This is a response I posted to a message board, in regards to this article:

http://news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,6119776%255E401,00.html

I actually find the technology quite fascinating. In fact, I'd LOVE to work on something like this. I did a long project on mathematics & music when I was getting my Bachelor's degree. As much as many self-taught musical purists want to deny it, there is a lot of science behind why certain musical pieces convey the emotions that they convey, and why certain combinations of notes just "work" or "don't work". And I still don't think this destroys the beauty of music; if anything, it makes me find it more fascinating.

Is this really going to change the music scene? I don't think so. Pre-packaged top 40 music, stretching all the way back to the days of Frank Sinatra, has by far and large been written by "hit-making song writers". All this computer program could potentially do is cut down on the same work that they've always been doing: studying harmony, chord progressions, and hooks of past & present music hits, then "borrowing" those progresions that that just sound "good". As they say in the article, "There are a limited number of mathematical formulas for hit songs." It's true! Ask anybody who's studied music theory above the basic level.

Do I think the computer program will be a fool-proof method? No, and I don't think the people who created it do either. There are always going to be those bands that confound the critics. And I don't mean the occasional scruffy-haired garage band with the low-slinged guitars that come along -- punk-pop still uses a lot of those same catchy hooks and progressions that show up in other forms of popular music, just sped up with distortion. I mean those top 40 songs that really don't sound like anything you normally hear on the radio (I can't think of any specific examples off the top of my head right this second, but they exist). Likewise, there are bands with catchy hooks n' looks that, for whatever reason, simply don't chart. Maybe they had horrible lyrics, a horrible rhythm section, or something else.

Are people afraid that this program will determine who gets airplay and who doesn't? Well again, I think this is what record companies have already been doing for decades with their own ears!