OFFICIAL: Pop IS Getting Worse
Scientists have proven that pop music is too loud and it all sounds the same
Reuters reports that researchers in Spain used a huge archive known as the Million Song Dataset, which breaks down audio and lyrical content into data that can be crunched, to study pop songs from 1955 to 2010.
The report says that a team led by artificial intelligence specialist Joan Serra at the Spanish National Research Council ran music from the last 50 years through some complex algorithms and found that pop songs have become intrinsically louder and more bland in terms of the chords, melodies and types of sound used.
"We found evidence of a progressive homogenization of the musical discourse," Serra told Reuters. "In particular, we obtained numerical indicators that the diversity of transitions between note combinations - roughly speaking chords plus melodies - has consistently diminished in the last 50 years."
The research adds that modern pop has a more limited set of sounds, and it offers advice to musicians saying that old tunes re-recorded with increased loudness, simpler chord progressions and different instruments could sound new and fashionable.