Measuring the evolution of contemporary western popular music (1205.5651v1)

Abstract: Popular music is a key cultural expression that has captured listeners' attention for ages. Many of the structural regularities underlying musical discourse are yet to be discovered and, accordingly, their historical evolution remains formally unknown. Here we unveil a number of patterns and metrics characterizing the generic usage of primary musical facets such as pitch, timbre, and loudness in contemporary western popular music. Many of these patterns and metrics have been consistently stable for a period of more than fifty years, thus pointing towards a great degree of conventionalism. Nonetheless, we prove important changes or trends related to the restriction of pitch transitions, the homogenization of the timbral palette, and the growing loudness levels. This suggests that our perception of the new would be rooted on these changing characteristics. Hence, an old tune could perfectly sound novel and fashionable, provided that it consisted of common harmonic progressions, changed the instrumentation, and increased the average loudness.

• The paper finds that pitch codewords follow a power-law distribution consistent across decades, revealing stable pitch usage in Western music.
• It demonstrates that timbre dynamics have shifted towards homogenization while maintaining perceptual continuity, influencing listener experience.
• The study reveals increasing median loudness with preserved dynamic range, suggesting evolving production practices and stable loudness relationships.

Overview of "Measuring the Evolution of Contemporary Western Popular Music"

Introduction

This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the evolution of contemporary western popular music through the examination of patterns and metrics related to pitch, timbre, and loudness. By employing statistical physics and complex networks methodologies, the authors aim to uncover the underlying regularities and historical shifts within these key musical elements. The paper utilizes the million song dataset, a large-scale collection spanning over fifty years, to conduct empirical and quantitative analyses.

Key Findings

1. Pitch Patterns:
   • The paper identifies a consistent power-law distribution in the frequency of pitch codewords, akin to Zipf's law in linguistic models. This distribution remains invariant across decades, indicating a stable use of pitch over time. Furthermore, pitch transition networks reveal a sparseness that suggests limited but predictable discourse pathways.
   • A noticeable trend is the restriction of pitch progressions, as evidenced by the decline of small-world characteristics in the pitch networks, indicating a reduced variety in transitions over time.
2. Timbre Dynamics:
   • While timbre codeword frequencies also follow a power-law distribution, the parameters vary, showing a significant trend towards the homogenization of timbral palette. This implies an increase in the frequency of common timbres and a decrease of less frequent ones.
   • The timbre networks exhibit relatively stable characteristics, and while rank correlation among timbre codewords is lower than pitch, it points to an attenuated perception of homogeneity by listeners.
3. Loudness Trends:
   • The paper documents the loudness race, where the median loudness levels have increased over time. The preserved dynamic range suggests that despite increasing loudness, the variability in loudness within recordings is maintained.
   • Loudness transition networks show a stable topology, indicating that, despite changes in loudness levels, the relationship between loudness transitions remains constant.

Implications

The findings highlight an intrinsic conventionalism in western popular music, marked by stable structural patterns in pitch usage and evolving timbre dynamics. The loudness increase, although notable, shows a maintained dynamic range up to the current point, but raises concerns about future constraints due to digital media limits.

From a practical perspective, understanding these patterns and trends can inform music production practices, help predict listener preferences, and guide the development of music recommendation systems. Theoretically, this work contributes to the understanding of cultural evolution in music.

Future Research Directions

Future studies may focus on expanding this analysis to include more granular genre categorizations or specific artist discographies. Further development of historical music databases could aid in exploring transitions over longer timescales and across different cultural contexts. Additionally, the integration of advanced AI methodologies might enhance predictive capabilities regarding future trends in music evolution.

In summary, this paper offers significant empirical insights into the evolution of western popular music, underlining both its stable structural patterns and dynamic aspects, with potential applications spanning both practical and theoretical domains.