Digital Music News today:

What drives a hit? A good beat, catchy riff, or charismatic singer are often key ingredients. But a new study from Columbia University indicates that psychology also plays a key role in the process. The research group released its findings late last week after querying more than 14,000 teenage participants, who sampled tracks on PureVolume.com. The study featured lesser-known songs and artists in the study to better observe the evolution of a hit.

As part of the study, certain buckets of participants were allowed to view how others ranked specific songs, while others were not. Interestingly, participants often chose tracks based on the rankings of others, instead of making completely independent choices. Meanwhile, listener opinions correlated more closely on the actual musical quality of specific songs, and most of the divergence occurred in the subsequent popularity rankings. While that points to a critical social component to song popularity, researchers conceded that the making of a hit song is a very tricky – and largely mysterious - combination of both individual and group opinion.

In other news, I received a certified letter from Sony BMG stating a lot of form letter crap basically saying they still don’t want to apologize for the rootkit/malware they infected my computer with on Nov. 1, object to me calling it malware/spyware and letting me know about the class action lawsuit, which coincidentally will be resolved on Wednesday, Feb. 15. So four months, two weeks later I’ll take my three free album downloads, but I still don’t trust Sony BMG and won’t trust them in the future. Check out EFF for more info.