldn't know how to market you guys" is not what you want to hear from them. "You're in the business of marketing bands. Fucking learn." is not what they want to hear from you.

I ended up forming an indie label. It made all the difference.

k.

Re:"-1 troll" utterance gets +5 Insightful

[phlosoft]

This is perhaps due to a psychological phenomenon whereby skilled people are more aware of their own shortcomings than are unskilled people, and in this case, are more likely to realize that their comments might be interpreted as trolling by others.

A 1999 article in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology entitled "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments," studies this phenomenon: http://www.phule.net/mirrors/unskilled-and-unaware .html [phule.net]

Across 4 studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although their test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd. Several analyses linked this miscalibration to deficits in metacognitive skill, or the capacity to distinguish accuracy from error. Paradoxically, improving the skills of participants, and thus increasing their metacognitive competence, helped them recognize the limitations of their abilities.

Re:Would the Beatles have made it today?

[Bo'Bob'O]

They almost didn't. If a classically trained producer who just happened to hear 'something' in it that caught his ear in passing, they might never have gone anywhere.

We might never have heard of Stravinsky or Picasso had they not established themselves as masters of the current form of art before they went in very new directions. Had Picasso started his carrier painting like that, I doubt we would have heard of cubism.

I think the problem today is we have become so used to gloss that we are unwilling to except anything that isn't perfect. People find theater ridicules because it doesn't have edited perfection of film. We don't accept games that are a bit rough around the edges. Anything without the marketing and gloss of a big company is an "Off-Brand." Now, many, if not most, of us outgrow this, but I think few of us can say we are completely immune to it. It doesn't help that so often off brands really are crap.

So we forget, we grab the "name we trust" or listen to that band we heard on the radio all the time. Fortunately though, we have places for musicians to start out in, clubs, schools, little places, or little theaters for actors to tune their craft. We aren't in a place where new stuff is imposable, but it takes a lot of work from the artists, and an open mind from the audience.