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Increasing Similarity of Billboard Songs

It's not just you, others have also noticed that popular songs on the Billboard charts sound similar. But what you may not realize is that in the recent days, they're sounding even more similar. Andrew Thompson and Matt Daniels for The Pudding make the case: From 2010-2014, the top ten producers (by number of hits) wrote about 40% of songs that achieved #1 - #5 ranking on the Billboard Hot 100. In the late-80s, the top ten producers were credited with half as many hits, about 19%. In other words, more songs have been produced by fewer and fewer topline songwriters, who oversee the combinations of all the separately created sounds. Take a less personal production process and execute that process by a shrinking number of people and everything starts to sound more or less the same.

169 comments

  1. Surprised they are by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Surprised they are, when sales stagnate. Recording companies, complain to the Emperor they do. Longer copyright they want.

    1. Re:Surprised they are by Humbubba · · Score: 5, Insightful
      The music business has been declining for so long, by now they should have discovered Arne Saknussemm's skeletal remains at the center of the earth. I was just listening to an old clip of Frank Zappa talking about the decline of the music business. Back in the 60's the music industry was run by

      "old guys who said 'I don't know. Who knows what it is. Record it. Stick it out. If it sells, all right.' We were better off with those guys than we are now with the supposedly hip young executives, you know, who are making the decisions about what people should see and hear..."

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZazEM8cgt0

    2. Re:Surprised they are by farrellj · · Score: 1

      Music Industry insider Rick Beato has an excellent video on why the songs all sound the same...and it's illuminating and worth watching...

      The Four Chords That Killed POP Music!
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

      --
      CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
    3. Re:Surprised they are by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

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    4. Re:Surprised they are by ausekilis · · Score: 1

      I'll give you guys another theory - Maybe all the songs are *actually* the same:
      Four Chords

      If you need more proof, here's a country version with 6 top-ten country songs smashed on top of one another.

    5. Re:Surprised they are by Humbubba · · Score: 1

      I think, in some way, all music is derivative. Bach's 'The Well-Tempered Clavier' changed the way music is written and performed, and even how instruments are made. Some of its more notable fans/students included Hayden, Mozart and Beethoven. When my neighbor/music teacher use to play it, I would sit on the porch spellbound. And yet I know music aficionados who say it sucks. C'est la vie.

  2. "Mainstream music sounds the same" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    So what this "news story" is saying is that in recent years "mainstream music" sounds all the same. Let me guess, it's probably because "artists" nowadays use some computer algorithm to generate music which appeals to a wide audience and call themselves DJs ("disc jockeys", although I bet that none of them use discs anymore, they should be called "sample mixers").

    1. Re:"Mainstream music sounds the same" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hey yall don't talk shit bout Alan Walker dat wey

    2. Re:"Mainstream music sounds the same" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I trust you have the name of this alleged magic machine that creates music everyone likes.

    3. Re:"Mainstream music sounds the same" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      \/\The Conscience of a Hacker/\/
      by +++The Mentor+++
      Written on January 8, 1986

      Another one got caught today, it's all over the papers. "Teenager Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal", "Hacker Arrested after Bank Tampering"...
                      Damn kids. They're all alike.

      But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950's technobrain, ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him?
                      I am a hacker, enter my world...

      Mine is a world that begins with school... I'm smarter than most of the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me...
                      Damn underachiever. They're all alike.

      I'm in junior high or high school. I've listened to teachers explain for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. "No, Ms. Smith, I didn't show my work. I did it in my head..."
                      Damn kid. Probably copied it. They're all alike.

      I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it's because I screwed it up. Not because it doesn't like me...
      Or feels threatened by me...
      Or thinks I'm a smart ass...
      Or doesn't like teaching and shouldn't be here...
                      Damn kid. All he does is play games. They're all alike.

      And then it happened... a door opened to a world... rushing through the phone line like heroin through an addict's veins, an electronic pulse is sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought... a board is found.
                      "This is it... this is where I belong..."

      I know everyone here... even if I've never met them, never talked to them, may never hear from them again... I know you all...
                      Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again. They're all alike...

      You bet your ass we're all alike... we've been spoon-fed baby food at school when we hungered for steak... the bits of meat that you did let slip through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We've been dominated by sadists, or ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us willing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert.

      This is our world now... the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore... and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge... and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals.

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      I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual, but you can't stop us all... after all, we're all alike.

      +++The Mentor+++

    4. Re: "Mainstream music sounds the same" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think you misspelled Puff Daddy

    5. Re:"Mainstream music sounds the same" by dohzer · · Score: 1

      Thank-you for exposing me to a billion-view YouTube artist that I have never heard of.

    6. Re: "Mainstream music sounds the same" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There are a number of services that pre-screen songs to make sure they're similar enough to a current hit so a label can feel confident about putting money behind it.

      I'm too lazy to google it for everybody, but they're easy to find.

    7. Re: "Mainstream music sounds the same" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So you're a liar. Gotcha.

    8. Re:"Mainstream music sounds the same" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      All music is made out of construction kits and apps like ableton live , "musicians" do not know how to make music anymore. My mom can make a hit now, it is quick cheap....

    9. Re: "Mainstream music sounds the same" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nah you'd know it was Puff Daddy from the classic rock music being raped in the background.

    10. Re: "Mainstream music sounds the same" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Fine. For Pete's sake.

      Just search for:
      Hit Song Science
      Music Intelligence Solutions
      UPlaya
      A bunch of other shit

    11. Re:"Mainstream music sounds the same" by sd4f · · Score: 2

      The thing to note is, you won't see Alan Walker in any billboard lists, just like how he's not mentioned in the original pieces linked in this post. He arguably had a huge hit that would have easily surpassed many in original article, while, not getting the coverage or radio airplay that they would have enjoyed.

      My problem with the article is that it ignores how there's a lot of other activity in the music industry, which isn't covered by the billboards or major recording labels. I suspect that the reason there's such consolidation is because the mainstream industry is in decline, while people's listening habits and tastes are actually broadening, while it's not being measured.

    12. Re:"Mainstream music sounds the same" by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      In the distant past artists had to be very skilled and creative. The artists had to know their music, have a total understanding of music from lyrics, instruments to studio recording and how to present their own style.
      The people buying and accepting new work to be sold had to have deep understanding of music and the later recording results.
      Now its all what will test well and what an AI thinks will be just like all the other music that sold well that year, over the pat few months.
      Merit, quality, skill, creativity, the ability for an artist to create is all lost. Make music that sells. Find the next artist that can be tested to sell just like the last artist.
      Computer says Yes. Yes the music will sell. The music production is made to fit that narrow test so it will be accepted for sale globally.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    13. Re:"Mainstream music sounds the same" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Let me guess, it's probably because "artists" nowadays use some computer algorithm to generate music which appeals to a wide audience and call themselves DJs ("disc jockeys", although I bet that none of them use discs anymore, they should be called "sample mixers").

      Not really.

      The billboard music sounds the same because it is the same few people producing it. Max Martin is still active and he has been around since the early 90's, long before algorithmic music creation was anything but lame prototypes.
      The record company go to him, tell him they want a new song. Then the studio goes to the radio station and tells them to make it a hit.
      Since the radio station isn't exempt from copyright law they need a deal with the record company or pay royalties that are way higher than they can afford.
      That means that they have to play what the record company tells them to play.

      So the record companies gets the people they know produce things reliably and the radio station plays what they are told to play.
      The result is that music from the same people are played all the time with a few exceptions mixed in.

      The 'artists' are just packaging.
      You will get a new sound when the audio technicians in the studio retires, but the shift will be gradual.

    14. Re:"Mainstream music sounds the same" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In the distant past artists had to be very skilled and creative.

      Like when?

      Sure, if you group together all past history you will find plenty of talented artists, but there aren't that many every decade.
      None of them rose to the top on talent alone. Without marketing you have always been a no-name.

      Even back in the 18th century the age of popular artists was downplayed as a marketing ploy to make them seem more talented than they really were.

  3. wrong assumption by Torvac · · Score: 0

    titles of the same genre have always been somewhat similar, its just that the industry figured that a few mainstream genres are worth it, and the rest not. compare this with comics, books, games, movies, series, ... . few popular exceptions can divert this a bit (increase of synth use after title xxx, mistery series after stranger things or more gore/crime after breaking bad walking dead, ... ). and ofc people want money, means artists will copy popular stuff all the time. everything is a copy of everything at the end

    1. Re:wrong assumption by Barsteward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      But now in the age of "I want to be famous without any talent", successful songs are now easier to copy and more and more talentless people have access to the tools to do it

      --
      "The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
    2. Re:wrong assumption by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      DING DING DING, we have a winner. A friend was telling me about some real housewife that got some top 10 song. She was auto-tuned as she could not sing, did not play an instrument of course, and did not write it. She was however already famous, so it became a hit. I just don't get it. I rarely listen to anything past 2000. There are still a couple of new artists, but not very many.

  4. Does this seem like a formula to you? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y%27All_Want_a_Single#Captions_in_the_music_video

  5. AutoTUNE motherfuckers! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Answered, right here, right now. Bank it like Trump! OFFSHORE!

  6. Yeah, I Wanna I Wanna Baby by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Baby Wanna Baby Wanna Baby Wanna I Wanna Baby.

    There that is the next ten number 1 hits.

    1. Re:Yeah, I Wanna I Wanna Baby by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You forgot fuck nigga, nigga fuck fuck, hos and nigga....now that's a hit

    2. Re:Yeah, I Wanna I Wanna Baby by fluffernutter · · Score: 1

      .. mostly paid for by rich, entitled white guys.

      --
      Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
    3. Re:Yeah, I Wanna I Wanna Baby by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      .. mostly paid for by rich, entitled white guys.

      Ain't no record store in jail.

    4. Re:Yeah, I Wanna I Wanna Baby by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      .. mostly paid for by rich, entitled white guys trying to be niggahs.

      FTFY

    5. Re: Yeah, I Wanna I Wanna Baby by TimMD909 · · Score: 1
      Who cares where the funding is coming from? I'm more saddened that people listen to it. I can't imagine listening to unimaginative trash can enrich one's life. A lot of those songs seem like HOWTOs on how to be a douche by partying too hard and sleeping around as much as possible.

      It took years, but my friend finally stopped listening to rap. He now listens to what I'd call chill out music. He's a lot happier, less stressed, and no longer content with living a hook up lifestyle. I'm tempted to say there's more than a correlation.

    6. Re:Yeah, I Wanna I Wanna Baby by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Baby Wanna Baby Wanna Baby Wanna I Wanna Baby.

      There that is the next ten number 1 hits.

      I was in the gym locker room the other day and some guy was listening to some music player. The song he was listening to was, quite literally, just a single word repeated over and over again. "Goddam, goddam, goddam, goddam,..., goddam..." I think you get the idea. No, I'm not exaggerating. That was the entire song from beginning to end, as far as I could tell. And it wasn't like there was much musical ingenuity to the melody, chord progression, etc. Well, at least I'm sure it was quite easy to memorize what we might charitably refer to as the lyrics.

    7. Re: Yeah, I Wanna I Wanna Baby by sound+vision · · Score: 1

      Oh no, watch out for the NigHas

    8. Re: Yeah, I Wanna I Wanna Baby by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Woozle wuzzle woozle wuzzle - that will beat all of them!

    9. Re:Yeah, I Wanna I Wanna Baby by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Blind Melon, "The Pusher"?

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQUNigVcBB8

  7. Relevant? by phantomfive · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Are the billboard top 10 even relevant anymore? It seems like a different metric like "top 100 concert earnings" or something would be more relevant these days.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    1. Re:Relevant? by umafuckit · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Are the billboard top 10 even relevant anymore? It seems like a different metric like "top 100 concert earnings" or something would be more relevant these days.

      Or no single metric. Over the last 50 years or so both the number of different genres and the quantity of being being produced have both ballooned so it's not reasonable for a single chart to make sense. What you now really want to know is who thinks what is popular rather than just what is considered popular by the largest number of people.

    2. Re:Relevant? by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 1

      Is that more relevant? Some bands produce decent albums, but make a poor or even terrible live act.

      --
      If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
    3. Re:Relevant? by KozmoStevnNaut · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Top 10, Top 40, Top Whatever lists are always 100% manufactured. Either directly through payola, or indirectly by "encouraging" bars and clubs to play the same shit over an over again, so people enter a sort of Stockholm Syndrome, where they only "like" the hits because they recognize them or because "everyone likes it". People are afraid of new experiences, they actively seek to be superficially the same as everyone else. Even if that means "enjoying" utter garbage.

      --
      Eat the rich.
    4. Re:Relevant? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nowadays its more like Top Streamed, Top Click-on-Social-Media, or Top Played- By The Mall. Who buys this music anymore?

    5. Re:Relevant? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Over the last 50 years or so both the number of different genres and the quantity of being being produced have both ballooned so it's not reasonable for a single chart to make sense."

      Sadly the vast majority of that diversification needs to be dug for since as people have been noticing, the top 10 charts are sounding more and more the same. (less diversification)

    6. Re: Relevant? by azadrozny · · Score: 2

      I suspect that the Billboard stats are skewed. There are more options for artists to remain independent. Correct me if I am wrong, but releasing a song on YouTube doesn't get counted by Billboard.

    7. Re:Relevant? by houghi · · Score: 2

      Who thinks what is popular is obviously Google. When I look for the music section, I see who they say is popular.
      With the direct marketing tools they use, they even can tell me what I would like and by pure coincidence this is identical from what is popular.

      --
      Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
    8. Re:Relevant? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      i.e. see The Cars

    9. Re:Relevant? by bad-badtz-maru · · Score: 1

      The chart now factors in online sales, free streaming, and paid streaming with various weightings. It's not as basic as it was historically.

    10. Re: Relevant? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There might be mire genres today thanghere were 50 years ago, but genres from back then are completely missing today.

    11. Re:Relevant? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Who thinks what is popular is obviously Google. When I look for the music section, I see who they say is popular.
      With the direct marketing tools they use, they even can tell me what I would like and by pure coincidence this is identical from what is popular.

      Sorry, you are mistaken or trash. Disable every targeting option for Youtube and remove your history and look at the resulting proposals. All complete utterly repulsive clickbait garbage with millions of viewings.

      I just hope that it's the SEO verification bots that have developed this absolutely garish taste instead of real humans but I doubt it. I mean, someone must be responsible for electing the current crop of politicians.

    12. Re:Relevant? by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      That doesn't make them irrelevant. Quite the opposite. It makes them a lovely indication of what you're likely to experience if you interact with any part of the commercial world, be it turn on the TV, radio, what concerts are likely to come up, and what shitty music will be playing over your beer and steak at the bar.

    13. Re:Relevant? by Jahta · · Score: 1

      Are the billboard top 10 even relevant anymore? It seems like a different metric like "top 100 concert earnings" or something would be more relevant these days.

      Or no single metric. Over the last 50 years or so both the number of different genres and the quantity of being being produced have both ballooned so it's not reasonable for a single chart to make sense. What you now really want to know is who thinks what is popular rather than just what is considered popular by the largest number of people.

      Another view: the charts made sense when music was sold on physical media. When people had to physically go to a store, buy a vinyl record (or CD), and bring it home to listen to it, that represented a conscious choice (and a level of commitment) on the part of the consumer.

      With the rise of easy mass downloads (and now streaming) and portable personal music players, for many people music has now become an "always on" background soundtrack; hence devolving into a sort of "muzak" is not that surprising.

    14. Re:Relevant? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "by "encouraging" bars and clubs to play the same shit over an over again, so people enter a sort of Stockholm Syndrome,"

      I think you mean Pavlovian response. In the bars and clubs people are often drunk and/or drugged, and sometimes they even up the oxygen content in the room for a little bit extra of a high. The point is that in bars and clubs the atmosphere is a happy one and positively reinforcing thus encouraging a positive response under repeated stimuli. It also helps that a lower short term memory makes it easier to reply the same song with hardly few noticing it, If you go sober you will find the play list starts having repeats at about 30 minutes but with a different remix as most bar/club music is just samples of other music now a days.

      The difference with Stockholm syndrome is that the Pavlovian response is based off of positive stimulus while Stockholm syndrome is based off of negative experiences. No one is forcing you to go to clubs or bars, if it is a negative experience then those people will not return frequently enough for any lasting impression in their mind or find another type of bar or club with a music that matches their style. You are right that most people will try to fit into the group but i think you under estimate the sub groups and how people like to differentiate themselves amongst the larger group. A person may like metal, but there are many sub genres of metal, that person is more likely to explore the sub genres rather than go for dance music or R&B. Now there is the argument as well that the Top 40 genre of music is all formulated in a way to appeal to the largest number of ears (thus reinforcing the Pavlovian response), hence the fast beat, repetitive words solid baseline, etc etc but it is a hard sell to argue that people will force themselves to listen to "utter garbage" when the array of music is vast and quite varied.

  8. Dum... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Dam Da Dum Da Da Dum Dum
    Dam Da Dum Da Da Dum Dum

  9. Reverse: Sign of *diversity* ? by DrYak · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Hypothesis: Can also be a sign of *diversification* of the means of distribution.

    In the late 80s, music distribution was though a small number of TV channels (you know, back when the "M" of MTV still stood for music), a (relatively) small number of radio channel, and by buy media (tapes, CDs) from stores (with limited physical space).
    Whatever you wanted to listen too mostly came from mainstream media.
    You would need a tiny bit more producers to cover a diverse enough offer to cover all the needs of the public within such a small restricted numbers of channel.
    In other words the remaining 80% of the 80s producers will be another dozen or couple of dozens of producers, and that's basically all that there was.

    Compare to today, even if you're into chiptunes, nerdcore, or even weirder/rarer style that only people on some obscure forum know about, there's going to be at least a dozen of youtube channels with playlist/mixes.
    There are dozens of producer event for the rarest type of stuff.
    In other word, the remaining 60% of todays producers at thousands of producers, split among so many style that they'll never register on any "top fo whatever" classifications.
    The long tail has grown a lot in the mean time, but that something that won't be registered by a simplistic stat like "top billboard song contribution from 10 topmost procuders grew from 20% to 40%" , unless you start paying attention of what's happening to the remain 80% to 60%.

    --
    "Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
    1. Re:Reverse: Sign of *diversity* ? by geekmux · · Score: 5, Informative

      In the late 80s, music distribution was though a small number of TV channels (you know, back when the "M" of MTV still stood for music), a (relatively) small number of radio channel, and by buy media (tapes, CDs) from stores (with limited physical space).

      What the hell are you talking about? Distribution through TV channels? Uh, no. We usually watched MTV to catch a music video after a song became popular enough to justify making a music video. Radio airplay was still the main distribution method, as it had been for decades prior, which people usually wouldn't go buy media until they heard the music. Radio hasn't existed in "small" numbers since it was invented, and distributors sure as hell weren't going to limit themselves to whomever could afford cable TV.

      And stores with "limited physical space"? Are you kidding me? We used to have many stores that were dedicated to selling nothing but music, who carried many different "channels" of music in various categories. Where do you think all the media revenue came from before the internet distribution models? This is like claiming Gamestop has "limited" space to sell games when that's all they sell.

      I understand your UID implies otherwise, but this description of the 80s sounds like it was written by a Millennial who only read about it on a poorly written Wiki page.

    2. Re:Reverse: Sign of *diversity* ? by jythie · · Score: 2

      There was a transitional period when MTV and such were the places things got premiered, with music videos for promoted artists coming out before radio debut of the same songs. Radio was the place to run the song over and over, but MTV was the place to tell fans what they should be listening to, though that would really be more early 90s than late 80s. As for music stores, yes, there were entire stores dedicated to selling nothing but music, but even the largest places had pretty limited selection. Like books, there was just too much music for physical space to accommodate anything other than the most popular items

    3. Re:Reverse: Sign of *diversity* ? by avandesande · · Score: 2

      even at the beginning MTV was used to market new music... you definitely have the tail wagging the dog

      --
      love is just extroverted narcissism
  10. That's how it always is by KozmoStevnNaut · · Score: 2

    The business types get control of art, and they homogenize it into a fetid featureless river of shit.

    Luckily, there is so much creativity outside of the mainstream, if you only cut the feed of shit they feed you, and go explore on your own.

    --
    Eat the rich.
    1. Re:That's how it always is by BlueStrat · · Score: 2

      The business types get control of art, and they homogenize it into a fetid featureless river of shit.

      Luckily, there is so much creativity outside of the mainstream, if you only cut the feed of shit they feed you, and go explore on your own.

      You and I rarely agree on a whole host of topics, but here we find common ground. I agree. Go out to local clubs and other venues where "unsigned" bands and musicians perform, often without even a cover charge or ticket required, and explore local talent that the "industry" won't promote because it doesn't fit into their molds dictated by algorithms and MBAs. There's tons and tons of amazing musical talents and musicians performing live shows right in your local area. The best part is you can support them directly and personally without the "industry" walking away with most of it and leaving the artists crumbs at best while locking away our culture in perpetual copyrights.

      Strat

      --
      Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
    2. Re:That's how it always is by apoc.famine · · Score: 1

      This is also where Patreon shines. I support a couple of local bands, and I, along with only a hundred or so like-minded people, have managed to give them a solid financial base upon which to plan. I probably get a 75% return on my donation, with free t-shirts, albums, show covers, etc. that I would have purchased anyway. And I'm plenty happy to donate that other 25% to support some really interesting and talented musicians.

      --
      Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
  11. Re:Free Tommy Robinson! by Barsteward · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Lock up Tommy Robinson (and his bigot mates) and throw away the key

    --
    "The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
  12. The Musical One Percent - only in USA? by RobinBermanseder · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Sounds like the phenomenon of "Top 1% owns 99%" is impacting music as well as wealth, but it that purely an American phenomenon? The concentration does not seem to be as bad in UK or Europe, or here in Australia.

    As an old fart (punched card Fortran guy) it seems to me that most pop music has become very homogeneous there; the same four chords and riffs over and over with autotuned well-known-female-voice over the top.

    Listening to random classics on Youtube (today: The Monkeys, The Stranglers) the difference in texture and nuance from then to now is very evident.

    It will be interesting to see how AI generated music goes:
    a. Will it be indistinguishable from human output, or is there some 'human' quality that WE will always be able to detect?
    b. What music will an artificial consciousness prefer? Jazz? Human au Naturale? - we may be surprised!

    [Personal Taste warning]
    There is some 'real music' still coming out of USA, but mostly in genres ignored by the Mu$ic Indu$try, My favourite is Jackie Evancho who seems to have been blackballed by the industry since singing at Trumps Inauguration, but her vocals are very impressive (and very human) to my ears.
    [/End Personal Taste warning]

    1. Re:The Musical One Percent - only in USA? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I would hope there is a difference in texture and nuance between The Monkeys, The Stranglers. There was a decade between them!

    2. Re:The Musical One Percent - only in USA? by jythie · · Score: 1

      Wealth is a bit of a special case. When it comes to movies, music, books, etc, zipf's law tends to come into play which produces about an 80/20 split (20% of the artists having 80% of the mindshare).

    3. Re:The Musical One Percent - only in USA? by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      As an old fart (punched card Fortran guy) it seems to me that most pop music has become very homogeneous there; the same four chords and riffs over and over with autotuned well-known-female-voice over the top.

      Nah, if you can't tell the difference between this style and this style, you're deaf. And if that's not enough, this is #1 right now and wildly different.

      In the 60s and 70s it was all guitar and drums. Throw in an occasional piano or trumpet. Now in pop music there is more variety in instruments, more variety in chords, more variety in recording techniques. I like the classics but the skill level in music production has gone up without a doubt.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    4. Re: The Musical One Percent - only in USA? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Autotuned female voice vs autotuned female voice? Both sound like computers. Should we add believe from Cher also?

    5. Re:The Musical One Percent - only in USA? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nah, if you can't tell the difference between this style and this style, you're deaf.

      I'm certainly not deaf, but from my point of view those are exactly the same type of song.

    6. Re:The Musical One Percent - only in USA? by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      You're fucking deaf. One is primarily a guitar song, one is completely synthpop. One is recorded to give the artist a natural sound, the other has a heavily distorted voice (not that they need to, both have wonderful voices). Not to mention the rhythms and chordsets are completely different.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    7. Re:The Musical One Percent - only in USA? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Listening to random classics on Youtube (today: The Monkeys, The Stranglers) the difference in texture and nuance from then to now is very evident.

      *Cough* Perhaps you meant The Monkees? Or were you referring to this, instead?

    8. Re:The Musical One Percent - only in USA? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The "skill level in music production" has to go up because the actual artist talent has gone down. In the 60s and 70s we didn't need PhD producers because the artists were actual fucking musicians and not props.

      As for your songs, the first two are in fact the same style of song. The Childish Gambino song is garbage and only "#1" on the artificial "charts."

  13. Song writing is sort of dead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I think much of today's music with some exceptions with country music is born out of the music not the lyrics. Certainly there is plenty of the one hit wonders going around and when that song get's played to death they move on to the next one hit. I've also noticed the lack of interest in a artist in general, people don't buy entire albums or collections but rather just singles. This is probably why record companies push single hit wonders and not artists that can hold a listener for a entire group of songs.

  14. methodology by mapkinase · · Score: 2

    I do not care about pop music, but I am interested in methodology. Article says about 8 data points calculated for each song but it does not describe how and how did they normalize it to 0...1 scale

    --
    I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
  15. Re:Free Tommy Robinson! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    When your ideology calls for the oppression of women, murder of Christians and Jews, violence against your own kind, and marriage of children, you have to be removed from society.

  16. Re: Free Tommy Robinson! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    So you want your country invaded by and ruled by bronze age primitives with the help of your own government? Because that's what people like you who blindly toss the word "bigot" around are producing.

  17. Re: Free Tommy Robinson! by cyber-vandal · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    Sharia law is completely incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights, enshrined in law in the Human Rights Act 1998. As the UK is a member of the EU we have nothing to worry about. Oh hang on.....

  18. fuck the music industry by AndyKron · · Score: 3

    I don't understand why people still buy into the bullshit music industry and even bother listening to the shitty music it produces. When I go to a store or a restaurant I don't hear shitty new music, I heard golden oldies from forty years ago.

    1. Re:fuck the music industry by KozmoStevnNaut · · Score: 0

      That's because the boomers are still desperately hanging on to the last remnants of their cultural monopoly.

      Every notice how all the popular christmas songs are from the 50s and 60s? That's when the boomers grew up, so that's the music they like, and thus force on all of us, because obviously their music and traditions are superior to everything else /s

      The same goes for music, basically everything "classic rock" and "evergreens" should be referred to as "shit boomers like for no good reason". Sure yeah, The Beatles were kinda cool and wild back then and they helped popularize rock. BUT IT WAS FUCKING 50 YEARS AGO! Get over it!

      --
      Eat the rich.
    2. Re:fuck the music industry by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's because the boomers are still desperately hanging on to the last remnants of their cultural monopoly.

      Every notice how all the popular christmas songs are from the 50s and 60s? That's when the boomers grew up, so that's the music they like, and thus force on all of us, because obviously their music and traditions are superior to everything else /s

      The same goes for music, basically everything "classic rock" and "evergreens" should be referred to as "shit boomers like for no good reason". Sure yeah, The Beatles were kinda cool and wild back then and they helped popularize rock. BUT IT WAS FUCKING 50 YEARS AGO! Get over it!

      What utter bullshit.

      The REAL reason we hear golden oldies in stores and in elevators is due to licensing and cost. Stores subscribe to what they can afford to play. It has fuck all to do with baby boomers pushing their music agenda on everyone else. I know it's fashionable, but perhaps we can get over trying to blame boomers for every fucking thing.

    3. Re:fuck the music industry by jythie · · Score: 1

      Well, it is both really. Stores go with the best compromise between things their preferred customers will respond to vs licensing costs. Boomers still have the most disposable income so that tilts things in their favor, which also gives the services that provide the music incentive to offer attractively prices packages for that age range.

    4. Re:fuck the music industry by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Which popular Baby Boomer Christmas music do you mean?

      White Christmas, Irving Berlin 1942
      Happy Holidays Irving Berlin 1942
      Auld Land Syne words written in 1788
      The Chipmunk Sons 1958
      Feliz Navidad Jose Feliciano 1970
      The First Noel 17th century English carol
      Silent Night Franz Gruber 1818
      Blue Christmas First recorded in 1948
      Here cones Santa Claus Gene Autry/Oakley Haderman 1947
      (There’s No Place Like) Home For the Holidays Stillman/Allen 1954
      Santa Claus is Coming to Town Gillespie/Coots 1934
      Rocking Around The Christmas Tree Johnny Marks 1958
      Rudolf the Red Nose Reindeer Johnny Marks 1949
      Jingle Bells James Lloyd Pierpoint copywrited 1857
      O Come All Ye Faithful author disputed current version 1841 (original manuscript of the oldest known version, dates from 1751).

      Current popular music sucks. Give me the popular music from the ‘60s any day.

    5. Re:fuck the music industry by ayesnymous · · Score: 1

      Oldies is cheap because the boomers are dying out and few people listen to it. No radio stations play oldies anymore - the ratings just aren't there to justify playing it.

    6. Re:fuck the music industry by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, it is both really. Stores go with the best compromise between things their preferred customers will respond to vs licensing costs.

      I was under the impression that what was driving this is copyright restrictions. Stores generally don't want to pay for the licensing costs of background music, so they go with what has gone out of copyright because that costs almost nothing. The upshot is that we are now experiencing an 80s revival, which can have some rather unfortunate repercussions. (e.g., Boy George crooning in the background as I'm getting my coffee at Starbucks *blech*)

    7. Re:fuck the music industry by KozmoStevnNaut · · Score: 1

      Oh, I don't know. These maybe:

      http://www.babyboomerradio.com...
      https://www.theatlantic.com/en...

      Popular music has always been 99% suck. The only reason you think music was better in the 60s is because you only remember the good songs, it's blatant survivorship bias.

      --
      Eat the rich.
  19. Music is fake like TV news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    All the good music like Stratovarius and Morcheeba is being played in other countries. All the goid news that keeps us informed about the FBI meddling in elections via Operation Crossfire Hurricane using spies like Professor Stefan Halper, comes from other countries too.

    So to hell with all the people who served. They're the reason this fascist police state got away with 9-11. ae911truth org

  20. Re:Free Tommy Robinson! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Didn't Tommy Robinson have a top-10 Billboard hit with "I Left My Heart (and My Head) in Afghanistan"?

  21. Shouldn't come as a suprise by GrumpySteen · · Score: 2

    All the data they used came from the Billboard Hot 100 chart which has a long history of being gamed by the record companies (as almost all Billboard charts are, if we're being honest).

    Smaller artists usually don't get on that chart because they don't have the resources to play that game. The companies that are willing to invest the money to game the system are generally going to back music that's similar to what's already popular because it increases the chance of success.

    And to follow through to the logical conclusion; gaming the system gets your song onto the chart which then gets you more airplay on stations that play the 'top hits' which gets you more sales. It's a complicated version of the pay-for-play that used to be commonplace, but this time with a veneer of legality to keep anyone from being arrested or fined.

  22. Re:Free Tommy Robinson! by walterbyrd · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Even if Tommy Robinson were a bigot, since when has that been illegal?

    Do you advocate the Orwellian practice of punishing people for thought crimes?

    Are other bigots held to the same standard? For example, what about hate-preaching Muslim Mullahs?

  23. So what? As long as it makes money. by walterbyrd · · Score: 1

    Seems to me the concerts are packed. The "artists" are insanely rich, as are their promoters.

    Isn't that what business is about? Where is the problem?

    I still listen to stuff like Santana and Eric Clapton. I know: "get off my lawn."

    1. Re:So what? As long as it makes money. by fluffernutter · · Score: 1

      Some people don't really come to terms with the fact that giving you something good is not good business, giving you something highly addictive is. You may not choose to listen to it and you might choose to bemoan the quality if it, yet enough listen to it so it sells. Yet they will praise business and defend its right to make a profit. It won't end well.

      --
      Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
  24. Sir Mashalot: Mind-Blowing SIX Song Country Mashup by Proudrooster · · Score: 2

    If you haven't seen it:Sir Mashalot: Mind-Blowing SIX Song Country Mashup, or 6 #1 country songs separated at birth.

    https://youtu.be/FY8SwIvxj8o?l...

    So yeah, it is all over compressed, similar sounding 120 beat per minute 4 chord stuff. I don't even think the music has chord changes in the songs anymore.

  25. Re: Free Tommy Robinson! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The US is not part of the EU, so by your train of logic...just sayin'

  26. Re:Free Tommy Robinson! by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2, Informative

    He is not trouble for contemt of court. He already has a suspended sentence for it. It's like he wants to go to prison.

    And while I don't agree with it, the do lock Muslims up for hate speech. Quite a few actually.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  27. Re:Sir Mashalot: Mind-Blowing SIX Song Country Mas by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    i counter your argument with this :)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOGkj2w0_Rs

  28. Re:Free Tommy Robinson! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    He is not trouble for contemt of court. He already has a suspended sentence for it. It's like he wants to go to prison.

    What I don't understand is how it's contempt for trying to bring attention (by being outside live-streaming) to trials that mostly pass under the radar of the mainstream media.

  29. Musical content by swm · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I sing in a choir.
    We'll have some piece of sheet music, 3, 4, 6, maybe 8 pages.
    We start rehearsing it, and after a page or two the choir director says, now you've seen all the musical content in this piece.
    IOW, all the rest of the song is just repeats and rearrangements of what we've already sung.

    So I learned this idea of "musical content".
    Now, when I hear current pop music, I think about it in those terms.
    What is the musical content of this song?
    And it's not two pages.
    It's not one page.
    Sometimes it's a line.
    Sometimes it's just a couple of bars.
    Sometimes it's barely a few notes.

    There's really not much there.

    1. Re:Musical content by Nkwe · · Score: 1

      This guy sums it up pretty well with a video on how to create a summer hit in two minutes. Yeah, it's a Facebook video link. Sorry.

    2. Re:Musical content by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This guy sums it up pretty well with a video on how to create a summer hit in two minutes. Yeah, it's a Facebook video link. Sorry.

      For those who don't want the Facebook link, I think this is the same video on YouTube:

      How to make hit songs in 5 minutes by ANGEMI

    3. Re:Musical content by mishehu · · Score: 1

      More or less stuff we learned in elementary school music class. Only that nobody really paid attention in that class (you would know by how many people blew too hard into their recorders)...

  30. Re: Free Tommy Robinson! by reanjr · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    No it isn't. Sharia does not have particular prescriptions and proscriptions. It is malleable. It takes on the character of the society implementing it. If the society is a regressive, misogynist, anti-semitic one, then its Sharia implementation will reflect that. If the society is a progressive, feminist, ecumenical one, then its Sharia implementation will reflect that instead.

    Religion can be used to justify absolutely anything. Including human rights.

  31. Minimum human involvement by biggaijin · · Score: 2

    For me, music is the most emotional and involving of the arts. It can span the whole human experience and dig deep into all of us. Modern pop music is a clean departure from the realm of emotion and feeling. The droning high-pitched lead voice, an uninspired repetitive lyric, and accompaniment that seems to be exclusively the product of a drum machine and bits of electronically synthesized sound patched together. The "samplers" are even worse, stealing the content of legitimate artists and pasting chunks of it together. It's something I would expect a 12-year-old to do, and shows very little creativity and no artistry. The music industry has corrupted itself and now it's trying to corrupt us.

  32. Re:Free Tommy Robinson! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What I don't understand is how it's contempt for trying to bring attention (by being outside live-streaming) to trials that mostly pass under the radar of the mainstream media.

    Easy: they "pass under the radar" because they're under a government gag order. The pretext is that minors were involved in the crime, but the real reason is that the UK government does not want the public aware that they have multiple pedophile grooming gang trials going on at the same time, all with Muslim defendants, because then people might become aware of the fact that there's a real problem in the UK with immigrants raping British children and with the police and social services refusing to take any such allegations seriously for fear of looking racist.

    Likewise, Tommy Robinson's own imprisonment is subject to a gag order until the rape gang trials are completed. The unofficial word is that within six hours of arrest he was sentenced to thirteen months, but the court system in the UK will not confirm or deny that. The UK can quietly imprison someone for peacefully live-streaming on a public street and order the media not to cover the imprisonment: no freedom of speech, no freedom of the press, and arbitrary detention. The UK has no moral ground anymore to lecture other nations about human rights.

  33. Most people don't listen to music by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    they keep it on as background noise when they work or use it to dance to at clubs. That kind of music needs to be bland because otherwise you can't tune it out while you go about your work.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
  34. Radio == Small (relative) by DrYak · · Score: 2

    What the hell are you talking about? Distribution through TV channels? Uh, no. We usually watched MTV to catch a music video after a song became popular enough to justify making a music video.

    (That was more thrown in for the jab at MTV, rather than considering it as the number one way to distribute music).
    Hence also the progressive enumeration :
    small number of TV < relatively small number of Radios < physical media from stores (with shelf space restriction).

    Radio airplay was still the main distribution method, as it had been for decades prior, which people usually wouldn't go buy media until they heard the music. Radio hasn't existed in "small" numbers since it was invented,

    Small: Compared to what ? To modern internet/streaming/Etc. ?
    Yes, definitely. It was tiny.
    At best you'd get a couple of dozen FM channels that you could catch with your radio in the 80s. At any point of time, there would be a grand total of a couple of dozen of different songs that you could be hearing available simultaneously.

    That is a tiny trickle compared to giant Niagara of content that is available today online.
    There's a crazy insane amount of content that is immediately accessible to you.

    There are style that you would probably never be able to hear on the radio that are a single click away from you on internet.

    And stores with "limited physical space"? Are you kidding me? We used to have many stores that were dedicated to selling nothing but music, who carried many different "channels" of music in various categories.

    All stores *DO* have limited physical space.
    Yes, it's in the "several hundreds to thousands" range of media, which is impressive by 80s standard.
    But again that's dwarfed by the amount of content currently available online.

    There things that you couldn't find in the shelf back then.
    With some luck, it could be ordered by the shop. Without luck, you would need to hunt for small very specialized store that don't sell any mainstream media but only rarities and oddities. And you would need to go through several shops until you find what you need - as in physically travel in a nearby town. And/or hunt any garage sells / etc.

    Nowadays, it's just a few search terms aways from you, all from the comfort of you internet-enabled laptop. Within seconds. No travel required.
    At worse you would need to get it peer to peer instead of from a website, because some copyright holder is still refusing to make it available. But you'll get it online faster anyway.

    That's the whole point of my post.
    Nowadays, even if you're interested in completely weird music that only 3 other guys are listening to, there WILL be content available for you now. (A distant SFW-equivalent of rule 34 of the internets :-P )
    As there are only 4 guys listening - counting you - this will never register on any "top 10 billboard song".
    On the other hand, that's yet another additional (even if eccentric) style made available for listening thanks to the modern internet media, so more argument in favor of an actually diversification of available media.

    I understand your UID implies otherwise, but this description of the 80s sounds like it was written by a Millennial who only read about it on a poorly written Wiki page.

    Not a personal example, but I have some friends who are huge metal heads:
    Back then, when they were teens, they would littteraly travel to manage to buy the media which interested them. (Some were happy to buy CDs during obscure band's tour. One even opened a specialized music shop to cater to people with similar non mainstream tastes)

    Same guys, a couple of decades later. They reminisces about some obscure band that they've seen once on tour (and which disappeared no longer afterward). One flings her phone open, types a few keywords, and blasts the music to the bluetooth

    --
    "Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
  35. The general public is musically ignorant by Quake1v1 · · Score: 1

    The general public is musically ignorant and they'll eat up whatever they are spoon fed.

  36. Meanwhile, over in the rest of the music world... by grumling · · Score: 1

    Take a look at the number of units sold in country and religious genres. Number one selling albums in the pop charts wouldn't crack the top 10 for units sold on the contemporary christian charts.

    These things are just there to justify the existence of the R&R guys at the label.

    --
    "Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
  37. Music majors will tell you the formula, like an al by raymorris · · Score: 1

    > Let me guess, it's probably because "artists" nowadays use some computer algorithm to generate music which appeals to a wide audience

    Almost is that, and has been for a long time. Pop songs have a very well-defined structure or formula. To some extent, that makes sense because that's what makes it a pop song, not blues, not country, not hip hop, not gospel, but pop.

    Programmers have a formula for sorting, called quicksort, and lots of programmers do quicksort with very minor variations. Bakers have a pretty standard recipe for bread, with different people doing minor variations, there are a couple formulas for lipstick, with the ratio of colorants being the only thing that changes, and there is a formula or recipe for a pop song. Music majors can tell you the formula or pattern for a pop song.

    Nothing wrong with using a well-proven formulas. The only thing is, as a consumer don't expect a pop song to B original, and don't expect paying $80 for lipstick is going to get you anything different than paying $8. When you buy lipstick, you're going get wax (mostly carnauba wax), oil, and pigment. When you buy a pop song, you're probably going to get intro, verse, pre-chorus, chorus (or refrain), verse, pre-chorus, chorus, bridge ("middle eight"), verse, chorus and outro.

  38. Re: Music majors will tell you the formula, like a by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I wish you still got that. Now you get intro verse chorus chorus chorus chorus chorus chorus chorus.

  39. Long time coming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Decades ago, radio was music. Then, when the ASCAP/BMI fees were too hard to pay, we had talk radio. Now, even on the music stations, we get more "morning team" patter than actual music. And the commercials! The NAB and FCC once had strict limits on commercials per hour. Now, radio is just one long commercial interrupted by a short musical interludes.

  40. Re:Free Tommy Robinson! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No, send the UKIP and the long-suffering British population under attack that it represents lawyers, guns, and money, particularly the last two.

  41. Re:Free Tommy Robinson! by thegarbz · · Score: 1

    This could well be the beginning of violent revolution in the UK.

    I've seen how these revolutions play out before: https://youtu.be/Kb1ztV93dsE?t...

  42. Re: Free Tommy Robinson! by thegarbz · · Score: 0

    Religion can be used to justify absolutely anything. Including human rights.

    Yes but only those rights of those who believes in my god and not those other animals.

    Note: Don't give a shit about the topic at hand, jews, christians, muslims, whatever. Just pointing out that the only thing religion should ever justify is its own abolition for the stupid practice that each one of them is.

  43. Re: Free Tommy Robinson! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No it isn't. Sharia does not have particular prescriptions and proscriptions. It is malleable. It takes on the character of the society implementing it. If the society is a regressive, misogynist, anti-semitic one, then its Sharia implementation will reflect that. If the society is a progressive, feminist, ecumenical one, then its Sharia implementation will reflect that instead.

    Religion can be used to justify absolutely anything. Including human rights.

    That's all very nice in theory, but in practice, when it's YOUR young son or daughter that's been abducted and sold as sex-slaves with government protecting the perpetrators, theory goes out the window and you reach for weapons to remove a government that sees no problem with those acts of war.

  44. all business no art by Revek · · Score: 1

    Pretty typical of this corrupted free market.

  45. Axis Of Awesome by tlambert · · Score: 3, Funny

    This has been well known as the "four chord song" rule for a very very long time.

    The Australian musical comedy group "Axis Of Awesome" has a fantastic comedy routine about it, which incidentally demonstrates it, in bold contrast, with current and historical hit songs.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    Australians are awesome.

    1. Re:Axis Of Awesome by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That song is truly wonderful - there are a few variations, all worth watching for the specific songs included

    2. Re:Axis Of Awesome by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Australians are convicts and also incredibly stupid people. "Maaaaaaaaaate" --Sheep or Australian?

    3. Re:Axis Of Awesome by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not all are, South Australia was settled by a British colony.

      "Mate" sounds nothing like a sheep.
      New Zealand are the sheep fuckers.

  46. Nonsense by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

    I just looked at the Billboard Top 30 for 1952, and almost every single song on the list is one of two chord progressions, either ii-V-I or I-IV-V. For that matter, practically the entire Great American Songbook of popular music written from the end of WWI to the early '60s could all be represented by one chord progression.

    Popular music is not more similar today, musically.

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
    1. Re:Nonsense by Northdot · · Score: 1

      Chord progressions do not tell the whole story. Sonically and stylistically, pop music is now more homogeneous than ever. Arrangements, mix, instrumentation, even sound-alike synth patches replicated endlessly. If you took the vocals off of many recent hit records, you could barely tell songs apart. Such a far cry from say, the 60s and 70s. The Beatles, The Stones, Chicago, Jethro Tull, Alice Cooper, The Jacksons, Abba, Fleetwood Mac, and on and on, they all had their own sound. Now there is one sound.

      Pop music has become assembly lined, with "top-liners" adding their unoriginal/derivative melodies to beat tracks produced on laptops, copied by other producers creating tracks on laptops. It's all ear candy, no substance or originality - at least not on mainstream radio/media.

    2. Re:Nonsense by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

      Sonically and stylistically, pop music is now more homogeneous than ever. Arrangements, mix, instrumentation, even sound-alike synth patches replicated endlessly.

      Your ears have gotten old, is all. Here are some songs from the Billboard 100 as of today. Tell me how they are sonically and stylistically homogeneous.

      https://youtu.be/VYOjWnS4cMY

      https://youtu.be/luHhJalHanw

      https://youtu.be/QRF9TgkBCjc

      https://youtu.be/qMNnVBv4tME

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    3. Re:Nonsense by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      THANK YOU!

  47. Re:Free Tommy Robinson! by BlueStrat · · Score: 1

    I've seen how these revolutions play out before: https://youtu.be/Kb1ztV93dsE?t...

    I've seen how this revolution in particular may well play out also.

    https://youtu.be/_-gHVGOoE48

    Strat

    --
    Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
  48. Maybe it's in the style guidelines by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Ever been a beer judge?

    If you're tasting entries into the American light lager category and you don't like light lagers (e.g. because you're an IPA freak), that doesn't mean they're bad entries. It just means American light lager isn't your bag, baby. They're supposed to be light. They're supposed to be lagerey. They aren't supposed to taste like IPA.

    And if you have been drinking IPA all night and someone hands you a couple light lagers, they're going to taste the same to you (like crap).

    I have listened to a lot of heavy metal, psychedelic rock, blues, and progressive mixes of all that stuff, but I have never explored the billboard genre. But it's easy to imagine that the billboard genre of music has specific requirements that make them sound all the same to people who listen to other genres.

    When I was a kid and played metal for my dad, he said it all sounded the same, too ("like International Harvester"). He didn't know the genre. Maybe it's the same with you and billboard style music, just because you're not familiar with what properties make it be billboard style music, as opposed to some other kind of music.

  49. Re: Free Tommy Robinson! by Barsteward · · Score: 1

    Go somewhere else to fuel your bigoted conspiracy theories. try the ends of the earth but be careful, you might fall off the edge.

    --
    "The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
  50. Re:Music majors will tell you the formula, like an by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You forgot the hook.

  51. Re: Free Tommy Robinson! by cyber-vandal · · Score: 0

    No it isn't but it's a lot easier to walk away from the Council of Europe when you're not in the EU or EEA.

  52. Re:Free Tommy Robinson! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Actually it is very different, if you bother to read it.

    It's easy to wave your hand and say they are all the same, that doesn't make it so. Just makes you an idiot.

  53. Re:Free Tommy Robinson! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Lock up Tommy Robinson (and his bigot mates) and throw away the key

    Absolutely!

    Don't these bigots understand that child-rape and pedophile sex-slavery rings trafficking in abducted children as young as 9 are simply the equivalent of Catholic communion-wafers?

    Why, there's not a jot of difference between the them!

    Such hate for poor downtrodden UK Muslims! /s

  54. It's obvious if you've taken a music lesson by tlhIngan · · Score: 1

    If you follow any one of those "learn to play in 2 hours" type courses, you'd know this. (These are the courses that don't teach from first principles and generally get you playing within about 5 minutes).

    You learn that most songs are composed of about 4 chords, and regardless of instrument (piano, guitar, ukelele, etc), those 4 chords are all you need to basically play about 90% of the music out there.

    The chords are I, V, vi, and IV.

    Which I think in C-major key, is C, G, Am and F. The more interesting thing is, you play these chords in the same order! (On a piano, I think you'd play it with D-major, and guitar is what, G major?)

    It's a somewhat harmonious chord relationship, which is why it can be transposed to any key and the songs sound "the same".

    To see this, you can google "4 chords music", or watch the following pretty much canonical YouTube video -

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    There are at least hundreds more videos that do exactly the same thing, covering 40, 80, 100+ songs.

    PS - looks like Wikipedia is in on it too.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

  55. I for one will be glad when money ball music dies. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Ok with it going bye bye in baseball and football too...

    Not pron tho..

  56. Re: Free Tommy Robinson! by reanjr · · Score: 0

    India comes to mind. It's generally a western-style progressive nation.

  57. Re: Free Tommy Robinson! by reanjr · · Score: 0

    Indonesia, for strictly Muslim majority.

  58. Demolition Man might get another one right... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Pop music is becoming a banal as your standard commercial jingle...

  59. Re:Free Tommy Robinson! by thegarbz · · Score: 1

    Ironically in this case the movie that plays out on an alien planet rather than the one set in London is the one grounded in reality. The news said it themselves. Hundreds! of people demonstrated. Hundreds! In the 4th most populated city in Europe a whole hundreds turned out and gave a shit. 8,787,500 other Londoners just yawned.

  60. Re:Free Tommy Robinson! by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

    Contempt of court is when you do something that might jeopardize the trial. As such the media is very careful when reporting on on-going trials.

    When the trial concludes it can be reported without this issue. Robinson seems to have got the date wrong and claims to have thought it was a sentencing hearing, but it was actually the trial itself.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  61. Simple solution: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Play only the music which less than 2% of your peers would appreciate.

  62. Re: Free Tommy Robinson! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What sort of pea brain bigoted assholes are getting mod points when drivel like this is modded up?
    Too many alt right aspie fatass virgins gaming the mod system, still I will be back to whack them all down shortly when todays points arrive.

  63. Re:Free Tommy Robinson! by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 1

    If he's a bigot, what does that say about the prosecutors, judge and jury sitting in on the trial? Why is it illegal to cover an actual Court proceeding?

    --
    Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
  64. This is a no-brainer and should be obvious. by Heebie · · Score: 1

    Pop music has been formulated by algorithm, and not "written" in a musical fashion, since the 1980's. The lyrics, the hooks etc.., it's all calculated. Every note and word of nearly every pop song is analysed for how it affects a person emotionally etc.., and then combinations of those are put together in a computer model. Ever listened to an "original" song by no-direction... it's a series of clichés set to very familiar chord changes and rhythms.. just like every other "pop" sensation. The more they "refine" these algorithms, the more pop music sounds similar, and the more similar it sounds, the more obvious it becomes. and... there isn't one of us (perhaps excluding the deaf) who doesn't know a ridiculously stupid pop song or artist that we love listening to, knowing full well their music is crap. We really could use more talented poets and more real musicians in the world... but when mediocrity ends up being the big hit, and the song with truly meaningful lyrics and some originality from a musical standpoint ends up not being heard.

  65. Re:Free Tommy Robinson! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    LOL

  66. Re:Free Tommy Robinson! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That's just, like, your opinion, man.

  67. I have always been attraced to off-the-beaten-path by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    music. I have never been into the Top 40.

    Bands like New Model Army, Killing Joke, The Church have always been my preference. I do admit an affinity for Midnight Oil, but this is more because I like their politics and Peter Garrett in particular.

    I loathe anything cookie cutter: music, houses, software (prefer the off-beat text-based older stuff).

  68. Well, duh! by uncoveror · · Score: 1

    Teen pop is crap. Always has been, always will be. It is a disposable manufactured commodity, not art.

    --
    The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
  69. Re:Free Tommy Robinson! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    https://twitter.com/TommyR0binson/status/1000691873432985600 != hundreds

  70. Re: Free Tommy Robinson! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Reminds me how the Commies keep whining how "True Communism" was never implemented. We just gotta try it one more time and it'll totally work out then, pinky swear!

    Islam has been implemented around the world time and again and it and it's malleable nature has produced such wonder progressive societies as ...

    Yeah. "Oh, but this one time there was like a 50 year period where jews and christians were only like 2nd class citizens and weren't killed automatically and had to pay 50% more taxes when it's fair when you think about because crusades and stuff."

  71. Re:Free Tommy Robinson! by snakeplissken · · Score: 1

    they have multiple pedophile grooming gang trials going on at the same time, all with Muslim defendants, because then people might become aware of the fact that there's a real problem in the UK with immigrants raping British children and with the police and social services refusing to take any such allegations seriously

    bit confused, 'multiple trials' or 'refusing to take such allegations seriously'?
    which one?

  72. Re:Free Tommy Robinson! by CaffeinatedBacon · · Score: 1

    According to The Independent, Robinson was already on a suspended sentence for contempt of court over a gang rape case in 2017. The judge in the case on Friday slapped a reporting ban on the case. The order bans reporters from reporting on a case if there is reason to believe the reporting could prejudice a trial. The order prevents reporting until the conclusion of the trial Robinson was reporting on.

    He's obviously done this kind of thing before.

  73. Re:Free Tommy Robinson! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Both. These are not mutually exclusive things. The authorities knew about these grooming gangs for years and flat out refused to do anything specifically because they were afraid of being called racist. This is not in dispute.

  74. 2664 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    In that year, all of the dullards will be trying in vain to pull the string with the carrot slice at the end to ace the SAT to even care about music!

  75. Re:Free Tommy Robinson! by BlueStrat · · Score: 1

    https://twitter.com/TommyR0binson/status/1000691873432985600 != hundreds

    Thanks for that link to video of the huge number of people who peacefully marched in protest of Tommy Robinson's imprisonment for (make no mistake, nothing to do with violating a court order, that's just CYA).daring to expose the British government's suppression of news surrounding Muslim child rape-gangs and sex-slavery rings.

    Take heart Brits! You are NOT alone! There are many, many here in America who are praying for Tommy and you, and are ready to lend what support we can. Our governments may 'take the piss' with each other, but Americans by and large are with you! We kicked one set of fascist's asses together, we can do it again.

    "Never, never, never give up!" -- Winston Churchill

    Strat

    --
    Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
  76. Re:Free Tommy Robinson! by snakeplissken · · Score: 1

    flat out refused

    ah, so now the problem is in the past not the present. cwl, progress then, the sky isn't falling chicken little, no need to worry your pretty little head!

  77. What you may expect would happen by Sqreater · · Score: 1

    This is what one would expect to happen when an area of human endeavor is studied, "understood" and turned into a set process. It is frozen. It doesn't advance and change. And this is exactly what will happen in any area that happily lets AI take over for human beings.

    --
    E Proelio Veritas.
  78. Re:Free Tommy Robinson! by mjwx · · Score: 2

    Even if Tommy Robinson were a bigot, since when has that been illegal?

    What do you mean by "if"?

    Of course he's a bigot, sadly, as you pointed out that is not illegal. Even Piers Morgan has called him a bigoted lunatic on national TV.

    Ultimately, what landed Tommy Robinson in court was contempt of court. His first infraction was trying to film defendants outside of the Canterbury Crown Court. In the UK, defendants are granted safety from the media so that the outcome of the trial cannot be influenced by the media, so that the jury cannot be influenced or coerced by external sources (See: Lindsey Chamberlain for why this is necessary). Tommy Robinson is granted the same protections. He was bought up in front of a judge for Contempt of Court where he was given a suspended sentence (basically, if he kept his nose clean there'd be no jail time). He was arrested for Breach of the Peace and as such, violating the terms of his suspended sentence.

    Realistically, Tommy Robinson was only given a suspended sentence because he's a political hot potato. Anyone else would have been jailed, contempt of court is a serious charge here in the UK. He was given special consideration and then took advantage of it. There's nothing about thought crime here, he committed an actual crime, given a second chance and did it again.

    --
    Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
  79. Re:Sir Mashalot: Mind-Blowing SIX Song Country Mas by Thelasko · · Score: 1

    Country music is dead. It's been replaced by pop/dance music with a few steel guitars.

    --
    One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
  80. Re:Free Tommy Robinson! by ComputerGeek01 · · Score: 1

    When your bigotry demonises a complete sector of society for the faults of a few, then you should be excluded from society as well as you just have hatred to others different to yourself

    There is no way this isn't satire. I'm used to whiteknights having very little self awareness, but this statement right here has got to be the dumbest thing I have ever read from the left.

  81. Re:Free Tommy Robinson! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Even Piers Morgan has called him a bigoted lunatic on national TV.

    Morgan is a fucking loon somewhere Left of Marx and a drooling idiot.

    Way to lower the bar.

    How about we have YOUR KIDS or those of your closest family abducted, raped over and over, and then taken out of the country and "married" to some old Pakistani paedo? Would you be OK with your government ignoring it and covering it up?

    Not every criticism of Muslims is bigotry when based on hard facts and violent & criminal horrific acts.

    There's such a thing as being so open-minded your fucking brains fall out.

  82. It's "product" by whitroth · · Score: 1

    You didn't think the multinational megamediacorps are interested in *art*, did you? All they want is to stamp out product, like laundry detergent. That's why they sound alike, that's why there are 15-book trilogies, and years-long "adaptations of complete-in-one-movie.

    Screw 'em. Buy from musicians, don't just video them on your phone, so they don't get paid. And yes, I buy CDs from the musicians all the time, and *they* get the money to keep doing what I like, rather than the friggin' record companies taking most of it, and cooking the books. (Arlo said, a few years back, that it was THIRTY YEARS before he ever saw a penny of royalties on Alice's Restaurant, and Janis Ian was being charged $11 PER CD by her record company for her *own* CDs).

  83. Re: Free Tommy Robinson! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ...

  84. Childish Gambino by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What explains that? Guy got a Nobel for a âoesongâ that just sounds like noise with a few spoken words.
    What algorithm did he download?

  85. Re:Free Tommy Robinson! by AutodidactLabrat · · Score: 1

    The dumbest thing you heard from the left beats the smartest thing the right has ever offered.
    Make people work for healthcare
    That's the best you have? Cause people who are sick to die since they cannot get work, being sick and all?
    ThIS is the best of the right?

  86. Re: Free Tommy Robinson! by AutodidactLabrat · · Score: 1

    Why not?
    You're already here Mr. White Power.

  87. Re:Sir Mashalot: Mind-Blowing SIX Song Country Mas by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    But you can still tell it's Country because they still sing through their noses. This is true even with the Country/Hiphop thing they're doing these days.

  88. Re: Free Tommy Robinson! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    India comes to mind. It's generally a western-style progressive nation.

    India is 14% muslim and Sharia is unofficially followed in some communities and the Sharia courts are in the process of being banned, and it's definitely not the entire country.

  89. Re: Free Tommy Robinson! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why is this down-voted? Sharia literally kills people for being gay, how can that be progressive?

  90. Re: Free Tommy Robinson! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And Indonesia is progressive? In college I had a group of Indonesian friends that once out of the country soon converted to Catholicism (as "it's less oppressive as a religious organization [these days]" and "its teachings are far more tolerant"). They complained about not being able to drink alcohol depending on where they are, can't kiss a girl or hold her hand in public, to say nothing about the acceptance of gays.

    Here's a excerpt from one region:

    The Economist reported: Aceh, at the far west of the Indonesian archipelago, is proud of its reputation for piety. In 2001 it became the only province in Indonesia authorised to introduce sharia Islamic law as part of “special autonomy” aimed at ending a long-running separatist war. The provincial parliament passed laws against drinking, gambling and “seclusion”—being alone with someone from the other sex. An Islamic police force modelled on Iran’s “vice and virtue” patrols started to round up women for not covering their heads or for wearing trousers that were too tight. The first public caning took place in 2005. Now Aceh has taken another controversial step, by telling everyone to follow sharia—Muslim and non-Muslim alike. [Source: The Economist, February 15, 2014 */*]

    Forcing your religious beliefs on others by law sounds just lovely to me...