Week 5 "The Science Of Hit Songs"

     On week 5 of my writing course, we were given the assignment to read "The Science of Hit Songs" which is a short analysis of a research that researches did with popular music. What they ended up concluding in the research was that people tended to download songs with higher popularity over songs with low popularity with the sheer fact that the popular songs were easier to access than the low popular songs. What this means, is on iTunes, it is very easy for people to access and download the higher populated songs because those songs are what are on the homepage and for people to easily access, but with over 6 million songs on the iTunes available for download, people do not easily have the accessibility to try and listen to less populated songs and get a chance to like it and download them.
    Salganik, the researcher, also stated that, on the other hand, "a desire for compatibility with others could drive the choice, since much of the pleasure from listening to music and reading books stems from discussing them with friends"(Salganik, 2). I find this statement to be a slightly bold statement as that is quite a large generalization for people. I, myself, do not necessarily choose music that are popular among everyone else and my friends to be able to have something in common with my friends. I would also think many other people would not just download songs that are popular just to have something to discuss with other people. The example that if everyone read Harry Potter and were talking about it, I would too, Salganik gives, is not very true. Harry Potter, I believe, got its immense success from being a very well thought out book that was very entertaining. I never actually read the Harry Potter series, and even when most of my friends were talking about the books, I never felt the need to read it to fit in with my friends.