Maths Vs Music!: computer program predicts hits by number science and comes up with Norah Jones and Maroon Five OH NO! The article gets a bit muddled over what the mathematics of HSS can actually do (I doubt for example it can recommend ‘mathematical rhythms’ to beef up your song) – and of course there are lots of questions you’d need answered before you’d know if it was any good or not. How subtle is its analysis of rhythm? How does it deal with singers’ inflections? How, for that matter, does it cope with lyrics? And the big one – what are some examples of the 5% of hits it didn’t predict?
My guess is that widespread reliance on this system would be a fad rather than an incipient industry standard – all it would take are a few smashes that don’t get high scores and people will smell the snake oil. Or rather – people won’t actually use it to base decisions on, they’ll use it as another influencing factor in their decisions. Boringly enough.