Researchers at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont. have determined that music is just as infectious as diseases – mathematically, at least.
“There are many similarities between the release of a new hit song and the outbreak of an infectious disease,” reads a paper published in the September issue of Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences.
"When an infectious disease first enters a population, it is transmitted from person to person via social interactions. Prevalence eventually reaches a peak and then declines as the susceptible pool is exhausted and/or infectious individuals recover. After a new hit song is released, it also ‘spreads’ rapidly through a population, from person to person and through various media, eventually reaching some peak popularity and then diminishing in appeal.
“At the end of a disease epidemic, a large proportion of the population will have been infected with the disease, whereas at the end of a hit song’s period of extreme popularity, a large proportion of the population will recognize that song.”
Dora P. Rosati, Matthew H. Woolhouse, Benjamin M. Bolker and David J. D. Earn used data from 1,000 song downloads in Great Britain between 2007 and 2014 and found that “count time series for many popular songs resemble infectious disease epidemic curves.”
The academics explained: “This suggests that the social processes underlying song popularity are similar to those that drive infectious disease transmission.”
Rosati and her team calculated the basic reproduction number – a measure of a disease’s ability to spread in a society with no immunity – of several music genres and found that Dance and Metal scored the lowest, with R0 ratings of 2.8 and 3.7 respectively.
Pop music scored 35, followed by Rock (129) and Rap/Hip Hop (310). The most infectious music genre is Electronic, which has an R0 rating of 3,430 – roughly 190 times more transmissible than measles.
“Popular songs are often described as ‘viral’ or ‘catchy’ as if they could ‘infect’ people,” the researchers wrote, “Perhaps this description is more apt than has been previously recognized.”