The science behind what makes a song hit

European researchers have developed a computer equation that can be used to predict whether a pop songs will soar and or flop.

Using 50 years' worth of hit songs on Britain's top 40 charts, they've come up with a computer program that can rate a new song.

"The computer can combine a song's features in an equation that can be used to score any given song," said Project leader Tijl De Bie, a senior lecturer in artificial intelligence at the University of Bristol in England.

"To predict the hit potential of a given song, we used a computer to quantify how similar it is to previous "hits" and "flops." Time frame is important: If you're scoring a song from today, then we will consider the songs in 2011 more important than the songs in the '60s.

We represent each song using a set of 23 different features that characterize the audio. Some are very simple features — such as how fast it is, how long the song is — and some are more complex features, such as how energetic the song is, how loud it is, how danceable and how stable the beat is throughout the song. We also took into account the highest rank that songs ever achieved on the chart.

We can then evaluate how accurately the computer scored it by seeing how well the song actually did.

Every single week now we're updating our equation based on how recent releases have done on the chart. So the equation will continue to evolve, because music tastes will evolve as well."

Tijl De Bie also claimed the correct guesses of some hit songs by the program.

He said, "Wiley's "Wearing My Rolex" did well, strongly based on loudness. So that was an expected hit. It went to No. 2 in 2008.

Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy," which went to No. 1 in 2006, scored well thanks to its danceability, among other things.

Elvis Presley's "Suspicious Minds," which went to No. 2 in 1970, had a fairly simple harmonic movement, which at that time was a good thing if you wanted to score a hit."