There’s probably a perfect moment in your favourite song where everything just clicks. Wouldn’t it be great to skip right to the zenith of every tune? Music Machinery’s Paul Lamere think so — he’s just devised a Spotify plugin that takes you right to the most dramatic moment of any song.
The aptly-named Where Is The Drama does exactly what the label says: Type in an artist and song title, and up comes a graph showing you the loudness of the song over time. The most dramatic moment, that perfect stanza where the song swells up and grabs you in the chest like a sucker-punch of emotion, is highlighted in minty green. No more waiting around for the hit — Where Is The Drama gives it to you immediately.
Admittedly, this is just a fun little project that Paul put together during Music Hack Day in Berlin. Rushing through a song to get to the most dramatic part is like wishing for a fast-forward button on a romance — it sort of misses the point.
But it’s a nifty bit of hacking, and it’s interesting to see how the app’s determination of “most dramatic moment” lines up with your own opinion of where the moment really hits. “The app is online,” Paul says, “but please treat it gently — it has a really hacky Spotify integration that will probably fall over if you look at it too hard.” If you want to tweak the algorithm, or just see how it works, the code is available on github.
Given the task of evaluating your favourite song, how does Where Is The Drama‘s taste measure up to your own?