Does it seem as if the dumber music gets, the more popular it is? According to a recent study published in the PLOS One journal, it may not just be you suffering from a case of get-off-my-lawn-ism, but a genuine formula trend of success by pushers of banal repetitious drivel.
The study examined how a particular style of music’s complexity increases or decreases over time with respect to album sales, and found that “album sales of a given style typically increase with decreasing instrumentational complexity,” which, in other words, finds “music becoming increasingly formulaic in terms of instrumentation once commercial or mainstream success sets in.”
Over half a million albums from 15 genres and 374 styles were sampled, using albums released from 1955-2011. The study analyzed the use of nearly 500 instruments, and translated the analysis into a mathematical equation:
Seems legit. We totally got the same answer.
As it turns out, styles employing generic instruments used across a genre spectrum tend to have low complexity, while styles with a more varied use of instruments that were used in fewer styles had high complexity. So four-chord structured pop music and basic EDM beats that sound like a fax machine having unnatural relations with a broken modem sell very well, while increasingly complex styles of rock and hip-hop are more challenging to the listener, resulting in decreasing sales.
“This can be interpreted as music becoming increasingly formulaic in terms of instrumentation under increasing sales numbers,” the study explains, “due to a tendency to popularize music styles with low variety and musicians with similar skills.”
Speaking of popularizing low-variety music style with matching skills, we’re reminded of DJ Falcon drinking a beer and dancing throughout his entire Treasure Island set (pic above), stopping only to cue up the next track as thousands of mollygoblin kids went completely apeshit. Later that same day, Atoms For Peace’s complexly incredible polyrhythmic blizzard of live-band EDM was met with listless bodies and blank stares.
“I guess the ecstasy’s worn off,” frontman Thom Yorke sardonically offered midway through the star-studded group’s performance. With two drummers providing a frantically danceable backdrop to the dynamic, spastic weirdo duo of Yorke and Flea, not to mention a spectacular light show, AFP’s set was far and away the most impressive set of the Treasure Island festival experience. Hell, it was the best on the mere principle of the fact that every sound we heard was associated with a physical activity taking place onstage.
But the crowd was confused, overwhelmed and disconnected. They’d cashed in their devoted intensity to the nn-tiss nn-tiss copy-paste party earlier in the day. Where’s Andy Samberg when you need him?
Thankfully, Bo Burnham has a song just for the occasion:
