Evolution of the Informational Complexity of Contemporary Western Music

Abstract: We measure the complexity of songs in the Million Song Dataset (MSD) in terms of pitch, timbre, loudness, and rhythm to investigate their evolution from 1960 to 2010. By comparing the Billboard Hot 100 with random samples, we find that the complexity of popular songs tends to be more narrowly distributed around the mean, supporting the idea of an inverted U-shaped relationship between complexity and hedonistic value. We then examine the temporal evolution of complexity, reporting consistent changes across decades, such as a decrease in average loudness complexity since the 1960s, and an increase in timbre complexity overall but not for popular songs. We also show, in contrast to claims that popular songs sound more alike over time, that they are not more similar than they were 50 years ago in terms of pitch or rhythm, although similarity in timbre shows distinctive patterns across eras and similarity in loudness has been increasing. Finally, we show that musical genres can be differentiated by their distinctive complexity profiles.