It would be nice to think that in a cultural market like music, quality is everything, and each number-one hit is also the best-in-class. Plus, it seems awfully hard to prove otherwise. How do you demonstrate that a song nobody has heard of is “better” than the most popular song in the country? You would need something crazy: a parallel universe to compare where thousands of people have listened to the same songs and come to different conclusions without the power of marketing. In fact, that parallel universe exists. Music labels consult it all the time. It is the universe of HitPredictor and
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