life inspired

"From Mozart to the Beatles, music evolves as listeners get used to sounds they initially find strange or even shocking. As trailblazing music becomes mainstream, artists strike out in new directions. But in a new study, a computer program shows how listeners drive music to evolve in a certain way. Although the resulting strains are hardly Don Giovanni, the finding shows how users' tastes exert their own kind of natural selection, nudging tunes to evolve out of noise." Full news piece @ ScienceNOW. Original article:

MacCallum et al [2012]. "Evolution of music by public choice". PNAS. 10.1073/pnas.1203182109