Benjamin Draves and Vincent Demarco (Lafayette College)
Tempo of the Times looks to connect social shifts with fundamental changes in musical compositions. Powered by the Echo Nest, this project uses macroeconomic metrics and musical metrics that vary in sophistication in an attempt understand how artist’s work change with respect to the societal climate. Strong correlations relating economic and musical trends were found between the years 1950 and 2011. In addition to these correlations, autoregressive models were used to predict the future of musical indicators. Through tempoofthtimes.com, visitors can view and download the datasets, use the interactive graphics to better understand the data, and explore the correlations and predictive models. Through the data available publicly and advanced statistical methods- Tempo of the Times connects society to its music.