MoL-2022-09: The National Contests Behind International Success: A Musical Comparison of the Eurovision Song Contest, the Festival di Sanremo and the Melodifestivalen

MoL-2022-09: van Harskamp, Jasmijn (2022) The National Contests Behind International Success: A Musical Comparison of the Eurovision Song Contest, the Festival di Sanremo and the Melodifestivalen. [Report]

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Abstract

The Eurovision Song Contest is the longest-running annual international music competition. In recent years, especially Italy and Sweden have obtained many successes at the song festival. Both countries select their entries through a popular national contest, respectively the Festival di Sanremo and the Melodifestivalen. Though all three contests have been studied repeatedly in various research areas, very little is known about their music. This thesis analyses the music represented at the Eurovision and at the two national contests in the period between 2011 and 2021. The aim of this study is to investigate the differences and similarities between these contests with respect to the performed entries. In order to analyse this, different sets of XGBoost classifiers were trained on musical features to match songs to the contest they were entered in. The results show a greater similarity between Eurovision and Melodifestivalen songs, than between Eurovision and Sanremo songs. We argue that this is most likely caused by distinct national music styles. Additionally, we attempt to predict the outcome of the Eurovision final from the outcome of the national contests by using the musical features. This problem was approached by training a top ten classifier and by constructing a ranking model. Neither method shows promising results. However, a comparison of the actual voting behaviour of all countries participating in the Eurovision and the predictions based on the national competitions supports our earlier hypothesis about national styles.

Item Type:	Report
Report Nr:	MoL-2022-09
Series Name:	Master of Logic Thesis (MoL) Series
Year:	2022
Subjects:	Computation Logic
Depositing User:	Dr Marco Vervoort
Date Deposited:	14 Jul 2022 11:56
Last Modified:	14 Jul 2022 11:56
URI:	https://eprints.illc.uva.nl/id/eprint/2206

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