4 research outputs found
Instrumentational complexity of music genres and why simplicity sells
Listening habits are strongly influenced by two opposing aspects, the desire
for variety and the demand for uniformity in music. In this work we quantify
these two notions in terms of musical instrumentation and production
technologies that are typically involved in crafting popular music. We assign a
"complexity value" to each music style. A style is complex if it shows the
property of having both high variety and low uniformity in instrumentation. We
find a strong inverse relation between variety and uniformity of music styles
that is remarkably stable over the last half century. Individual styles,
however, show dramatic changes in their "complexity" during that period. Styles
like "new wave" or "disco" quickly climbed towards higher complexity in the 70s
and fell back to low complexity levels shortly afterwards, whereas styles like
"folk rock" remained at constant high complexity levels. We show that changes
in the complexity of a style are related to its number of sales and to the
number of artists contributing to that style. As a style attracts a growing
number of artists, its instrumentational variety usually increases. At the same
time the instrumentational uniformity of a style decreases, i.e. a unique
stylistic and increasingly complex expression pattern emerges. In contrast,
album sales of a given style typically increase with decreasing complexity.
This can be interpreted as music becoming increasingly formulaic once
commercial or mainstream success sets in.Comment: 17 pages, 5 figures, Supporting Informatio
O Que os PaĂses Escutam: Analisando a Rede de GĂȘneros Musicais ao Redor do Mundo
Plataformas de streaming de mĂșsica sĂŁo cada vez mais populares, facilitando o acesso ao conteĂșdo musical. Esse efeito amplia o alcance de diferentes estilos musicais, incrementando a diversidade de gĂȘneros musicais escutados nos diferentes paĂses do mundo. A fim de melhor entender essa diversidade, neste artigo foi construĂda e analisada uma rede complexa de artistas, gĂȘneros musicais e paĂses utilizando dados do Spotify. Como resultado, alĂ©m de identificar comunidades de paĂses com gĂȘneros musicais semelhantes, nĂłs mostramos como a diversidade de gĂȘneros influencia a estrutura da rede considerada. NĂłs tambĂ©m classificamos os gĂȘneros musicais mais comumente escutados utilizando mĂ©tricas de centralidade e analisamos como ocorre a difusĂŁo de gĂȘneros ao longo do tempo, incluindo um estudo de caso sobre mĂșsica viral