The Grammys are awarded Sunday starting at 5 p.m. PT. Can online music services' data predict the winners?
(Credit: Getty Images)The debate over man versus machine has existed as long as machines have. So how well does raw data hold up for something as human as musical expression?
Online music services, which use data to figure out what you like, would say: very well, thanks. And for the Grammy Awards, the Recording Academy's yearly Employees of the Year ceremony, they're putting their data to the test.
Spotify, the on-demand streaming music service, applied the number of streams for each nominee to come up with its list.
"We are truly data driven," said Steve Savoca, Spotify's head of content. "That's just raw data. We're not manipulating...it's really just reflecting the interests of our users."
Shazam, the app that will recognize what song you're hearing simply by listening to it, based their predictions on the number of times users pulled out their phones to help them up to figure out the details of a song.
Director of Music Will Mills called it one of the clearest signs of intent out there. Its data held up last year: The New York Times dubbed the service the most successful crowd-sourced digital predictor of the awards, as it correctly identified three of the four winners of the top categories.
"We've got the heavyweight belt," Mills said, joking.
iHeartRadio, an online radio service owned by terrestrial radio giant Clear Channel, decided not to go the route of play volume, but rather custom-station creation. It's when a listener creates a station based on artist name, which Chris Williams, senior vice president of programming, said helps clarify intent from influences like radio play or marketing. "That was a good measure of passion," he said.
Slacker, an online radio service that focuses on the marriage of data and old-school programming, examined its internal Engagement Quotient to determine how deeply fans engage with a given track, which looks at seven positive and negative factors like how often the song is hearted, banned, skipped and shared. While EQ data is certainly useful in representing the tastes of a very large group of music fans, "anticipating what the panel of Grammy voters will do falls less to what music fans en masse like and more to anticipating what the panel will do based on historical precedent," said Mat Bates, senior program director.
"The songs that have the highest engagement and consensus don't always win out at the Grammys. That's how Justin Bieber didn't win Best New Artist," he said.
In most of the big four categories, Slacker's head (data) and heart (editorial expertise) were in sync, except for Album of the Year. In that round, CNET offers up two Slacker picks, one by machine and another by man -- in this case, Bates himself, predicting with the consideration of historical importance too.
Beats Music sells its heavy human-touch approach as giving it an edge -- unlike all its online competitors, it claims -- in picking your music because it's a "service, not a server." The new subscription service didn't make specific predictions in general categories, but its global head of editorial and programming, Scott Plagenhoef, did post some meandering thoughts about the general-category awards on the company's blog. We'll adopt those picks, so to speak, here too.
CNET compiled the various services' predictions in the top four categories of award: Record of the Year (awarded for a single's performers and producers), Album of the Year, Song of the Year, (awarded for a single's songwriters), and Best New Artist. And the nominees are...
Record of the Year
Beats Music: Lorde - "Royals"
iHeartRadio: Imagine Dragons - "Radioactive," followed closely by Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines"
Shazam: Robin Thicke - "Blurred Lines"
Slacker: Lorde - "Royals"
Spotify: Imagine Dragons - "Radioactive"
Album of the Year
iHeartRadio: Macklemore & Ryan Lewis - "The Heist"
Shazam: Macklemore & Ryan Lewis - "The Heist"
Slacker (machine): Macklemore & Ryan Lewis - "The Heist"
Slacker (man): Kendrick Lamar- "Good Kid, M.A.A.D City"
Spotify: Macklemore & Ryan Lews - "The Heist"
Song of the Year
Beats Music: Lorde - "Royals" or Macklemore & Ryan Lewis - "Same Love"
iHeart Radio: Katy Perry - "Roar," which was neck-and-neck with "Locked Out of Heaven" by Bruno Mars
Shazam - Pink - "Just Give Me a Reason"
Slacker: Lorde - "Royals"
Spotify: Pink - "Just Give Me a Reason"
Best New Artist
Beats Music: Kacey Musgraves or Ed Sheeran
iHeartRadio: Kendrick Lamar
Shazam: Macklemore & Ryan Lewis
Slacker: Macklemore & Ryan Lewis
Spotify: Macklemore & Ryan Lewis
So which one, if any, has the data or insight to call them? CNET will update after the awards to suss out which service was perfectly in tune with the Grammys.
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