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.

Comments

Surprised they are

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Surprised they are

[Humbubba]

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

Re:Relevant?

[umafuckit]

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.

Reverse: Sign of *diversity* ?

[DrYak]

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%.

Re:Reverse: Sign of *diversity* ?

[geekmux]

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.

Re:Relevant?

[KozmoStevnNaut]

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.

Re:wrong assumption

[Barsteward]

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 Musical One Percent - only in USA?

[RobinBermanseder]

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]

Musical content

[swm]

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.