7 ms·
MRIs of teenage brain waves can predict pop hits.
- malvosenior 15y agoFull article: http://esciencecommons.blogspot.com/2011/06/teen-brain-data-predicts-pop-song.html http://esciencecommons.blogspot.com/2011/06/teen-brain-data-...
- wccrawford 15y agoWait, so songs people like might be hits? Color me amazed.
- abeppu 15y agoAnother interesting twist: When the research subjects were asked to rate the songs on a scale of one to five, their answers did not correlate with future sales of the songs. I think the fact that the fMRI data predicted success, but that the explicit ratings given did not predict success is the interesting part of this. It would be totally uninteresting if you could predict the song's success just from asking people what they like, or how good they think something is. That an fMRI can tell you more about the goodness of the song than the people in the fMRI listening to the music, is pretty cool.
- wccrawford 15y agoYou're assuming that their rating on that scale actually matches what they like. Many factors will cause them to change their answers, not the least of which is peer pressure.
- rrival 15y agoHitPredictor.com has been doing this successfully for years without the brainwaves.
- powrtoch 15y agoHave they? The website doesn't seem to show any actual evidence of efficacy, or indeed any data whatsoever.
- rrival 15y agoYes. They're not targeting you. Every major label has a deal with them, nearly every hit on the top 50 for the last 5+ years was pre-screened by management. The last numbers I heard were $1m/year for the service with a $20k/song screening charge.
- stcredzero 15y ago"Thanks for coming to our focus group. Now if you can relinquish all metal objects and stand below these really large hats..."
- JonnieCache 15y agoNot so much these days. http://www.emotiv.com/store/hardware/299/ http://www.emotiv.com/store/hardware/299/
- stcredzero 15y agoI doubt it has the same capabilities as an MRI.
- JonnieCache 15y agoTrue, but if this research turns out to be as lucrative as one might imagine then I bet firms like emotiv will come out will compatible models pretty quickly.
- pygy_ 15y agoDefinitely not. Especially since the involved structures are either between the hemispheres or at the base of the brain. You can reconstruct the source of neural activity using EEG (it is an example of the inverse problem, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse_problem), but you need at least 64 channels if you want any semblance of precision. 128 or better, 256 channels give better results (although, at least a few years ago, the 256 channels machines often were an overkill (diminishing returns)).
- nkassis 15y agoThis sure is one expensive way to figure this stuff out. For those wanting to understand better brains and music check out this book: "This is you brain on music" by Daniel J. Levitin (http://www.amazon.com/This-Your-Brain-Music-Obsession/dp/0452288525/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1308335103&sr=8-1 http://www.amazon.com/This-Your-Brain-Music-Obsession/dp/045...)
- cing 15y agoI can't wait for high accuracy brain measurements in the mainstream. hoping to do some brainsourced computation in the future!
- harrybr 15y agoThey tested 120 songs found on myspace. One of them later turned out to be a hit, so the researcher went back to his data to see if there was a correlation. Correlation does not imply causation. As it happens, there was a correlation. But we don't know what the songs were actually like. (Perhaps the poor songs were incredibly bad, so much so that any musician would have been able to flag them up as likely failures). We don't know much about the 27 participants. We don't know much about the experimental method. This is not well reported science.