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Science Quickly

Here's How AI Can Predict Hit Songs With Frightening Accuracy

Science Quickly

Scientific American

Science

4.2639 Ratings

🗓️ 28 July 2023

⏱️ 11 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

New AI technology predicts hit songs—by listening to someone’s body.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Understanding the human body is a team effort. That's where the Yachtel group comes in.

0:05.8

Researchers at Yachtolt have been delving into the secrets of probiotics for 90 years.

0:11.0

Yacold also partners with nature portfolio to advance gut microbiome science through the global grants for gut health, an investigator-led research program.

0:19.6

To learn more about Yachtolt, yacult.co.com.j.

0:23.9

That's y-A-K-U-L-T.C-O.JP.

0:28.4

When it comes to a guide for your gut, count on Yacolt.

0:34.3

Last month, AI researchers claimed an impressive breakthrough.

0:37.9

They published a paper showing that AI can predict with 97% accuracy if any song will be a hit.

0:45.2

And it does this by measuring how the listener's body responds to the music.

0:50.0

But it might be too soon to anoint AI as the next big talent scout for the music industry.

0:57.0

I'm Lucy, too, the 2023 AAAS Mass Media Fellow for Scientific American.

1:02.5

And I'm Sophie Bushwick, tech editor at Scientific American.

1:05.9

You're listening to Tech Quickly, the All Things Tech part of Scientific American Science Quickly podcast.

1:16.1

I thought that the music industry had been using AI to create songs and analyze them for a while now.

1:22.9

So what's so special about this new approach?

1:25.9

Great question. Streaming services and music industry companies

1:29.8

have been relying heavily already on algorithms to try and predict hit songs. But they've

1:35.4

focused primarily on characteristics like a song's artist and genre, as well as the music itself.

1:41.5

So aspects like the lyrics or the tempo. But even with all of that data,

1:47.0

the existing AI algorithms have only been able to correctly predict whether a song will be a

1:52.1

hit or not less than 50% of the time. So you're honestly better off flipping a coin.

1:57.2

Yeah, a very random chance odds. And so this new approach, it's different for a few reasons.

...

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