Abstract: A method implemented by a determination engine is provided. The determination engine receives a media dataset comprising target piece music information, target piece audience information, corpus music information, corpus audience information, and corpus preference data. The determination engine determines a subset of the corpus music and preference information and determines at least one surprise factor of the subset of the corpus music and preference information across features at one of a plurality of orders. The determination engine learns a model that estimates a likelihood that time-varying surprise trends across the features achieves a preference level. The determination engine determines at least one surprise factor of the target piece music information across the features at the one of the plurality of orders and predicts, using the model, preference information using the time-varying surprise trends for the target piece music information across the features.

Abstract: A system and method for estimating the popularity of song by calculating the (absolute and/or contrastive) harmonic surprise of each song in a corpus of music data, determining the popularity of each song in the corpus (e.g., based on a music chart, downloads, online streams), determining correlations between harmonic surprise and popularity, and estimating the popularity of an individual song based on the (absolute and/or contrastive) harmonic surprise of the individual song and the correlations between harmonic surprise and popularity.

Abstract: A method implemented by a determination engine is provided. The determination engine receives a media dataset comprising target piece music information, target piece audience information, corpus music information, corpus audience information, and corpus preference data. The determination engine determines a subset of the corpus music and preference information and determines at least one surprise factor of the subset of the corpus music and preference information across features at one of a plurality of orders. The determination engine learns a model that estimates a likelihood that time-varying surprise trends across the features achieves a preference level. The determination engine determines at least one surprise factor of the target piece music information across the features at the one of the plurality of orders and predicts, using the model, preference information using the time-varying surprise trends for the target piece music information across the features.