2008 Woodie Awards
'Hit Song Science' may predict hits
Jim Powers
Issue date: 5/21/03 Section: Style
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Making a career out of music has never been easy. Writing songs, putting lyrics to them, getting time in a studio, getting a label to put out your album...they're all part of a process that is long, arduous and not for the weak-willed. With the economy in a downturn, major record companies are merging left and right (leaving established artists out in cold), and record company executives are hesitant to spend money. It's a very difficult time for the music industry.
If a new computer application designed by a Spanish company proves itself worthy, the days of the Artist & Repertoire , the record company liaison between label and band, may be numbered.
Giant conglomerates like the AOL Time Warner Group, which owns record labels Atlantic, Elektra, Warner Brothers, Atco, London-Sire, Rhino, and Reprise, are no longer willing to part with their cold, hard cash unless the artists they sign are going to be stars. How can such a thing be decided, you ask? How can someone predict something like future chart success? The major labels think they have found the answer: Hit Song Science (HSS). It sounds like something from a B-movie, but it's real. Hit Song Science is a service of the Polyphonic HMI company from Spain. Originally created by Spanish technology company Grupo AIA, HSS, as Polyphonic HMI calls it is a computer application that compares songs to each other.
The company loaded all the songs from the last 30 years of the Billboard charts into the machine and discovered, according to the application, that they all had something in common. So if your band's new song bears some similarity to Hootie & The Blowfish's "Let Her Cry" or The Beatles' "Yesterday" then you've got a hit on your hands, according to the machine. If this thing actually flies, then a musician could tell if a new song was going to be a hit by loading into HSS, right? That's what the majors think.
Industry giants like RCA, Universal, Sony, and the aforementioned AOL Time Warner labels have already signed on to analyze their prospective artists. It would only make economic sense to cut out the middleman and just send the demo from a new auspicious yet unsigned band to a machine to figure out whether or not they'll hit it big. However, the system isn't perfect. It contains some major drawbacks. It fails to take into account lyrical content, for one thing. You could take Jennifer Lopez' "Jenny From The Block," re-work it, use the exact same lyrics, and the HSS program would spit out a positive rating. Despite this, Tracie Reed, Polyphonic HMI's North American Office vice president, said in the press release announcing the program that she thinks HSS will "raise the bar for music."
If a new computer application designed by a Spanish company proves itself worthy, the days of the Artist & Repertoire , the record company liaison between label and band, may be numbered.
Giant conglomerates like the AOL Time Warner Group, which owns record labels Atlantic, Elektra, Warner Brothers, Atco, London-Sire, Rhino, and Reprise, are no longer willing to part with their cold, hard cash unless the artists they sign are going to be stars. How can such a thing be decided, you ask? How can someone predict something like future chart success? The major labels think they have found the answer: Hit Song Science (HSS). It sounds like something from a B-movie, but it's real. Hit Song Science is a service of the Polyphonic HMI company from Spain. Originally created by Spanish technology company Grupo AIA, HSS, as Polyphonic HMI calls it is a computer application that compares songs to each other.
The company loaded all the songs from the last 30 years of the Billboard charts into the machine and discovered, according to the application, that they all had something in common. So if your band's new song bears some similarity to Hootie & The Blowfish's "Let Her Cry" or The Beatles' "Yesterday" then you've got a hit on your hands, according to the machine. If this thing actually flies, then a musician could tell if a new song was going to be a hit by loading into HSS, right? That's what the majors think.
Industry giants like RCA, Universal, Sony, and the aforementioned AOL Time Warner labels have already signed on to analyze their prospective artists. It would only make economic sense to cut out the middleman and just send the demo from a new auspicious yet unsigned band to a machine to figure out whether or not they'll hit it big. However, the system isn't perfect. It contains some major drawbacks. It fails to take into account lyrical content, for one thing. You could take Jennifer Lopez' "Jenny From The Block," re-work it, use the exact same lyrics, and the HSS program would spit out a positive rating. Despite this, Tracie Reed, Polyphonic HMI's North American Office vice president, said in the press release announcing the program that she thinks HSS will "raise the bar for music."