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Comment by talltimtom | Hacker News Reader

Extrapolating these trends would suggest that all popular songs will just be repetitions of single sentences in the year 2140.

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So you're saying that Daft Punk was 150 years ahead of its time?

But still centuries behind liturgical music. Sing "Kyrie eleison" in this manner for 5 minutes, and then sing "Kyrie eleison" in a different manner for 10 minutes. Sing "Christe eleison" in between for a few minutes. Let's end the day singing "Osanna in excelsis" in a couple of different ways, for a few minutes each.

  $ echo "GlooOOooooOOooooOOooooOOooooOOoria" | wc --bytes
  35
  $ echo "GlooOOooooOOooooOOooooOOooooOOoria" | gzip | wc --bytes
  34

Unexpected!

Actually not. Zipping itself produces some headers and metadata. Zipping can actually increase filesize. But the effect decreases the bigger the file you're zipping is.

The raw deflate stream is more in line with expectations:

  echo "GlooOOooooOOooooOOooooOOooooOOoria" | gzip --no-name | tail --bytes=+11 | head --bytes=-8 | wc --bytes
  16

Or how about a single word, e.g. Emotion.

Entire sentences? In 2140 all popular songs will just be tag spam generated by AI.

We'll look back on the days of "Versace" and "Gucci Gang" like they were poetry.

Tag spam? No. In just 2040 lyrics of pop songs will consist of nothing but a string of emojis.

Actually they’ll be fragments that sound like bursts of static but are actually adversarial constructions that induce an unquenchable thirst for the great taste of Diet Pepsi(tm).

Sentences would be a luxury by then! I'd guess just one phrase and a catchy motif.

I remember my mother tutting at The Police in the 80s for repetitive lyrics such as 'Message in a bottle'

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