"A group of researchers from Queen Mary and Imperial College London
measured musical patterns in the US pop charts between 1960 and 2010 to
pinpoint trends and track their duration. Gathering data through
Last.fm, the group used signal processing and text-mining to analyse the
musical properties of songs.
Their findings suggest that far from the “British invasion” of the
1960s causing a revolution in the pop charts, the musical style of those
bands – measured by elements like chord changes and tone – was already
established. The real revolution came 30 years later, the study claims,
when hip-hop went mainstream and began to take over the charts in 1991,
changing the musical landscape forever.
The study’s lead author, Matthias Mauch, says the research breaks new
ground in the way it measures musical trends. “For the first time we
can measure musical properties in recordings on a large scale. We can
actually go beyond what music experts tell us, or what we know ourselves
about them, by looking directly into the songs, measuring their makeup,
and understanding how they have changed,” he said.
The study also disputes the widely held idea that pop music has
become more homogenous over the years. The researchers pinpointed 1986
as the least diverse year in US chart history, which they attribute to
the emergence of drum machines.
Other academics say the study is flawed, however. Mike Brocken, a
senior lecturer in music at Liverpool Hope University, argued: “Popular
music cannot be ‘measured’ in this way – what about reception, the
political economy, subcultures? So my first instincts are to question
any study that uses the dreaded data analysis.”
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