Blogs

How Predictable is the Eurovision Song Contest?

22 May 2021 Research

The Eurovision Song Contest has long been a popular basis for betting, and popular fan websites such as Eurovisionworld collate the books from about a dozen different online bookmakers to make predictions about who will win the contest. The success of these sites is mixed: although Eurovisionworld’s particular compilation of bookmakers had identified the winner correctly in only two out of the last five contests by the evening of the final (2015 and 2019), if we use more flexible criteria such as the Top 5, the same site has on average identified 4 out of 5 of the Top 5 correctly.

Is there a Christmas canon?

24 December 2020 Research

If I ask you to think of popular Christmas music, what song would come to mind first? Would you mention one of the true oldies, like ‘Sleigh Ride’ by The Ronettes? Maybe ‘Driving Home for Christmas’ by Chris Rea? Or would you go with Mariah Carey’s sensational hit ‘All I Want for Christmas is You’? No matter the song, chances are that it was produced a while back. The ‘Christmas canon’ appears to consist of pre-2000’s songs, despite exceptions like Ariana Grande’s ‘Santa Tell Me’, produced in 2014.

Happy holidays from the Amsterdam Music Lab

14 December 2020 News

Happy holidays from the Amsterdam Music Lab! To help you keep up the holiday spirit, we’ve just released a special holiday edition of the Hooked on Music experiment.

Welcome to the Amsterdam Music Lab!

7 October 2020 News

Welcome to the Amsterdam Music Lab, a space where you can learn about how you hear music and how your listening style compares to others, and where the music industry can test new ideas with the forefront of music cognition research.