Research Shows Modern Music Is Getting Louder And All Sounds The Same

Elders who complain that "all new music sounds the same" have been proven right. The Artificial Intelligence Research Institute in Barcelona have released findings from their analysis, concluding that modern popular music has gradually become louder and monotonous.

The team conducted their research by analysing just under 500,000 tracks spanning 55 years of the musical timeline.  They crunched the data on pitch, timbre, song structure and loudness to put the very complaints that your Gran has inevitably said at some point in life to the test.  It's a fascinating form of experiment, taking something that has always been a qualitative opinion and testing it with systemic analysis.

Turns out there is some truth behind their causes for concern.  Research shows that the average volume of a song has been gradually increasing in the timespan analysed, which has been the responsibility of record labels wishing for their products to stand out amongst all the other radio noise.  But looking into the foundations of the songs themselves, the team report that pretty much nothing has changed.  Granted, the structure of songs vary on an individual basis; but timbre, tonal quality, pitch, all of these have dipped in terms of differentiation since the 60s.  This has been attributed to the experimentation by the artists of the time.

So the conclusion is simple: musical creativity is dying.  BUT, please take this with a pinch of salt.  It's key to identify that only Western pop music was analysed for this research.  Then again, the Grandparents have never really been into Djent, so that makes sense.

Source: Scientific Reports

Jason England