SSS 2012-06-21

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That is Generation Zero of DarwinTunes. It is a website researchers are using to study how listener preferences affect the evolution of music.

A new study claims that the taste of the public exerts a force on music similar to natural selection. The findings support the theory that culture and art are shaped not only by their producers, but by consumers too. The report is in the Proceedings² of the National Academy of Sciences. 

Researchers created short tunes¹ and allowed them to procreate,that is, they’d combine aspects of the parent tunes to produce a new generation of music.User ratings on the DarwinTunes site provided the evolutionary³ selection, with only the most appealing tunes allowed to create progeny⁴.

The researchers found that quality increased quickly at the beginning. The random⁵ sounds rapidly gave rise to something an awful lot like music. Here’s generation 600. 

But after a while things stagnated⁶. The researchers plan to update the program to drive evolution further. Meanwhile, here’s DarwinTunes generation 3000.

Thanks for the minute for Scientific American-60 second science. I'm Evelyn Lamb. 

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