Recording companies using
computer analysis to determine likely hit songs. The program known as Hit Song Science claims to detect the deep patterns which appeal to popular tastes; several labels are using it to help plan release dates, or decide whether to put money into releasing a song at all. Could this usher in a new era of conformism and stagnation that will make the late '90s seem like an explosion of creativity, and drive everybody looking for anything other than homogeneous bubblegum in genre drag into the MP3 underground?