hit songs

So you've written a song and are wondering whether it could be a big hit in the music industry or not.

Who can tell you?

Is songwriting a hit & miss proposition or is it actually possible to predict whether the song you write is going to be a huge success?

In the past no-one would have suggested you could judge a song's potential except by gut instinct and even that was inaccurate.

There are many rejected songs that became No1 hits. More famous examples include:

"Since U Been Gone" passed in by both Pink and Hilary Duff was a hit for Kelly Clarkson, the first American Idol.

"Umbrella" , caste aside by Britney Spears' label exec's went to Number One around the world in the hands (or should that be heart, soul & voice) of Rhianna.

Kylie Minogue apparently declined "Toxic" which subsequently debuted in the UK at number One for Britney Spears.

The list goes on http://prince.org/msg/8/299053

Given the failure rate, it is little wonder there are now music intelligence companies - most notably Music Intelligence Solutions (http://uplaya.com/) - that have created databases of hits or rather their rhythm, melody, harmony and other patterns (including length & lyrics) which can be grouped together.

These computer designed models of a musical universe of hit patterns are intended to transform the subjective art of predicting hits into an objective science.

A "Harvard Business School found that the software was accurate 8 out of 10 times" according to Laura Sydell on http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113673324.

Grouping hits over the past 50 years by similarity is intended to make it easier to compare an "unkown" and a known hit and hip hop band The Block Scholars went back into the studio to remix after the machine only gave them a 7.1 rating for a song they'd written.

In some ways, songwriters are probably over-supplied with false praise and may need the cold hard rating only a computer (or Simon Cowell of American Idol!) can deliver.

It some how makes things more believable but whether software can ever predict a hit or reject a song..well...?

For more on this see also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hit_Song_Science