The Computer as Music Critic

Researchers at the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute of the Spanish National Research Council discuss the growing field of music information processing in a recent article in The New York Times.

Joan Serrà, Álvaro Corral, Marián Boguñá, Martín Haro, and Josep Ll. Arcos used computers to analyze 464,411 Western popular music recordings released between 1955 and 2010, including pop, rock, hip-hop, folk and funk. In a paper published in Scientific Reports, they reveal a number of patterns and metrics characterizing the generic usage of primary musical facets such as pitch, timbre, and loudness in contemporary western popular music.


The Computer as Music Critic (The New York Times)
Measuring the Evolution of Contemporary Western Popular Music (Scientific Reports)