Louder, shorter, safer: the sound of a spreadsheet
- Angles with evidence. 🎸.
The data says it got narrower. Serrà's 2012 study ran 460,000 recordings from 1955 on through a computer: fewer chord transitions, fewer timbres, louder every decade. A 2024 study of 12,000 songs found lyrics simpler, more repetitive, angrier, and more about "me" than in 1980. That is not nostalgia, that is a measurement. 📉
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Loudness ate dynamics. The loudness war of the 90s and 2000s compressed everything to the ceiling so it would sound bigger on radio. Quiet parts died. Metallica's 2008 album was so crushed that fans preferred the Guitar Hero version. A song that cannot breathe cannot build. 🔊
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Streaming rewrote the song. Spotify pays only after 30 seconds, so the intro vanished: average intro fell from about 20 seconds in 1986 to 5 seconds by 2015. Average length dropped from over four minutes to around three. The chorus now arrives before you have decided anything. Songs are built for the skip button, not the listener. ⏭️
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A hit is now written by a committee. 1975 hits had one or two writers. Today's top-10 songs average five or more credits, some Beyoncé tracks over twenty. Committees produce safe. Meanwhile 1996 radio deregulation let one company own thousands of US stations and one playlist. 🏢
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The flood. Over 100,000 new tracks land on streaming every day. And old music wins anyway: catalog, meaning songs older than 18 months, is over 70% of US listening. New music is losing to its own grandparents in the market, not just in memory. 🌊
Musicians did not get worse. The contract changed: from "make something that lasts" to "make something that is not skipped 😱