Music Machinery

Lots of ink has been spilled about the Loudness war and how modern recordings keep getting louder as a cheap method of grabbing a listener’s attention.   We know that, in general, music is getting louder. But what are the loudest songs? We can use The Echo Nest API to answer this question.  Since the Echo Nest has analyzed millions and millions of songs, we can make a simple API query that will return the set of loudest songs known to man.  (For the hardcore geeks, here’s the API query that I used).   Note that I’ve restricted the results to those in the 7Digital-US catalog in order to guarantee that I’ll have a 30 second preview for each song.

So without further adieu, here are the loudest songs

Topping and Core by Grimalkin555

The song Topping and Core by Grmalking555 has a whopping loudness of  4.428 dB.

Modifications by Micron

The song Modifications  by Micron has a loudness of  4.318 dB.

Hey You Fuxxx! by Kylie Minoise

The song Hey You Fuxxx! by Kylie Minoise with a loudness of 4.231 dB

Here’s a little taste of Kylie Minoise live (you may want to turn down your volume)

War Memorial Exit by Noma

The song War Memorial Exit by Noma with a loudness of 4.166 dB

Hello Dirty 10 by Massimo

The song Hello Dirty 10 by Massimo with a loudness of 4.121 dB.

These songs are pretty niche. So I thought it might be interesting to look the loudest songs culled from the most popular songs.  Here’s the query to do that.  The loudest popular song is:

Welcome to the Jungle by Guns 'N Roses

The loudest popular song is Welcome to the Jungle by Guns ‘N Roses with a loudness of -1.931 dB.

You may be wondering how a loudness value can be greater than 0dB.  Loudness is a complex measurement that is both a function of time and frequency.  Unlike traditional loudness measures, The Echo Nest analysis models loudness via a human model of listening,  instead of  directly mapping loudness  from the recorded signal. For instance, with a traditional dB model a simple sinusoidal function would be measured as having the same exact “amplitude” (in dB) whether at 3KHz or 12KHz. But with The Echo Nest model, the loudness is lower at 12KHz than it is at 3KHz because you actually perceive those signals differently.

Thanks to the always awesome 7Digital for providing album art and 30 second previews in this post.