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TonyZa's avatar

One aspect that makes contemporary music boring and could be statistically studied is the lack of new genres since the early 90's. In the past a genre reigned for a decade or so and then faded from popularity as new genres reached proeminence.

Despite far low music production and distribution costs the internet age has been one of genre stagnation. Since early 90's the charts are dominated by hip hop and R&B, rock, metal and country are slowly declining while EDM stays a niche loosely connected to the pop scene.

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Jonah Wiener-Brodkey's avatar

Have you read Alex Mastroianni’s essay “Pop Culture Has Become an Oligopoly”? https://www.experimental-history.com/p/pop-culture-has-become-an-oligopoly

I feel like your argument is the logical extension of his from the macro level (number of artists on the hot 100) to the micro (features of songs appearing there). Very interesting to see that lower variability is observable in both cases.

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