Written by: Amanda Graves
Big Data can be utilized in almost every industry, so no wonder the music industry wants to cash in on some of the capabilities. There are plenty of benefits to using data to create success of a song, but is it killing creativity and individuality?
Numerous studies have shown that people prefer music that feels familiar to them1, which is most likely why pop music has such the level of wide spread success as it has had. The more you hear those top 40 songs that play repetitively on the radio, the more you subconsciously like them. But instead of waiting for the next big pop star to show up, why can't the industry just engineer their own? They already have.
"This can be interpreted," the researchers write, "as music becoming increasingly formulaic in terms of instrumentation under increasing sales numbers due to a tendency to popularize music styles with low variety and musicians with similar skills."1
Very few other genres have retained success in the industry – folk, alternative rock, experimental music – aren't reaching nearly the success as hip-hop and pop genres. Radio corporations have mechanisms to insure these up-and-coming artists will connect to the listeners. One radio conglomerate, "On the Verge"2, has a major play in this. If a song hits this program, every radio station in its network must play the song at least 150 times. For instance, Iggy Azalea can place her thanks to this program, where she has reached quite a bit of success, although most claim she is solely an imitator and does not hold much talent to arguably make it on her own.
Genres have standardized and merged over time to get a piece of this success. But as a listener, we are forced to hear the same, predictable, unoriginal song over, and over, and over again.
Big data has generated lots of money to the music industry. And although music companies haven't started using data to create music from scratch – yet – there is a point at which the music gets tired. I'm hopeful that we can become aware of these practices and trends to better resist how they are standardizing music, and that we can revert to the genuine and original music of our pastimes, and create a more individualistic music culture.
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