WHICH SONG WILL BE A HIT?

CAN YOU PREDICT A HIT SONG?

One can listen to music almost anywhere, but with so many choices, music labels and platforms have an increasingly difficult time identifying which new music will be hits.

This places the burden on artists to create new music that cuts through all the clutter and attracts enough listeners to earn a living. Predicting which songs will become hits is a particularly difficult problem because people's musical tastes vary so much. Are you a Sinatra or Daft Punk person? Or, do you enjoy both?

We measured neurologic value while 21 people listened to the first minute of seven songs from seven artists in Steereo’s Artists in Residence Program. The songs had not been released so they were new to all participants. The order of songs was varied during testing. Listeners were also asked to rate how much they liked the song.

The songs were released a month later on Steereo's platform to rideshare providers across the United States. The Steereo app lets riders skip songs or change stations and Steereo shared these data with us.

We also tracked Spotify song streams and followers for the artists. As another measure of market impact, we tracked Shazam lookups for the artists and songs.