
An experiment in crowd-sourced songwriting - henrytla
https://crowdsound.net/lyrics
======
SwellJoe
The majority of the people are completely lacking in taste the majority of the
time.

Also, the majority of people have no musical training; not even a few hours
tinkering with a music app to have a vague understanding of what makes a song
meaningful; basic stuff like tension and resolution and song structure. This
is effectively a random selection of notes within the key, and I bet "no note"
will never win the vote, so there will be no interesting rhythmic variation. A
simple script would work as well as these 65,000 people.

That said, there probably _are_ interesting (though questionable in their
artistic merit) ways to crowd source an artistic work. Focus groups for films
and TV shows and such have been happening for a couple decades. There have
been interesting surveys of popular harmonies and melodies, which could be
applied to scientifically build songs that fit what is popular (and I'm sure
it has been done). The uncanny valley is probably where you'd end up in most
cases, though; at least for now.

Some interesting work in the area of understanding what crowds like:

[http://www.hooktheory.com/blog/i-analyzed-the-chords-
of-1300...](http://www.hooktheory.com/blog/i-analyzed-the-chords-
of-1300-popular-songs-for-patterns-this-is-what-i-found/)

[http://articles.latimes.com/2012/feb/03/science/la-sci-
hit-s...](http://articles.latimes.com/2012/feb/03/science/la-sci-hit-songs-
computer-20120204)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hit_Song_Science](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hit_Song_Science)

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cpeterso
Somewhat related:

"The Most Unwanted Song" is a novelty song created by artists Komar and
Melamid and composer Dave Soldier in 1997. The song was designed to
incorporate lyrical and musical elements that were annoying to most people.
These elements included bagpipes, cowboy music, an opera singer rapping, and a
children's choir that urged listeners to go shopping at Walmart.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Most_Unwanted_Song](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Most_Unwanted_Song)

Most Unwanted Song:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gPuH1yeZ08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gPuH1yeZ08)

Most Wanted Song:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McIfIx29tSg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McIfIx29tSg)

~~~
busterarm
Less somewhat related:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The17](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The17)

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0xdeadbeefbabe
> The song is currently in skeleton form. When performed by artists, they are
> at liberty to use their artistic interpretation.

That's a wise move for which the crowd didn't get to vote. Same goes for the
chord structure. It's as if an individual is trying to make the crowd look
good?

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TheOtherHobbes
This would be a lot more interesting if you could "buy" pretend "shares" in
each possible note and then get pretend "rewards" if your choices turned out
to be correct.

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md224
Shameless plug: if you're interested in crowdsourcing, check out my subreddit
AskOuija ([https://reddit.com/r/AskOuija](https://reddit.com/r/AskOuija)).
It's a platform for linguistic collaboration at the most granular level
possible: individual letters. This diffusion of authorship leads to some
pretty interesting (and pretty stupid) results. Also it gave me an excuse to
write a Reddit bot.

~~~
user731955373
great job!

~~~
md224
Thanks!

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0xdeadbeefbabe
I like the old style where the artist submits a song and the crowd approves
it:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=It3Cctk6BRs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=It3Cctk6BRs)

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exorcet
Lololol. Guess "When In Rome - The Promise" is the new Rick Roll?

The tune wad immediately recognizable, but i didnt know which song. The lyrics
tho - "hmmm..na..hmm.. The right words to say" I did remember. Googled "the
right words to say lyrics" and bam - the promise - perfect match.

So was original song created via wormhole travel to grab crowdsourced song
from the future? Or is the crowdsound song intentionally being shaped to
match? Or all one big coincidence?

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jasonmp85
I listened to the melody, started to write a comment here, but then remembered
Thumper's rule. So here we are.

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ihuman
Isn't this in violation of thumper's rule? You're still saying something, and
implying you were going to say something negative.

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akeck
I couldn't find a TOS. There was no click-through license that granted rights
one way or another. So... if they get something really good, defending their
copyright on the piece will be difficult?

~~~
sova
They own the platform so.. I don't think it would be difficult. How else could
it come into being without their hosting of the platform? Then again, if there
were a class-action suit... perhaps, but it seems more like a task of fancy
than a task of profit. Anyway, music is kinda a different ballgame thanks to
ASCAP

~~~
dublinben
Owning the platform doesn't make them the author of the piece. Each member of
the crowd can claim to be a partial author, which is a copyright nightmare.

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peeters
The first time you try it, it's a mildly successful novelty. The second time
you try it, 4chan causes the site to get sued by Metallica for copyright
infringement.

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exorcet
Lololol. I guess "When in Rome - The Promise" is the next Rick Roll?

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chombier
Unsurprisingly, this results in the infamous 4 chords C, G, Am, F.

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steveeq1
Why infamous? Aren't most pop songs based on this?

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david-given
This is probably a really good time to link to Axis of Awesome's _Four Chord
Song_:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOlDewpCfZQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOlDewpCfZQ)

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sova
What an amazingly cool experiment

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toddwick
wtf! lowest common demoninator = a poor way to create art. 5x penny back..

~~~
anotheryou
This is why crowd sourcing for anything touching "taste" fails. Even
suggestion engines fail with this (I don't like the cliche artists of the
genres I listen to).

~~~
SwellJoe
Yep. This is why every station I have on Pandora plays Pearl Jam, the Cure,
and Bad Religion. All range from "OMG, again! why!?" to "mild boredom" in how
I feel about them. No matter how many times I dislike Pearl Jam and Eddie
Vedder songs, they keep coming back; something like 30 or 40 dislikes, now,
but the will of the crowd is that someone that likes the things I like is
clearly supposed to like Pearl Jam. (One could argue this is a problem in
their algorithm. By the third or fourth dislike of an artist, that artist
should probably be purged from the possibilities.)

~~~
anotheryou
Especially pandoras metrics just don't cut the subtleties of "good taste".
E.g. listening to something like Bach, with many interprets, there will be
just a few that play it to my liking, even though most superficial (every
single note) stays the same.

Another problem might be the inability to split a personality. Many engines
take the 7 people that behave most like you as a reference, but might
compromise when trying to find people that like exactly the genres you like.
(if you try to find people that listen to the same set of genres your pool of
candidates gets so small, that the similarities within the genres are very
few).

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raverbashing
This is a gimmick

A melody doesn't even have 65k notes

It's like having 65k people writing a text. There's no structure, leadership,
direction, etc

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fao_
> This is a gimmick

That's probably what it was intended to be. Are gimmicks bad now?

> A melody doesn't even have 65k notes

If you had followed the link, you would see it works via a vote for the next
note / word in the lyrics.

> It's like having 65k people writing a text. There's no structure,
> leadership, direction, etc

Many, many successful things have worked without leadership or structure. I
disagree, there is direction. People choose the note/word that is most
appealing to them, etc.

