Unveiling the melodic matrix: exploring genre-and-audio dynamics in the digital music popularity using machine learning techniques

Purpose This paper aims to explore factors contributing to music popularity using machine learning approaches. Design/methodology/approach A dataset comprising 204,853 songs from Spotify was used for analysis. The popularity of a song was predicted using predictive machine learning models, with the results showing the superiority of the random forest model across key performance metrics. Findings The analysis identifies crucial genre and audio features influencing music popularity. Additionally, genre specific analysis reveals that the impact of music features on music popularity varies across different genres. Practical implications The findings offer valuable insights for music artists, digital marketers and music platform researchers to understand and focus on the most impactful music features that drive the success of digital music, to devise more targeted marketing strategies and tactics based on popularity predictions, and more effectively capitalize on popular songs in this digital streaming age. Originality/value While previous research has explored different factors that may contribute to the popularity of music, this study makes a pioneering effort as the first to consider the intricate interplay between genre and audio features in predicting digital music popularity.