What makes a song a hit? And if you’re a listener that loves the hits, how can we help you discover new music that gives you the same satisfaction as the Hot 100? This project focuses on tracks featured in the past 11 years of Billboard’s Hot 100. We’re considering building two analytical tools.

1) a genre classifier based on the audio features and lyrics of tracks in these lists
2) the “hit profile” — a feature profile that allows us to predict whether other tracks in Spotify’s impressive, but unreasonably large, catalog would grab the attention of a listener who’s typically a fan of the Hot 100
A more detailed sketch of our plan can be found here.