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March 01, 2007
Link Heavy. Gladwell's So Predictable
Link Heavy. Gladwell's So Predictable: Five years ago, a software engineer bought 30 albums at random, all of them had just been released that day. He was testing a new program that measures the mathematical relationships of all the structural components of a song (melody, harmony, beat, tempo, rhythm, octave, pitch, chord progression, cadence, sonic brilliance, etc.). Based on this measurement, the program comes up with a song's mathematical signature. This mathematical signature can be used to predict the likelihood of a song becoming a hit with a success rate of about 80%.
After the program is run, it absolutely loves one album. The album: Come Away With Me by Norah Jones. It went on to sell 22 million copies. In this video from The New Yorker Festival, Gladwell discusses an emerging movement to predict and ultimately engineer hits in music and film. If this movement is successful, what impact will it have on creativity?
Watch Malcolm Gladwell's So Predictable [Here]
Posted by james at March 1, 2007 09:29 PM