Is there really no accounting for taste? A group of British researchers just published a paper in PNAS proposing that popular music is a product of evolution -- the survival of the fittest melodies, harmonies and rhythms according to natural selection by thousands upon thousands of music consumers stating their preferences.
To make their point, they computer-generated 100 musical loops, each 8 seconds long, that were posted online at Darwin Tunes. Thousands of people then logged in to rate them on a five-point scale from "I can't stand it" to "I love it." The most popular loops were, in the words of one researcher, then allowed to "have sex and make baby loops" (i.e. new loops with bits from each parent loop mingled together). The new "generation" of loops replaced the old ones, and then visitors rated these, and so on.
You can listen to one of the researchers explain it, here:
The paper covered the evolution of this music over more than 2,500 generations (during which time more than 50,000 new musical loops were generated). In a separate experiment, they asked people to rate loops randomly selected from different generation, and people consistently preferred more recently "born" musical loops). What starts off as audio chaos does turn into something more melodious via this "natural" selection. Give it a listen. Remind you of anything?
To make their point, they computer-generated 100 musical loops, each 8 seconds long, that were posted online at Darwin Tunes. Thousands of people then logged in to rate them on a five-point scale from "I can't stand it" to "I love it." The most popular loops were, in the words of one researcher, then allowed to "have sex and make baby loops" (i.e. new loops with bits from each parent loop mingled together). The new "generation" of loops replaced the old ones, and then visitors rated these, and so on.
You can listen to one of the researchers explain it, here:
The paper covered the evolution of this music over more than 2,500 generations (during which time more than 50,000 new musical loops were generated). In a separate experiment, they asked people to rate loops randomly selected from different generation, and people consistently preferred more recently "born" musical loops). What starts off as audio chaos does turn into something more melodious via this "natural" selection. Give it a listen. Remind you of anything?
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