Saw an interesting article in today's paper discussing scientific evidence suggesting today's pop recordings are getting "louder" and more "homogenized.

http://www.buffalonews.com/entertainmen ... 020634.ece

Here's the crux of the article, written by Buffalo News music critic Jeff Miers:

In late July, Reuters ran a story tracing the doings of a team of scientists in Spain, whose members employed an archive known as the Million Song Dataset to examine music recorded between 1955 and 2010. The Million Song Dataset “breaks down audio and lyrical content into data that can be crunched,” according to the Reuters piece.

So what did the team, led by Joan Serra, an artificial intelligence specialist with the Spanish National Resource Council, conclude?

“We found evidence of a progressive homogenization of the musical discourse,” Serra told Reuters. The team also noted that recordings have become increasingly louder in recent years, that compositions have become more “bland” in terms of chords, notes and general harmonic information, and that sounds represented on these recordings have grown much more confined in terms of timbre.

Which is a fancy way of saying that music has become much louder while simultaneously being dumbed down...

...The reason for this tendency to compress the life out of recordings? Record companies love homogenized product, because it’s easier to sell. They’ve trained a whole generation of listeners to accept this practice as normal. The music suffers greatly, of course. Like the record companies care.

Take a look at this week’s list of top iTunes downloads, and you’ll find all the evidence you need. In the top 5 alone are Taylor Swift’s “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” (snappy title, no?), Flo Rida’s “Whistle,” Maroon 5’s “One More Night” and Justin Bieber’s “As Long As You Love Me.”

Putting aside the rather dubious artistic merits of this collection of tunes, we see (and hear) that all are guilty of every finding in the Spanish scientists’ study. The songs have little, if any, dynamic range; they employ tired and worn chord progressions, when they employ any at all; the variety of timbre, or “sound color,” is virtually nil; and they are loud as hell, some to the point of digital “clipping,” or distortion. Oh, joy.

I've certainly noticed this, especially in the age of mp3 files and uber-compressed recordings. Probably a big reason why vinyl sales are on the rise.

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Personally I dont think today is any different than past decades..Crap Bubblegum music has always been around..a few examples: I ask for forgiveness
60's Sugar Sugar - The Archies
70's Bay City Rollers- Saturday Night
80's Roxanne- The Police (Oh how I loathe this song!)
90's Hit me Baby one more Time- Brittany Spears
(Songs off the top of my head I issue a disclaimer for incorrect facts haha)
The fact is the junk sells and it sells well but true talent and real muscians seem to find their niche inspite of it...an example for now I think is Foo Fighters..real muscians, a lot of their original recordings were done in their garage without the multimillion dollar studios
I dont think your concern of "Homogenized" is any different than the past decades and decades of the same..the only trend I see is radio stations have become increasingly stale and seem to have the same universal play list and I think that is narrowing the scope of people getting to really hear the better stuff..Okay I have rambled enough but you get the general gist of what Im trying to say

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Mona
"Music is What Feelings Sound like"

Hey! Sugar Sugar is as cool as All-Star by Smash Mouth - hahaha
Just listened to Saturday Night two days ago.
There is always crap music.
Just more of it today.
Not many pay their dues.
More hype and looks than talent.

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Drum machines, pitch correction and all the other processing used on almost every song delivers mechanical music. Certainly, there have always been crappy songs that are popular, but I think that relates more to what the average person (nimrod) buys. It is my opinion that most consumers today are satisfied to buy what is offered to them irregardless of quality. In the end every business is the same...minimize production expense and maximize profit.

I don't even think people make up their own minds about what they like and dislike. It seems they just wait to see if their "friends" like it and then they just follow the crowd.

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'09 Am Deluxe Ash Strat
'09 Mex Standard Strat
'10 Mex Standard Tele
Champ 600
Blues jr.
'65 Deluxe Reverb Reissue

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First and foremost for everyone to understand is that Music is a Business.
It's out to make money. Not to satisfy Artistic needs.

Once you understand that, the "dumbing down" becomes easier to understand.

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-T

"You can't spend what you ain't got, you can't lose what you ain't never had" ~ McKinley Morganfield

I am already dumbed down

But, gotta say that LMFAO "Sexy And I Know It" is a song I wish I wrote

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Music is changing. Or rather, the creation of music is changing. For those of us who live in the middle of nowhere, some of these changes were, at first thought, pretty cool! The creation of software to record at home was awesome! It helped a TON of businesses. If you had the software, you had to have the hardware to run it. So sales of sound cards, ram, fast hard drives, cables, studio monitors, soundproofing and a host of other things associated with a home studio rose exponentially. It made it easy, or easier, for us to ply our trade. People who couldn’t afford to go into a professional studio could now, for much cheaper, record at home.

But it also took money and work away from those professional studios. Why go to a professional studio when you can do it at home for a fraction of the cost? Plus, you don’t have to listen to some stupid engineer with 25 years experience tell you how you are going to record your song. It’s YOUR song! Even though you’ve never been in a professional studio in your life, YOU are the paying customer and YOU should have THEM doing what YOU want!

There are more people creating music now than there ever has been. That is the “other” side of this musical coin. Every person in the entire civilized world who thinks they can sing, write, play, etc., has a “home” studio. All of the music related sites on the Internet are bogged with the talented and the “I think I’m talented.” Try to find some decent music to download and you have to wade through 100 “I think I’m talented” artists to find one that actually is good.

The Internet brought us many good things. And many bad things. In the music world, it brought us MP3’s, a file format that has, much to every real musician’s dismay, become the standard of audio. We all know that argument and I’m not going to get into that because that’s not my purpose.

When the drum machine was created all those years ago, I thought, “Wow, that’s incredible!” If you don’t have access to a real drummer you must program the drum machine to do the work for you. Granted this took a lot of time but with a little patience you could put together a pretty good drum track.

Now, software based MIDI drum packages like addictive drums, EZDrummer, etc., have kind of revolutionized the music business. It is so much better than the drum machines and it is easier, in most ways, to put together a drum track. What a jewel! And it doesn’t matter what genre of music you are into, there’s a package for you!

But when I first heard about the new drum packages, there was one thing I didn’t consider and it has been on my mind a lot lately.

Where is music headed?

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Being able to play and enjoy music is a gift that's often taken for granted.

Don't leave home without it!

That's a fact - but luckily there are still ARTISTS that has a genuine talent to share from , and enlightening even those who are not artists. If they only are allowed to make and promote their ''product''.

That is , in fact -a good thing, Mike - -and I don't think this is the ''problem' !

I think this is the key
That leads us to this:

....which echoes what the ''average'' wants ( I personally think it is unfair to mix in The Police , as I regard them as unique , talented artists )
Why is it that way? Why does the ''average'' want this?
I think we must look to Tyronne's and Briese's posts. That is why this kind of music is what we mainly are exposed to . The ''business'' wants to make money. Of course.
And to make their ''products'' noticed - make the world aware of themselves /the product - they have to shout out REALLY loud . Here is where the 'art ' of compression comes in . The more compressed sound - the louder is possible . They are after all competing with advertising spots on radio & TV (which always are very loud , overly compressed)
But do we like it?

This is perhaps an indication to what can take more place in the future :

Many people , like me, really love the sound of less compressed music - richer dynamics , and artistic superiority . But I don't blame modern recording equipment - rather the non-critical use of the modern possibilities . Bad music will always exist - but I think more and more of us are longing to more varied sound expressions. Many are going back to record players (Mike to tape, if I remember correctly ? ) -because these media usually are less compressed. Perhaps the good old LP's are the only way for ''serious'' artists to make money, as there are still severals willing to buy them. Perhaps the past is the future ? IMHO

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A-man

Some artists...a small number, used DVD-Audio for a while and I became a buyer of the format for the higher resolution it provides. While the format itself is wonderful. Using it is problematic.

I still support artists who use the format and have seen older catalog albums being put out to take advantage of the format...Tull, ELP, The Who, etc but without many more buyers, it will remain a niche market.

As was mentioned above the, mp3 and I-pods have brought music into the disposable age.
I use the formats too but not for serious listening which I don't think happens that much anymore. Our society seldom wants to slow down. Everyone multi-tasks.

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-T

"You can't spend what you ain't got, you can't lose what you ain't never had" ~ McKinley Morganfield

The heck with all of it.. I think 4-track recordings sound great.

It's for sure changing. It's a problem but at the same time it isn't a problem, although it is much less entertaining for me to hear popular, less musical songs as opposed to musical songs. Technology has brought it's influence into music - for the better, I think. But the availability of recording hardware has ended up flooding the music industry.

Though still an accomplishment, I don't think a record deal is the same level of accomplishment that it used to be. Anybody can make a record these days. That being said, what approach does a good musician take to market his music to an audience where the majority listens to loud ("which loud" is nothing new), brainwashed youth? There's many musicians where the artist's fan base is mostly on youtube. But as far as the traditional "performing to get fans" approach, well, Mayer did it right.

He's got his pop music to get people to buy the album, and then underneath the pop songs are songs that have substance. His voice has gotten better over the years, but if you've ever heard his voice on performances in his earlier career (Any Given Thursday live album), what he's gotten away with, vocally, is remarkable. For a popular singer, he's pretty pitchy. I still have yet to see him in concert, but from the live albums I've listened to, he always goes into the blues based jam. He brings everyone to the concert with pop music, hits them over the head with the good stuff. And to be honest, his pop music doesn't bother me. It's not played in the same manner that the Top 5 in iTunes are.

words of wisdom from the king of surf guitar
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AJxc3Lxn4o

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~Dan

+1, very good advice