Predicting hits: What’s the buzz?

If you think there is no rhyme or reason to what songs make the top music hits of the week, you may be partly right, researchers said Thursday.

The mystery of what makes a hit has perplexed songwriters and marketers as long as there has been popular music. And in the end, the next hit song may be -- like love -- unpredictable.

But a new study has come up with an intriguing clue: People will select a song if they think others like it.

In other words, at least one key to musical success is the buzz, or bandwagon effect.

The same is true for books and other products, said Duncan J. Watts, an author of the study appearing in today’s issue of the journal Science. “Successful things tend to be more successful.”

Once an author has a bestseller, the next book he writes is likely to also become a bestseller, and once a brand name has recognition it is more likely to do well. The possibility that musical popularity may be unpredictable could, in a way, be comforting to music marketers, said Watts, a sociology professor at Columbia University.

“The fact they have such difficulty predicting what’s going to be popular doesn’t mean they are incompetent,” he said. “There are all these stories of famous acts that weren’t picked up by someone,” he notes. “It’s just inherently unpredictable.”

“The [study] results are certainly consistent with the motivations for payola.... Getting it out there and getting it on people’s radar screens increases its likelihood of it becoming popular.” Payola involved marketers bribing disc jockeys to give their records more airtime.

In their search for what makes a song a hit, Watts and colleagues Matthew J. Salganik and Peter Sheridan Dodds recruited 14,341 participants through a teenage interest Internet site, asking them to listen to music, which they were asked to rate from 1 to 5 and could then download. The researchers provided a selection of 48 songs by up-and-coming bands that the participants were unlikely to be familiar with. The music was selected from www.purevolume.com, a website where bands can create home pages and post their music for download.

The study was done twice. Each time, young people were divided into groups, with about 1,400 of them in an “independent” group and about 700 in each of eight “social influence” groups.

In the independent group each participant was on his own, while those taking part in the social influence groups could see which songs others were choosing to download and keep.

The participants didn’t all check out every one of the 48 songs; some listened to a few, some to many, Watts said.

In the social influence groups, once some songs started to be downloaded, others would try out those songs too, he said.

In the independent group, with no guidance from others, each person had to make his own decision.

Some songs proved more popular than others but not always the same ones that became popular in other groups.

“The best songs never do very badly, and the worst songs never do extremely well, but almost any other result is possible,” the researchers concluded.

For example, the song “Lockdown” by 52metro was ranked near the middle -- 26th -- by participants in the independent group who had no knowledge of others’ opinions. But in one of the social influence groups, it came in first, while in another the same song came in 40th out of 48.

Watts does not believe that people are consciously allowing themselves to be influenced.

“They think they trust their own judgment,” he said.

“What makes social influence difficult to understand is that we are often unaware of it. We always think we are voting without preferences. We don’t think we like bad songs.”

The study, “Experimental Study of Inequality and Unpredictability in an Artificial Cultural Market,” was funded by the National Science Foundation, the McDonnell Foundation and Legg Mason Funds.