Is It Me, Or Why Junk Music Like Radio And Pop Music Has Ruined Popular Music?

Hey guys, it’s me again. Is it me or junk music like pop music has ruined popular music?

3 years ago, back in 2012, science proves that pop music actually gotten worse. That’s right, science confirms what you've always suspected: music these days is worse than it used to be.

Now, here’s what Smithsonian has to say about this:

“Science Proves: Pop Music Has Actually Gotten Worse

Science confirms what you've always suspected: music these days is worse than it used to be.

By Rose Eveleth

smithsonian.com

July 27, 2012

If there’s one thing everyone can agree on, it’s that everyone else’s music is bad. And if there’s something everyone but teenagers can agree on, it’s that today’s pop music is terrible. But what if the issue isn’t inherent bias and nostalgia? What if today’s music really is that bad? To find out, we’ll need some science.

Scientific American reports on a study that tried to track changes in pop music over the last half-century.

Joan Serrà, a postdoctoral scholar at the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute of the Spanish National Research Council in Barcelona, and his colleagues examined three aspects of those songs: timbre (which “accounts for the sound color, texture, or tone quality,” according to Serrà and his colleagues); pitch (which “roughly corresponds to the harmonic content of the piece, including its chords, melody, and tonal arrangements”); and loudness (more on that below).

So, what happened since 1955? Well, timbral variety went down. That means that songs are becoming more and more homogeneous. In other words, all pop music sounds the same now. Take this fake pop song for example.

The study also found that pitch content has decreased – which means that the number of chords and different melodies has gone down. “Musicians today seem to be less adventurous in moving from one chord or note to another, instead following the paths well-trod by their predecessors and contemporaries,” Scientific American explains.

And the next time an old person complains that your music is too loud, well, it probably is. Music has gotten a lot louder in the past half-century. This is a problem, Scientific American says, because:

Loudness comes at the expense of dynamic range—in very broad terms, when the whole song is loud, nothing within it stands out as being exclamatory or punchy. (This two-minute YouTube video does a great job of demonstrating how excessive loudness saps richness and depth from a recording.) Indeed, Serrà and his colleagues found that the loudness of recorded music is increasing by about one decibel every eight years.

So what this study is saying is that your parents are right, music just isn’t what it used to be.

More at Smithsonian.com”

Thanks, Smithsonian. As you may know that junk music like radio are ruining music. Why can’t music videos and internet dominate music business? People are supposed to listen to music on the internet, streaming services, albums or by watching music videos. But no, all people listening to music does these days is junk music like sex and Justin Bieber and never stops. What was US thinking?

I love music artists like Taylor Swift, but if I hear junk music like Justin Bieber one more time, I’m going to set the world on fire. I want my music in general like rock music and music videos. So I have to agree with everyone that junk music like pop music are ruining music. Plain and simple. I mean, why people can’t watch music videos on something like MTV? That all people listening to music does these days, junk music. Now, here’s what Music.Mic has to say about this:

“How The Music Industry Is Brainwashing You to Like Bad Pop Songs

By Tom Barnes August 04, 2014

Two summers ago, it was "Blurred Lines." This summer it was "Fancy." These days, it's "Blank Space" by Taylor Swift. Every year, there's a new song that we all hate until we don't anymore (see: playcounts). And it turns out that's because we were brainwashed to like them.

Research suggests that repeated exposure is a much more surefire way of getting the general public to like a song than writing one that suits their taste. Based on an fMRI study in 2011, we now know that the emotional centers of the brain — including the reward centers — are more active when people hear songs they've been played before. In fact, those brain areas are more active even than when people hear unfamiliar songs that are far better fits with their musical taste.

This happens more often than you might think. After a couple dozen unintentional listens, many of us may find ourselves changing our initial opinions about a song — eventually admitting that, really, Katy Perry's "Dark Horse" isn't as awful as it sounds. PBS' Idea Channel's Mike Rugnetta explains, it's akin to a musical "Stockholm syndrome," a term used originally by criminologist Nils Bejerot to describe a phenomenon in which victims of kidnapping may begin to sympathize with their captors over time.

Most people assume that they hear a song everywhere because it's popular. That's not the case — a song is popular because it's played everywhere. It is technically illegal for major labels to pay radio stations directly to play certain songs, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. The phenomenon is called "payola" (an amalgam of the words pay and Victrola), and it was rampant in the 1960s up through the '80s, during which period the music industry was literally run by the mob. It still happens today, even though it isn't as blatant. Labels pay independent promoters to "incentivize" radio stations to play their music, or create program caps to make sure a song gets enough plays to have its effect. There's real neuroscience behind the strategy: If you hear something enough, you'll start to like it.

That Stockholm effect happens with culture, too. The scientific term for this phenomenon is the "mere exposure effect," discovered in the '60s by Robert Zajonc, and it can apply to anything — images, shapes, songs or people. In his study, participants reported liking songs more the second and third times they were exposed to them. This same response occurred even when participants weren't aware of any previous exposure. It seems then that people can easily mistake the fluidity of their ability to identify and fully comprehend a song with actually liking it. So once a song gets stuck in your head it may quickly transition from being irritating to being beloved. A good example of this is the inexplicable popularity of ear worms like the Black Eyed Peas' truly heinous "I Gotta Feeling."

Other scientific factors matter just as much, though. The context in which you hear a song is often just as important as the qualities of the song itself in communicating meaning, and the more times it's forced upon us the more opportunities we have to make positive associations. If someone hears Ariana Grande's smash hit "Problem" every time they're out with their friends, they will likely start to associate it with good times and good feelings regardless of the song's actual lyrics. Songs that the industry foists upon us constantly, then, have a far better shot at becoming popular than ones without the machine behind them.

Ultimately, we have way less of an idea of why we like the things we do. Numerous social and cognitive factors make it very easy for the pop music industry to gather an audience for artists they decide are worth promoting, and once we've been initiated to those artists, there's no turning back. The industry knows that well, and they manipulate it constantly. But even amidst all that science and big business maneuvering, there's one truth: If you play a really bad song too much, people will still figure it out for themselves.”

Thanks, Music.Mic. Now, here’s another article that junk music like Miley Cyrus are brainwashing people like kids causing people like adults to only listen to junk music like dance music. Take it, away, Music.Mic.

“Scientists Prove That Pop Music Is Literally Ruining Our Brains

By Jordan Taylor Sloan September 10, 2014

Research proves what our parents have been saying all along: Modern pop music really is worse than older generations of pop music. Not only that, it has negative effects on your brain, too — if you're chiefly a pop music fan, you're likely to be less creative than any other kind of music lover.

But that says more about the industry than it does about you. Bad pop music is a harder habit to kick than you think. Kicking it, though, is way more important than you thought.

In 2008, Adrian North of Scotland's Heriot-Watt University published the largest study yet of musical taste, involving 36,000 people, 60 countries and three years of work. He asked each participant to rank their favorite genres of music. He discovered that the most common characteristic among all genre listeners was creativity. However, one group of listeners showed a genuine and significant lack of creativity: pop music lovers.

That doesn't necessarily mean that stupid people love pop — just that pop trains us to expect less from our artistic and creative lives. Music can nourish our minds like almost nothing else, so when a mega-industry is devoted to selling the least inspired music they can, they're short-changing all of us. A survey of other research on music reveals that pop music has gotten worse over the last 50 years. Not only that, it's been used to brainwash listeners through predatory marketing strategies across all media channels.

Pop music hasn't always been that way. Researchers measured the variety of words, chord variations and volume of songs across the decades sine the 1950s. Unsurprisingly, they found that modern pop is a watered-down version of what John, Paul, George and Ringo used to rock the charts with. Since the 1950s, vocal timbre — the character of the voice — has become less diverse and pitch content has become totally monochromatic (fewer chord and melodic variations), while everything has gotten much louder overall. Our popular music is literally being dumbed down.

This music isn't even music anymore; it's become a platform for inflammatory music videos that only detract from the musical experience or, in most cases, distract from the total absence of a genuine musical experience. People were talking about Nicki Minaj's "Anaconda" cover art way before the song dropped, and they only really discussed the song when the incendiary video followed. It's that culture that has music critics like Ted Gioia claiming that music criticism has devolved into lifestyle reporting. It's that culture that's rotting our minds.

Unfortunately, there's no end in sight. As these songs get watered down, they become cheap and easy fuel for the music business because they appeal to the lowest common denominator and thus reach a wide audience. That isn't a frivolous thing, though: Researchers have thoroughly documented that pop music is the "heavy equipment" of the adolescent years. It is far more influential than computers, television and movies in shaping how kids grow up.

That's why it matters when it's getting worse. Billboard charts fuel the mainstream market, identifying safe bets for movie soundtracks, commercials and background music, all of which ensure that a popular song is impossible to avoid. And despite common sense, songs aren't played because they are popular; they're played to make them popular.

If we care about our culture — and if we care about our minds — we'll vote with our ears. If the formulas stop paying off for the industry, we might get real music back into the mainstream.”

Thank you so much. Now then, popular music has to get rid of junk music like pop music and replace them with good music that should be mainstream like rock music and Carrie Underwood. That way, junk music like radio will be thrown out the window.

What you think about why junk music is brainwashing music industry like contemporary stations?