Evolution of music by public choice.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: MacCallum RM
PROVIDER: S-EPMC3409751 | biostudies-literature | 2012 Jul
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Publications
Evolution of music by public choice.
MacCallum Robert M RM Mauch Matthias M Burt Austin A Leroi Armand M AM
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20120618 30
Music evolves as composers, performers, and consumers favor some musical variants over others. To investigate the role of consumer selection, we constructed a Darwinian music engine consisting of a population of short audio loops that sexually reproduce and mutate. This population evolved for 2,513 generations under the selective influence of 6,931 consumers who rated the loops' aesthetic qualities. We found that the loops quickly evolved into music attributable, in part, to the evolution of aes ...[more]
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