Week 5:The Science of Hit Songs

There is a notion that our musical purchases are in fact based partly on what we believe are others preference. An artificial "music market" was created with around 14 thousand participants. All the participants were then put into 2 groups. One of the groups would browse through the songs without knowing the name or the band. Another group would rate the songs 1-5 stars to measure the quality of the song and to see the outcome when there was no social influence. The groups that rated the songs could see what the previous teens had rated it and how many times it was downloaded. Miraculously researchers found that in the group that teens could not see the ratings both popular and unpopular songs were popular, regardless of what the previous group had rated it. This brings up the "Britney effect". Everyone knows someone who likes and dislikes Britney Spears. Some of her songs were popular in certain places while others were popular in other places, but "the best songs never did very badly and the worst never did very good". Long story short the "Britney effect" suggests that there are to many songs and since we don't have time to listen to them all we choose to listen to what others are listening to.