Music has always been about forming an identity. Some people listen to everything. And for others, music seems to be their only means of independence, as they spout assurances such as: "You wouldn't like what I like" or "I don't listen to anything popular."
Thanks to Massachusetts Institute of Technology grads Brian Whitman and Tristan Jehan, however, our tastes in music are about to be as predictable as the Arizona sun.
The Globe and Mail reported Thursday that these two, who are musicians themselves, created a program called Echo Nest that may change music forever. That is a big statement, sure. But music is not like death and taxes; it changes all the time, often when one artist or group of artists break away from any current models.
Echo Nest, however, may make this change in an entirely different regard. By not only pulling data from current songs -- everything from tone and pitch to "hooks" -- but also from a plethora of places on the Internet where music lovers talk shop, this program hopes to predict what songs and what types of songs will become hits.
The program's purpose, according to Whitman and Jehan, is "trying to get in between the audio and the audience" and expose listeners to a wider range of music.
This won't happen.
What will happen is that music industry big wigs will be more than happy (after being provided with lots of evidence that the program works) to use Echo Nest to churn out songs that sound exactly alike -- just so they're what people will buy.
I remember how "Kryptonite" by Three Doors Down was played so much it became my kryptonite -- forcing me into convulsions whenever I heard that unmistakable opening.
And yet I formed the same reaction to Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Californication," since the two begin in an eerily similar fashion. Both did well on the charts at essentially the same time, though "Californication" is rather dissimilar to the Peppers' typical stuff and more like the sort of mediocre melodies that were doing well at the time.
Movies such as "Josie and the Pussycats" and "Airheads" have satirized the degree to which consumers simply obey whatever the record industry says is cool.
The mystery is to what degree they are correct: whether the music industry puts out a smattering of styles and then presses the ones people seem to like, or if they control what we like by brewing certain songs for success and pushing them on us until we agree.
Despite the seemingly altruistic intentions of Whitman and Jehan's efforts, the real problem with the program is that if every genre has one formula for success -- one series of sounds that will make people like it -- then every artist will be forced to emulate this sound.
If artists' singles all sound the same, there is little room for eclectic tastes and variety.
And the nagging question on everyone's minds should be: What comes first, the hit or the desire for the hit?
If a thousand bits of data actually predict what we will buy, if the record industry uses this data and then forces radio stations to play certain songs over and over, then the majority of consumers will buy what they hear, not what they like.
Even if Echo Nest is openly distributed, listing songs made with the popular model in mind is still self-fulfilling prophecy if it enjoys any success. The problem is not with the first string of songs it predicts will make it big, it's with the songs made solely for the purpose of imitating that successful model.
What has been left by the wayside in this equation is taste -- not preferences recorded before a song has been made, but our decisions as consumers after artists have done their best to give us something they feel is genuine.
While Echo Nest sounds like it would make a great search engine for music lovers to find artists, prediction before the music is even made will only lead to predictable music.
Darren Todd is an English literature graduate student. Tell him you're not that predictable at lawrence.todd@asu.edu.
