Week 5 Blog

"The Science of Hit Songs" by Bjorn Carey
Summary: An experiment was conducted to determine whether or not the listening habits of teens is affected by their peers in any significant fashion. The study was conducted and found that significantly different results came about when the amount of times a song was downloaded was visible. A conclusion was made that a plausible reason for the slippery slope of popularity is for the sake of filtering the large amount of songs available (since a proper amount of time wasn't given to listen to all of the songs). Parallels were drawn between the large amount of songs available in the sample and the seemingly infinite amount of music available today.
Analysis / Reflection: I believe this study to be an interesting look into the popularity levels of songs, and a good way to explain how popular music comes to be. When on the prowl online for music, there are only a few ways which music can be categorized - you have yourself the artist, the song name, and, sometimes through research of the artist, the genre. Song and artist names are hardly good ways to determine the quality of the song without previously knowing the song and/or artist and there can be a LOT of music for each genre out there. The only aspect of a song that may give some insight into the quality of the music is the number of times the song has been downloaded. If, for example, you are listening to an artist you have never heard of before on youtube, and are interested in hearing more from the artist, more than likely there will be more songs by the artist in the "related videos" pane, and if you have to decide between two songs, odds are that the one with more views is going to be the better song. The problem that comes from this is that by viewing that video, you are then adding another view to the count, and this is how the slippery slope is created.