The next ‘American Idol’? Ask your computer

New software shows promise in predicting breakout artists
Could a computer pick the next “American Idol”? The next Ludacris or Madonna?

New software by Israeli researchers promises to take much of the guesswork (and endless cover songs) out of figuring out which hip-hop or R & B artist will be the next "it" star in the United States. Using a mathematical formula to sort music requests logged by the massive Gnutella peer-to-peer file-sharing network, the researchers have boasted an enviable 15 percent to 30 percent success rate in automatically choosing artists or bands with breakout potential.

The solution, according to Tel Aviv University electrical engineer Yuval Shavitt and his colleagues, “is based on the observation that emerging artists, especially rappers, have a discernable stronghold of fans in their hometown area, where they are able to perform and market their music.”

Crucially, the researchers were able to extract geographic information from many of the 10 million to 40 million requests logged by Gnutella users every day. In some cases, the locations could be pinpointed to the level of a city borough, as in New York.

“What’s happening on the Internet is that it’s a whole collection of individual actions,” Shavitt said. “Such a huge collection of actions should have a very strong signal about many things, and in this case, it was so obvious that it should be a way to pick up trends — music, for example.”