WHAT MAKES A HIT SONG?
Analysing Billboard #1 Songs Through The Years
How have the audio features of US
popular songs evolved over the past 50 years?
Why Research Music?
Suffice to say, music is in our lives in one form or another. On average, Americans spend more than 4.5 hours a day listening to music, with this figure increasing yearly (Nielsen, 2017).
​
However, the way we interact with music has greatly changed over the years from The Beatles to One Direction and from Barbra Streisand to Flo Rida. This project is aimed at exploring what makes a song 'popular' by analysing various audio features over the years in a data-driven way.
In particular, we will be answering the question :
How have the audio features of US Billboard Top 20 songs evolved over the past 50 years?
This question will be answered using various data science and visualisation techniques on Python.
NB: We are defining popular songs as Top 20 US Billboard songs.
Aims and Objectives
1. Explore what features are prominent in popular songs.
​
Using Spotify's API, we will investigate the different characteristics of Top 20 US Billboard songs and learn which particular features are more prominent than others.
​
​
2. Discuss and compare the composite factors of popular songs throughout the years to identify any trends.
​
We are curious to see if the characteristics of a popular song remain the same or change over the years. We want to compare this to societal trends, preferences and norms to see if they influence what music the majority like.
Hypothesis
Here is what we expect to find during this project:
​
-
All audio features change over time.
-
The overall length of songs is shorter now than 50 years ago.
-
The composition of songs reflects the societal trends and behaviour of their times.
Who are we?
Jasmine Modiano
Research and Context
Jasmine is from Italy but has lived in London for 7 years. She's a second year Arts and Sciences student at UCL.
​
Her studies are focused on Biochemistry, but also ventures into Philosophy for her minor.
​
Aside from uni, she loves to play the piano and the guitar, as well as travelling as much as possible (thanks corona).
​
​
Jing Xue
Website Design
Jing is from Nanjing, China.
She's now a second-year BASc student. Her major pathway focuses on public policies and global development, with computer sciences as her minor.
Beyond these, she's cat-addicted (meow).
Kumayl Gulamhusein
Data Analysis
Kumayl is born and raised in the UK.
​
He majors in societies and is looking into consultancy as a career path but he also has an interest in the study of dino & saurs and their historic relationship.
Ebani Dhawan
Data Analysis
Ebani is a second year BASc-er excited by the brain and science policy.
​
Growing up in Dubai, she's unsurprisingly never seen snow yet can (barely) ski.
In her spare time, you can find Ebani reading, testing out her puns, or training her spice tolerance.
Louise Riche
Data Visualisation
Louise is an Arts and Sciences student from Paris majoring in Science.
Her studies focus on nothing in particular as she is far too indecisive to choose a specific domain. She is therefore doing at the same time maths, politics and mandarin.
​
Apart from university, she really enjoys American politics, baking and Tarantino's movies.