Objectives
• To rate similarities between selected songs of Southeast Michigan’s homegrown artists
• To develop a model accurately describing the main dimensions used by song raters in rating similarities between songs
Methods• Each Song was rated on a 21 point Likert scale on
similarity with each other song• Following ratings, subjects rated each song on the
following factors (7 point Likert Scale)
1.“Danceability” 2. “Singability”3.“Popularity When Released”4.“Appeal to Males”5.“Appeal to Females”6.“Appeal to You”
Methods• In addition, the following objective indices
were collected on the songs:
Sex of Performer
Year Song was Released
Top Billboard Chart Position
Style of Music
• And on their raters:
Sex of Rater
Age of Rater
MDSEuclidean distance model
Dimension 1
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Dimensional?• If the songs were rated on continuous
dimensions, the distance of a song from the origin on a dimension should correlate with an independent measure of that song’s position on that dimension.
Correlations between MDS-Derived Dimension Scores and Subject-Rated Dimensions
Dim 1Dim 2
Danceability .06
-.18Singability
.09-.15
Popularity When Released.08 -.15
Appeal to Males.12 -.17
Appeal to Females.09 -.24
Appeal to You.08
-.18Year Song was Released -.23 .43Top Billboard Chart Position -.25 .27
Dimensions?
• None of the objective or subject-rated characteristics we measured accounted well for the dimensions mapped by MDS.
• In addition, ranking the songs based on these characteristics did not well describe the putative dimensions mapped by MDS.
Tree Model
White Stripes
Ted Nugent
Alice Cooper
Iggy Pop
Kid Rock
Derrick May
Eminem
Temptations
Marvin Gaye
Supremes
Aaliyah
Madonna
Mean Appeal to Females in Tree Structure Groups
Appeal to Females
Group 1
Group 2
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
t = 4.14, p < 0.005
Singability
t = 4.18, p < 0.005
r = .91