Wednesday, July 01, 2009

The new grey whistle test

I post quite a lot about music; I think that the changes happening in music production and distribution, not to mention the business models are remarkable, and fascinating to document.

The lastest mini trend I've seen (in the spirit of '2 bands that sound similar can be called a movement'), is using digital technology to analyse the music itself. Users upload a track, and then get feedback, based on either a technology or crowdsourcing approach.

On one hand you have companies like Playa, which uses algorithms to analyse the music, compare it to other successful songs and try to predict whether it will be a hit:

"We use artificial intelligence applications as well as other methods to analyze the underlying mathematical patterns in music. Our technology does something called spectral deconvolution which is a fancy way of saying that we can isolate and separate many musical events that occur in a song. Some of these events are patterns in melody, harmony, chord progression, brilliance, fullness of sound, beat, tempo, rhythm, octave, and pitch. We then compare the patterns in new music (yours for example) to patterns in hit songs. By doing this combined with other mathematical calculations we’ve been able to develop a highly accurate and scientific tool."

On the other hand you have companies like SoundOut (part of SliceThePie) which takes the crowdsourcing approach, getting lots of people to provide unbiased opinions on the music. They then provide reports and verbatims from their reviewers (sample report here), and charts like this:

Very clever, but slightly depressing. Real life A&Rs generally have very low hit rates, so these services could be as reliable as a team of real people. As Jeff Fenster, senior vice president of A&R for Island/Def Jam Records puts if on the Uplaya site:

"It’s a fascinating tool, and smart companies will use this as ancillary information"

See also - Drake - Breaking big without a major label

(By the way, the title to this post comes from a old tin pan alley expression. Apparently, in the golden age of song writing in tin pan alley: "When they got the first pressing of a record they would play it to people they called the old greys [doormen in grey suits] . The ones they could remember and could whistle having heard it just once or twice had passed the old grey whistle test")

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