In my research with the Billboard Hot 100 charts and how it affects popular music, I found the link between tempo to be stronger than the link with key. This means two things;

1. In a short period of time, the tempo or speed of a track may more effectively affect mood than key does
2. In a longer period of time, the more easily it is to detect the key or modality

In order for it to touch the emotional aspect of our minds, we need to be able to compute it. Consider these numbers:

• A song is playing at 120 beats per minute; tick, tick, tick – your brain is able to detect the distance between beats within two – three notes and compute a fairly accurate tempo.
• A song is playing in the key of D minor, walking up the scale; D – E – F – G – A – Bb – C – D. This is to identify a scale in a song if it were playing from bottom to top. In doing so, until we hear the Bb it could easily be the C Major scale. Regardless of where it starts, it will take > 2-3 notes to detect scale. Pop music is never played in scalar format, making it take an even longer time to compute than tempo.

So what? One second commercials are popping up. Many web ads are only 10 seconds short instead of the longer ones many of us are used to on television.

We know with advances such as AppleTV & Google TV that the advertising and revenue models are going to see a shift as we move towards Web-to-TV interfaces.

For short commercials and jingles where we don’t have as much time as usual, it’s important if we use music to connect our brand to our audience that we prioritize the rudimentary elements.