Mar 27
Want to know if your song will be a hit?
Platinum Blue Music offers musicians a service that will “tell you if your song has the “optimal mathematical patterns” to become a success, a necessary but not singly sufficient condition for having a hit.”
In the past I would have been skeptical of such a service, arguing that it takes the magic and mystery out of the music making process. But in this rapidly changing industry, every little bit helps. I’ve also had the pleasure of getting to know Mike McCready, Platinum Blue’s Founder and CEO. I’ve learned that Mike is a genuine guy who actually gives a crap about music and musicians. Based on him alone, it’s worth giving them a try.
Platinum Blue was recently featured on the Grammys.com website. The story referenced Gnarls Barkley, remember the HUGE hit they had with their single CRAZY?
Prior to the release of CRAZY, Warner Music decided to contacted Platinum Blue Music and run the song through their process. Using a cutting-edge technology called Music Xray that analyzes underlying mathematical patterns in music, PBM determined that the song had all the makings of a hit. And that hit eventually nabbed the group a Grammy. So, maybe there really is something to Music Xray.
If you do send them a song for analysis, let me know what you think of the service and results.
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Hi Kyra, I have posted several times on Platinum Blue on my blog http://www.baronzero.com and submitted about half a dozen songs for Xrays. While I haven’t quite reached the score of Crazy (724 if I remember well), I’m quite happy that a coupole of my songs came pretty close (No Easy Way 716, Neverafter 707; you can check the Xrays at http://baronzero.blogs.com/blog/2007/11/barin-zero-is-a.html). In addition dealing with them was a nice experience even though things took time.
Some people can obviously be sceptical/cynical about having a computer software based on mathematical algorythms judging the potential of a song. But as the new music offer available on the net grows exponentially, such tool can help listeners narrow down their choice (Bruce Warilla wrote an excellent post in that sense some time ago). I’m ready to bet that xrays are here to stay, in one form or another.
Keep rocking
Le Baron
http://www.baronzero.com
Rock guitars & human touch
While I am only a music lover and I hold a similar amount of skepticism, I must say that I find the idea of reducing a song to a mathematically formula to be quite appealing to my nerd side.
We humans are simple machines who love patterns. I apply it every day in my design work. I can only imagine that there is a cross-over into music somewhere.
This of course further illuminates the need of people to make the final decision. Once you get past the knee-jerk, out-of-hand rejection of the machine somehow tainting the music, XRay seems to be a very useful tool that could help our struggling music industry.
Like anything, it needs temperance with a dose of humanity.
nice post