We’ve all heard of the loadness war (and if you haven’t then, familiarise yourself with it now) and people often say all music (pop chart wise) is the same. A research group in spain used the ‘Million Dollar Song’ set to determine the average loudness, timbre variants and other similar data to prove that the old cliché that all songs sound the same is true.
Some have criticised some of the data, claiming it is heavily biased in terms of songs from yore compared to now. It is worth reading the links at the bottom as in gives insight.
Oh, also I am currently trying to find out the average length of number 1 singles from various years. I’ll try and get this information up soon.
And, one last thing. I saw an advert briefly earlier for ‘Now That’s What I Call Music’ something or other, the new compilation release. The songs they played on it blended seamlessly from one to another with jump cuts. Not fades, no cuts. It may have been me, however I only felt that those songs were the same in every single way. 4 on the floor, that 909 and clap 3rd beat. I would write more on this, but those two articles and the original paper source does a much better job at explaining it all than I could.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/26/us-science-music-idUSBRE86P0R820120726
Full information – http://www.nature.com/srep/2012/120726/srep00521/full/srep00521.html