Frownland

So did Turing and Babbage.

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Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.

rostasi

Yeah, actually Lejaren Hiller created some of the first AI music back in the
mid- to late 50s with a work written for string quartet (“Illiac Suite”).
He’s best known on LP with a wonderful album he did with John Cage on Nonesuch.
Eno gets a lot of scratch in the various media because of
his “unusual” background and presentation, but much of what he’s
credited for usually had their roots earlier - sometimes much earlier.

Much of AI created music is not usually used in just its raw form, but, instead, it’s
used as a kind of springboard for new ideas that you can extrapolate further. I use it
and have created various scripts for creating it so as to jog the creative juices at times.

rostasi

Yup. Pretty much. It's how creative (or clever) you are in extending what already exists.

Guybrush

There's some research indicating that popular music is becoming more homogenic.

Here's from a 2012 paper from Nature (we like Nature): https://www.nature.com/articles/srep00521

Again, this is popular music. Coming from biology and liking meme theory, the above comes as no surprise. I mean, it's a competition between songs where they compete for our attention. There are certain strategies that are just going to be unbeatable, like it's obviously important to have good hooks, harmonies, for songs not to be too long, etc. etc. Many of the things that make a song competitive are nearly timeless while some others only work against the backdrop of a certain time, like perhaps their lyrics are about a situation a lot of people care strongly about for a while.

In general, it might make sense that you would have a (cambrian) explosion in music expression with the rise of youth culture. Some of the traits of that music will be competitive while some will not be as competitive. Over time, popular music distills the most effective traits/strategies and music featuring the less competitive traits/strategies dies off or gets relegates to obscurity. It's much like evolution by natural selection. This would create a general trend where popular music would have more variety in expression earlier on and get more homogenized over time, also across genres. This mirrors how natural selection reduces genetic diversion in nature by weeding out the worse genes.

That's not to say innovation doesn't happen, but without going into all the reasons why, it does make sense that there also will be less innovation or that over time there will be fewer appealing things to do to music that hasn't already been done.

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rostasi

Yeah, music as social measurement using data sets.
Clueless, ugly, wonkism.

Lisnaholic

Well, tore's point is a score for adidasss' s position.

Meanwhile my mention of AI generared music turns out to be a red herring. I naively imagined it was new, so thank you, elph, Frown and rostasi for educating me on that point. I had no idea it was actually being produced as long ago as the "mid to late 50s". Of course, as in all technical innovations, the prediction comes before the actuality and collectively, your comments reminded me of this section from the book 1984. Although it's more about lyrics than music, here's George Orwell writing in 1948 and predicting what AI-generated output would sound like:-

There's a connection between tore's article and Orwell's music for the Proles: both are about making music as broadly accessible as possible. If innovation is going on in music, that is the last place to be looking for it, I imagine.

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"Am I enjoying this moment? I know of it and perhaps that is enough." - Sybille Bedford, 1953

Frownland

Because it's fractured into niches and the music industry doesn't have a monolithic hold on the culture anymore.

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Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.

grindy

Here's a pretty good response to/debunking of that study and/or people basing opinions about modern music on it.
Don't let the facetiousness distract from the many good points.

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A smell of petroleum prevails throughout.

Guybrush

I don't have time to watch the youtube, but I'll check that out later. I just wanted to quickly comment that while you haven't provided a source for your claim, what I usually find is that people tend to misconstrue what these types of studies say.

This is simply looking at chart music through the decades, then quantifying things like time signature, length, timbral palettes and whatnot into numbers in a data set and then running some statistics on that. They reach some conclusions based on the results from that methodology. So the scope of the study is limited. It just says that popular music is more homologous based on the criteria they defined and the metholdology they used.

The news sources covering it add their own understanding of those results. They usually wanna find a slightly bigger perspective so that it's more relevant to readers. Later, when people read such things, they tend to extrapolate further to their own understanding or experience with the world. I did this, mirroring it to evolution by natural selection (though I still try to be aware of the scope of studies). Many may find that they don't think it's a good model for explaining reality as they see it and so they might disagree.`. but they might also have extrapolated that study to encompass or explain more than the authors intended.

Obviously, the amount of various shapes of musical expression goes up over time. There are more expressions of music today than there was 20 years ago.

But is there more innovation? I think most could answer yes or no depending on their definition of innovation. Lets say prog music popularized odd time signatures for a while in the early 70s. Rapping became big in the 80s. If you make rap music to odd time signatures, is that innovation? If yes, is it very innovative or just a little bit? At the heart of the bigger question is quantification, after all. Is there more or less now than before?

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Frownland

Maybe watch the video before you reject it in favour of a study with flawed methodology.

There's more innovation right now because there's more music being released right now than at any point in history. There's also more generic music being released than ever before, but pointing to that doesn't "disprove" innovation unless you approach art like an accountant.

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Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.