Researchers at McMaster University in Ontario decided to use
the math and statistics tools commonly used to study the spread
of infectious diseases to understand how songs become popular.
To do this, they turned to the database of the streaming service
MixRadio and studied information about almost 1.4 billion
downloads of music files. By selecting the top 1000 songs in the
UK for 20072014, they measured how well the standard epidemic
disease model describes trends in popular music downloads.
The results showed that the model is equally good at predicting the
spread of viral music among fans of popular genres, the Guardian
writes. Scientists also calculated the reproduction index for various
genres of music - in medicine, it means the ability of the disease to
spread, provided that the population has zero immunity. The lowest
average levels - 2.8 and 3.7 - were found in metal and dance music,
respectively. Pop music has a higher level, but rock and hip-hop are
even more infectious, and electronics - a subset of electronic music
intended more for listening than dancing - got the highest score: 3430.
That's almost 190 times more infectious than measles, in which has
an infectiousness index of 18.
There are probably many in the population who have already
developed immunity to genres such as electronics because of their
own tastes, said Thomas Rawson, a disease model specialist at
Imperial College London. "My grandmother, for example, is
particularly resistant to trap and dubstep infections." A recent large
meta-analysis provided evidence for the "Mozart effect" for patients
with epilepsy. Scientists from Italy confirmed that listening to Mozart's
music, especially on a daily basis, led to a significant reduction in
seizures and a decrease in abnormal brain activity.
