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Comment by treebeard901 | Hacker News Reader

I have been thinking about this some lately. The loss of complexity in main stream music. One of the most popular songs this year is just f# f# g ... f# ...

I am sure someone can figure out which song it is. While the music sounds great and sells, my theory is that it comes as a result of losing music classes in many public schools. Over decades it has led to a loss of complexity.

Then again, I am probably just old.

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I wonder which way the causal arrow goes? I'm confident more complex (and also excellent) music is being made now than ever before so it wouldn't be a supply problem. Could be a demand problem, or a transit problem, maybe.

It wouldn't be terribly surprising if it's the audience that has dragged things towards simplicity.

Could also be the homogenizing effect of recommendation algorithms that select for mass appeal, a song that everyone likes at an average of 7/10 is selected for way harder than a song that 50% of people like at an average of 9/10.

You really do need gatekeeping and curation in art. Otherwise it regresses to the mean - which is where the money is, but not the danger or surprise.

Fair point, and I'd add that there's a spot above the average where people used to flock to because it felt special and not just random average stuff. That's where society picked stars and new trends, something slightly special, complex, original yet not vulgar.

I wouldn't consider schools as a factor, my best guess was a harder industry that required people to know more theory before producing (except youth punk/rock..). Quincy jones had a long career in advanced genre, even bands like the police were trained on sophisticated music. It raised the entry bar higher overall.

Tarja Turunen could have been an excellent Wagnerian soprano but decided she liked heavy metal more. So even today there is quite a bit of musicianship in some pop genres.

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