Top all-time · #1064
Paul Lamere
Personal blog · musicmachinery.comdataai
Paul Lamere writes Music Machinery, a personal blog at musicmachinery.com about data and ai. Since 2009, 63 different Hacker News readers have linked it 81 times, most often “How 4chan hacked ReCAPTCHA to win the TIME 100 Poll”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-13, and you can follow it by feed.
Rarely recommended · 4 of 33 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Paul Lamere's blog for music-tech analysis from his Echo Nest-era work: loudness wars, playlisting, music hacks, and data on listening habits and genres.
- Recommended for · 4 comments
- Called a nice analysis of loudness and a good data post; playlisting tutorial urged as worth checking out; behind-the-scenes post called good.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 33 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
a blog about music technology by Paul Lamere
Most-linked posts?
- How 4chan hacked ReCAPTCHA to win the TIME 100 Poll4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2009-04-28
- In search of the click track (2009)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-03-25
- Python code makes any song swing3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2010-05-22
- 4chan hacker discusses the manipulation of the Time poll3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2009-04-16
- How to process a million songs in 20 minutes2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-09-06
- Hackathons are not nonsense2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-02-21
- Infinite Gangnam Style (from Music Hack Day)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-10-28
- The Infinite Jukebox2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-11-13
- Jonathan Coulton vs. Glee2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-01-26
- Gender Specific Listening2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-02-19
What Hacker News says?
Bring back echo nest's Rosetta stone. https://musicmachinery.com/2010/02/10/introducing-project-ro...
Comment linking /2010/02/10/introducing-project-rosetta-stone/
on “I Don't Have Spotify”Submitted How to process a million songs in 20 minutes as a story · 141 points
HN discussionThis is really awesome. They cut the entire song into one-beat segments of sound and video, and then categorized each beat by similarity to other beats in the song, and then after each beat there's a random chance that, instead of playing the next beat, the playback will transition to a different but similar-sounding beat from elsewhere in the song. More info at the author's blogpost: http://musicmachinery.com/2012/…
Comment linking /2012/10/28/infinite-gangnam-style/
on “Infinite Gangnam Style”Submitted How 4chan hacked ReCAPTCHA to win the TIME 100 Poll as a story · 127 points
HN discussionAn engineer said they have defenses against this >Checking for offensive words is only one of the filters we have. Even without that filter, it’s essentially impossible to get recaptcha to return a false result. http://musicmachinery.com/2009/04/27/moot-wins-time-inc-lose...
Comment linking /2009/04/27/moot-wins-time-inc-loses/
on “Captchas are Becoming Ridiculous”Submitted Python code makes any song swing as a story · 125 points
HN discussionReminds me of a cool hackathon project I saw a few years ago, The Infinite Jukebox. It finds pairs of beats in a song that sound alike and during playback has a chance at each beat with of jumping to its paired match, creating a seamlessly looped version of the song with added novelty from verses and choruses having varying order and length. The original hack, done on song that works particularly well, is still up:…
Comment linking /2012/11/12/the-infinite-jukebox/
on “It's normal to play the same song over and over again (2016)”Submitted 4chan hacker discusses the manipulation of the Time poll as a story · 120 points
HN discussionhttp://musicmachinery.com/2013/01/25/joco-vs-glee/
Comment linking /2013/01/25/joco-vs-glee/
on “Jonathan Coulton strikes back by re-releasing his own song”Submitted Jonathan Coulton vs. Glee as a story · 111 points
HN discussionDave - I like hackathons. In particular I like the 24 hour constraint. Having to build something in 24 hours (really probably 18 hours), forces me to make decisions, to get to the heart of the problem. Similarly, building something that I know I will only have 2 minutes to demo makes me really focus on what is important. I think the constraints lead to more creativity, just like the Haiku with 17 verses and 3 lines…
Comment linking /2012/02/20/hackathons-are-not-nonsense/
on “Hackathons are nonsense”Submitted The Skip as a story · 109 points
HN discussionSome users from 4chan managed to hack recaptcha and embarrass Time magazine seriously at the same time not long ago. Basically they stuffed the ballots on the Time online voting page where users could vote for most influential person of the year. Most influential person ended up being Moot, founder of 4chan. Just to rub it in they managed to spell "marblecake also the game" out of the first letters of the top 21 ent…
Comment linking /2009/04/27/moot-wins-time-inc-loses/
on “Google acquires reCAPTCHA”Submitted Revisiting the click track as a story · 73 points
HN discussionIndeed. The author is referring to the up-a-half-step modulation that Barry Manilow tactically used all over the place. I call it a "Manilow". --- But yeah, it's just one of the many elements of musical craft that's missing in today's popular music. Sampled sounds are (by definition) lifeless. Sequenced rhythm tracks are unnaturally consistent. See Paul Lamere's "In search of the click track": https://musicmachinery…
Comment linking /2009/03/02/in-search-of-the-click-track/
on “The death of the key change”Submitted How good is Google’s Instant Mix? as a story · 57 points
HN discussionThe closest thing to a documented case I've seen is a report of people gaming the Time Person of the Year poll so that the top person was moot, and the first letters of the candidates spelt out "Marblecake. Also the game.": By understanding how reCAPTCHA worked – the team was able to double their productivity (since they usually only had to enter one word instead of two). To further optimize their voting they create…
Comment linking /2009/04/27/moot-wins-time-inc-loses/
on “I’m not a human: Breaking the Google reCAPTCHA [pdf]”Submitted Looking for the Slow Build in the Million Song Dataset as a story · 38 points
HN discussionI am quite interested in this topic. There is some research on that field. Some links I collected in the past: http://thesis.flyingpudding.com/ http://dynampd.ubitux.fr/ http://erikbern.com/2015/09/22/presentations-about-spotify-m... http://erikbern.com/2015/09/24/nearest-neighbor-methods-vect... http://www.wired.com/underwire/2013/08/qq_netflix-algorithm/ http://www.slideshare.net/erikbern/collaborative-filtering-a…
Comment linking /2012/11/12/the-infinite-jukebox/
on “Finding Similar Music Using Matrix Factorization”Submitted Self-remixed track (mixed out of samples of itself) as a story · 29 points
HN discussionMore fun with sound stretching: http://musicmachinery.com/2010/05/21/the-swinger/
Comment linking /2010/05/21/the-swinger/
on “Python, Pitch Shifting, and the Pianoputer”Submitted Six degrees of Black Sabbath as a story · 26 points
HN discussionYour post led me down the rabbit hole of over-compression, not for the first time, and I ended up at this video which gave a very succinct answer to my question of: "Okay, I realize that music is getting compressed, but what are we losing?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ Via a nice article with analysis: https://musicmachinery.com/2009/03/23/the-loudness-war/
Comment linking /2009/03/23/the-loudness-war/
on “The Dark Art of Mastering Music”Submitted Playing with Playdar: Open Source Music Content Resolution as a story · 19 points
HN discussionI think that what we're seeing is actually just one service being repackaged as many. Echonest provides the data supporting all of these services, so it makes sense that they all look very similar and that there is no remarkable difference in quality from one to the next. However, even with this saturation there actually are a lot of successful music discovery services, so not really a money black hole. http://music…
Comment linking /2012/12/02/music_discovery_is_not_a_lie/
on “Show HN: 2u.fm is a social music discovery site, my side project for over a year”Submitted Search for music by drawing a picture of it as a story · 11 points
HN discussionThe Time poll for person of the year is notorious for being rigged. In 2009, 4chan got moot to the top, in addition spelling out "marblecake also the game" with the first initials of the 21 top nominees. [1] In 2012, something similar was done [2]. 2013? Yup. http://www.dailydot.com/news/time-person-of-the-year-miley-c... Anyway, my point is that the Time poll isn't even a reflection of popularity. The 2013 article…
Comment linking /2009/04/27/moot-wins-time-inc-loses/
on “Edward Snowden nominated for TIME's person of the year”Submitted Using Software to find Drummers who use Click-Tracks as a story · 9 points
HN discussionI was just going through their archives trying to answer my question and found a great discussion on this post: http://musicmachinery.com/2011/05/14/how-good-is-googles-ins... There are some insightful comments from names I recognize from my research.
Comment linking /2011/05/14/how-good-is-googles-instant-mix/
on “Show HN: 1M Song Dataset dev in 10 mins”Submitted The Infinite Jukebox as a story · 7 points
HN discussion
