Evolution of music by public choice

Thanks to the blog LondonJazz I just read an article published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS among friend), so let´s raise the standard for one moment here.

In the article "Evolution of music by public choice" by Robert M. MacCallum, Matthias Mauch, Austin Burt and Armand M. Leroi (published online 18 June 2012) the role of consumer selection is studied.

No offense meant, but to an untrained reader in the "Darwin and culture" field, this seems pretty far out! Now just read this (I have to think different about loops from now on):
"To investigate the role of consumer selection, we constructed a Darwinian music engine
consisting of a population of short audio loops that sexually reproduce and mutate".

They developed an artificial system for studying musical evolution called “DarwinTunes”, and if I understand this, the population mentioned above evolves for 2513 generations.

Conclusion: "Our experiment shows how cultural dynamics can be explained in terms of competing evolutionary forces".

You should read this yourselves, and Since PNAS is an Open Access journal, just follow the link above and click on PDF, then the article will be on your screen for your pleasure.

The SoundCloud material is taken from DarwinTunes.

If this is hot stuff, please tell!