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Thread: It's official. Pop music isn't what it used to be...

  1. #1

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    Default It's official. Pop music isn't what it used to be...

    https://science.slashdot.org/story/1...ore-repetitive

    Findings copied/pasted below for the lazy:

    1. Pop music has become slower -- in tempo -- in recent years and also "sadder" and less "fun" to listen to.

    2. Pop music has become melodically less complex, using fewer chord changes, and pop recordings are mastered to sound consistently louder (and therefore less dynamic) at a rate of around one decibel every eight years.

    3. There has been a significant increase in the use of the first-person word "I" in pop song lyrics, and a decline in words that emphasize society or community. Lyrics also contain more words that can be associated with anger or anti-social sentiments.

    4. 42% of people polled on which decade has produced the worst pop music since the 1970s voted for the 2010s. These people were not from a particular aging demographic at all -- all age groups polled, including 18-29 year olds, appear to feel unanimously that the 2010s are when pop music became worst. This may explain a rising trend of young millennials, for example, digging around for now 15-30 year-old music on YouTube frequently. It's not just the older people who listen to the 1980s and 1990s on YouTube and other streaming services it seems -- much younger people do it too.

    5. A researcher put 15,000 Billboard Hot 100 song lyrics through the well-known Lev-Zimpel-Vogt (LZV1) data compression algorithm, which is good at finding repetitions in data. He found that songs have steadily become more repetitive over the years, and that song lyrics from today compress 22% better on average than less repetitive song lyrics from the 1960s. The most repetitive year in song lyrics was 2014 in this study.
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  2. #2
    Daryll's Avatar
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    And three out of four people make 75% of the population......
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  3. #3

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    I am 60 so remember as far back as the 1960's.
    In those days there weren't the distractions there are now like mobile phones and game stations and not everyone had a TV.
    So music was a much bigger part of peoples lives.
    In those days many more records were sold.

    As the decades have gone by the number of songs out of the top 20 I have liked has steadily gone down.

  4. #4
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    Quote Originally Posted by ckpr2 View Post
    In those days many more records were sold.
    And therein lies the problem.

    OK - I'm more an 80s chap, but even then you KNEW what was in the charts. You used to listen to Radio 1 on a Sunday afternoon (usually with fingers poised over the record button ), and actually LISTEN to the music.

    Ask a young-un what's in the charts now? Most of them haven't got a clue!

    Why - because music now is disposable. They don't go out and buy shiny black discs or tapes anymore. They consume it via the likes of Spotify and whatever other channels they use now, mainly without paying for it. Even then, they tend to listen to the first few seconds of a song and skip to the next rather than listen to the whole thing....I've witnessed both my kids doing it!

    They have no "ownership" of it anymore. They have no collection of music other than a load of 1's and 0's stored in the cloud somewhere.

    Just my couple of pennies worth. I'll go back to my Zimmer frame now

  5. #5
    Daryll's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by ckpr2 View Post
    I am 60 so remember as far back as the 1960's.
    In those days there weren't the distractions there are now like mobile phones and game stations and not everyone had a TV.
    So music was a much bigger part of peoples lives.
    In those days many more records were sold.

    As the decades have gone by the number of songs out of the top 20 I have liked has steadily gone down.
    Totally agree , I am a young 60 as well , I get a little peeved at a gig where every where I look people are on their phones/tablets

    Daryll
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  6. #6

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    Quote Originally Posted by ckpr2 View Post
    As the decades have gone by the number of songs out of the top 20 I have liked has steadily gone down.
    That's a natural part of getting older. Even at proms where the customers are 16 at best, there's very little from the charts which goes down well - at least in my local parish. The best reactions tend to come from tunes recorded long before the kids were even a glint in somebody's eye. And that I find REALLY sad - that few people seem to be making good times music that has any staying power.

    In recent years, I've become ambivalent about the music I play. I don't think I could still be going out performing if I wasn't. If it goes down well that's good enough for me - whether it's Man's Not Hot or the latest phoned in wails from Beyonce. Infact if I ever get a request to play something I like I pause for thought & have to give it the benefit of the doubt.. so little of what I play you'd catch me listening to during my down time.

  7. #7

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    Quote Originally Posted by Daryll View Post
    Totally agree , I am a young 60 as well , I get a little peeved at a gig where every where I look people are on their phones/tablets

    Daryll
    They are usually stood on the dance floor, motionless, sending messages to each other. Half a second after the tune that they requested had come on, their attention was redirected to whatever someone had said about someone else. How often do you get asked for a somg that you had played not long before to be told "well, I never heard it" even though you know they were there.

  8. #8
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    Whilst there are some good modern songs (Rita Ora "Everything" for example) I have to agree that the overall standard is not as good although we do reminisce about the old days and forget Des O'Connor singing "Dick A Dum Dum".
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  9. #9
    Jim - Scotland's Party DJ's Avatar
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    The decade has been highly forgettable so far with a few minor exceptions.

    I was in Vegas over the Christmas holidays and marshmello was doing a set. I thought it would be quite fun to go and see big club night show, and then I realised that his stuff is so slow you can't even really dance along to it - and he's a dance producer!

  10. #10
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    I quite like the music from this decade, although I maintain that the best decade for music that I have experienced in the 00s.

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