My final project idea is to recreate the sound of MySpace music using a generative network.
As it appears, almost the entire archive of music on MySpace has been lost. MySpace used to be the largest social network in the world, with 75 million visitors at its 2008 peak. After years of poor management, dissatisfying user experience, and strong competition from Facebook, the popularity of MySpace has plummeted, down to a point of almost complete irrelevance. However, the largest asset of the company up to this year was an archive of music data. This year, however, 12 years’ worth of music has been deleted as a result of a botched server migration.
The interface I intend to develop would aim at reflecting the legacy of MySpace in influencing currents in arts and culture. It would do so by distilling the essence of the MySpace sound from a specific point in its history. By compiling 450,000 songs into a dataset, one can hope it is possible to infer certain patterns in the music of that time, and perhaps create a generative algorithm. The model would not so much aim at “reconstructing” MySpace and saving it from extinction as it would be an experiment in inferring musical essence from seemingly disparate samples.