Media release

From: The Royal Society

Recording Artist Career Comparison Through Audio Content Analysis

The careers of music artists can be studied over many recorded releases through computational methods acting on audio files. The present study focusses on music from three alternative rock bands, R.E.M., Radiohead and Coldplay; there are also control cases from the recordings of Patsy Cline, Buddy Holly and Kirsty MacColl. This is a new approach to comparative analysis of recorded music within the domain of computational musicology, looking at variation over time, and the diversity of artists’ oeuvre; are there aging effects for bands, and who is the most diverse artist with respect to rhythm, timbre and harmony?

OK Computer- Coldplay have shown less “harmonic daring” as they became part of the pop mainstream. In contrast, Radiohead have maintained high harmonic diversity in their body of work over time. These insights come from new comparative computational analysis of major musical releases across the careers of six artists. It includes statistical measures of variation over time and the diversity of artists’ recorded output. These approaches offer new insights into music as an evolving cultural activity, the authors said.