Askin, N. and M. Mauskapf. “What Makes Popular Culture Popular? Product Features and Optimal Differentiation in Music.” American Sociological Review 82, no. 5 (September 2017): 910-944.
This paper describes a new explanation for the success of cultural products, specifically music, and why certain products outperform their peers. A song’s position in feature space predicts its success. In addition to the artist familiarity, genre affiliation, and institutional support, the song’s perceived proximity to its peers influences its position on the Billboard’s Hot 100 charts. Interestingly, songs that sound too similar to previous productions are less likely to succeed; this means that popular songs have some degree of differentiation. Trying to connect this paper to the influence of the internet and technology will be very helpful because the findings of the paper show audience consumption behavior and product competition that likely rises from more publicity on the internet.
Shelfie: This paper was obtained by researching the psychology of popular music through the UCLA library. We also briefly examined the American Sociological Review.
Aucouturier, J. and Francois Pachet. "Representing musical genre: A state of the art." Journal of New Music Research 32, no. 1 (2003): 83-93. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1076/jnmr.32.1.83.16801?casa_token=x67nH3Mqyb8AAAAA:CToK2vzUbZdIIQJaLObmdMlcx9N6Q2n7RTsxc3fJ_jw2QraPNoaJahAPke1F_G01RYrIyftlIkjHZw.
Musical genre in this article is conceptualized as intentional or extensional; like the Popular Music dataset, it seeks to quantify aspects of music and see if there is anything to offer in terms of genre classification. It argues that timbre is not useful for distinguishing genres as rock and pop use similar instrumentation, while others have much more dramatic differences. Data mining techniques that involve thinking about time during the analysis. This will be helpful in furthering the genre analysis during the age of the Internet as we think about progressing to more advanced techniques for a shorter time period.
Shelfie: We used key terms like genre and popular music together while searching the Google Scholar database for published, peer-reviewed journal articles. This was to better understand the statistical techniques in use for quantifying music, and think about ways to pair linguistic, qualitative analysis with the quantitative aspects of music, such as timbre.
Boyle, J. et al. “Factors Influencing Pop Music Preferences of Young People.” Journal of Research in Music Education 29, no. 1 (April 1981): 47-55. https://doi.org/10.2307%2F3344679.
This paper examines the self-reported reasons of students for popular music preferences. The students ranged from grades five, seven, nine, eleven, and college. The results of the paper revealed that melody, mood, rhythm, and lyrics were the most important reasons for music preference. In fact, the sociocultural variables were generally viewed as less important. Also, the different grade levels have their differences in terms of the importance of the variables. This could lead to interesting discussion regarding technology use among different grades of students; the varying technology use can have varying effects on the important variables of music at a certain grade level.
Shelfie: This paper was obtained by researching how popular music affects children using Google Scholar; the source was able to be read because we were using UCLA’s wifi, eduroam.
Bruno, A. and G. Peoples. “The Top 10 Music Startups of 2011.” Billboard 124, no. 42: 25-28. https://search.proquest.com/docview/906774335?accountid=14512.
This article looks at the top 10 music startups of 2011. The introduction paragraph of this article is the most interesting and notable for our research topic. It states that “new startups [are] aimed at solving the problems of the evolving music market with innovative technologies and creative business models.” It goes on to state that the problems of music with regards to technology are mainly in the discovery of the music. This then makes us wonder if the emergence of the internet created such an infinite amount of music so that it became more and more difficult for users to find music. This would then cause the top music, the billboard hot 100, to be less diverse. On the contrary, the infinite expansion of music could have caused a greater diversity in music. However, we think the latter is false because of the rest of the article. It has quick summaries of the top 10 music startups of 2011; a list decided by billboard. This may cause some bias in the music industry. The startups were decided on how much diversity they may bring into the music industry.
Shelfie: JSTOR music, technology, pop
Christenson, P. et al. “What has America been singing about? Trends in themes in the U.S. top-40 songs: 1960-2010.” Psychology of Music (2018): 1-19. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0305735617748205.
This resource explains the trends in lyrical themes of music which featured on the US top 40 songs. The article explores the content of songs based on references like romance, alcohol, drugs, religion, race and so on to analyze the changing themes of the popular songs. The results found through analysis are important as they show a continuation but also a change in certain trends. For example, songs have always showcased the theme of boys and girls and references to lifestyle. However, there have been changes from romanticized songs to more sexual references. These results help understand how the particular era affected these themes. This would be useful for our project because we are examining the impact on the diversity of music. Such trends will help further connect how technology and internet changes contribute to such lyrical and theme changes overtime.
Shelfie: We obtained this source from the sage journal. We specifically entered the “changing themes in music” and came across this article from the journal.
Clarke, D. “Defining twentieth- and twenty-first-century music”. Twentieth-Century Music 14, no. 3 (2017): 411-462. https://search.proquest.com/docview/1985625349/fulltext/E15F9F8B85ED42CFPQ/1?accountid=14512.
This article argues that there is a defining distinction between twentieth- and twenty-first- century music, and that this defining distinction can be found in the “highly cultural” aspect of popular music. This means that because popular culture is so ingrained in popular music, clear transformative periods can be seen between the songs of the twentieth- and twenty-first- century. This article references the evolution of music around technological advances as an example of the clear dividing line between musical eras. This provides us with multiple authors’ view on how the introduction and evolution of the internet and other technologies created and transformed popular music. This will help us determine the breadth of the impact technology had on the songs and genres that showed up in the Billboard Hot 100 lists.
Shelfie: This article was found via the UCLA Library Online Database by searching “technology’s impact on music”. A link to the article is provided in the citation.
Edmondson, J. Music in American Life: An Encyclopedia of the Songs, Styles, Stars, and Stories That Shaped Our Culture [4 Volumes] : An Encyclopedia of the Songs, Styles, Stars, and Stories That Shaped Our Culture. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2013. Vol 4. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=658627&site=ehost-live.
Volume 4 of this encyclopedia dedicates a section to discussing the relation between technology and popular music. For example, it references early hip hop as an example of how technology influenced the generation of new genres and music styles. It also discusses technology’s impact on the creation of mass audiences, and how this new idea of a mass audience inspired an entire new way of creating music. This encyclopedia brings together an extensive collection of references and resources, as well as its own primary sources, to compile and summarize the generally-accepted ways technology impacted music. By having an almost unbiased reference point, we can situate our findings within the widely accepted viewpoints and facts expressed in the encyclopedia.
Shelfie: This encyclopedia was discovered through a Google Scholar search by typing in “technology and music resources”. The link is provided in the citation.
Frith, Simon. “Plugged In.” The Cambridge Companion to Pop and Rock. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
We read a single chapter of this book because it mainly focused on the technological aspects of music and music production throughout recent history while the book as a whole focused on the entire history of pop and rock. In this source the author takes a very strong stance that there are no longer any vestiges of pre-internet music/music production in current music/music production due to the drastic changes that technological advancements of recent year have made to the industry. He makes the argument that both sides of music, the producing and consumption, have been altered. During production they now have to consider the fidelity of all the devices they are using all the way from microphones to music synthesizers to speakers. New technologies also made it possible for new ranges of timbre and harmonic to be picked up and expressed to the crowd, allowing for new styles of music. This is especially interesting because we can look at time periods where new technology has come out and observe the new types of singing styles that followed.
Shelfie: We found this source by searching “effects of music software on music production” in google scholar. An article about this book came up and we then looked through the book and found this relevant chapter on Google Books.
Gerard, J. et al. "Evaluating the impact of the internet on barriers to entry in the music industry." Supply Chain Management: An International Journal 10, 2005. https://doi.org/10.1108/13598540510624179.
This source specifically looks into how technological advancement has restructured the entire supply chain management for music companies in the recent few decades. The change from physical records of music to simple MP3 files shook the entire music industry, for it created shift from exploiting your copyright to having to protect it from piracy and reproduction. This has also lowered the barrier to entry of new music production allowing small artists to enter the arena instead of large music production monopolies controlling all new development. With the development of streaming and sharing music online for a fixed monthly fee, there were little to no barrier to entry which allowed the market to be flooded with new talent, perspectives, and taste. We are relating this to our research question by demonstrating that with this new influx of talent, it creates a larger diversity of sounds (timbre and harmonic) and thus larger diversity of sounds on the Billboard Top 100.
Shelfie: We came in contact with this source by searching for the key terms ‘napster’ and ‘music industry’ on Google Scholar and then purchasing the article because the abstract was relevant.
Gouyon, F. et al. "Evaluating rhythmic descriptors for musical genre classification." Proceedings of the AES 25th International Conference, 2004: 196-204. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.77.6115&rep=rep1&type=pdf.
This article was interesting in that it acknowledged the subjectivity in assigning songs genres fairly early on. This is in spite of utilizing rhythmic and harmonic descriptors, the same way our dataset did while using principal component analysis and k-means clustering. Here, the article focuses on ballroom music in particular - genres like waltz, Salsa, etc. to help classify songs using only this “musical metadata”. What was found that is that the 8 descriptors they used wasn’t enough; they needed to incorporate more to be reflective of the genre classification of the excerpt from a ballroom song. It solidifies the case for us to either consider other rhythmic and musical factors in a song, or look towards other features in a dataset in our own research and thinking about the diversity of music in the age of the Internet.
Shelfie: We used key terms like rhythm and popular music together while searching the Google Scholar database for published, peer-reviewed journal articles. This was to better understand the statistical techniques in use for quantifying music.
Haynes, Jo and Lee Marshall. “Beats and tweets: Social media in the careers of independent musicians.” New Media & Society 20, no. 5 (2017): 1973-1993. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1461444817711404.
The resource specifically focuses on individual musicians and how they use social media in their careers. Instead of exploring the broad dynamics of social media, it focuses on the “institutional analysis” of social media. So, it explores the dynamics of social media in the music industry and a specific understanding of musicians and their relation with it. The resource is important in understanding the strong relationship between musicians, audience and social media. Through the study, we see social media being useful for musicians only if they have an established popularity with the audience as opposed to those new to the industry. Overall, the article is useful in understanding the pros and cons of social media and how musicians use it for their success. This would be important in exploring how social media contributed to certain musicians/trends being more popular in a particular era compared to others. It will also help see the change from previous time periods.
Shelfie: The use of key terms like “impact of social media and internet” on musicians in my google search ledusto the sage journal, which had this article.
Hayward, Philip. "Enterprise on the new frontier: music, industry and the Internet." Convergence 1, no. 2 (1995): 29-44. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/135485659500100206.
Article discusses use of internet by producers and pop musicians between 94-95’. Was written in 1995, before the emergence of streaming services and six years before the iPod. Findings show that most music websites are for promoting the band or created by fans. Article sees the internet primarily as a medium to raise attention about certain artists and make money. Looks at websites for Madonna and Michael Jackson to see how they were successful for the artist. See the internet as a place for music distribution as well. Foresees a lot of the issues we see now such as piracy. Sees the internet as a way for artists to gain independence looking at Prince and George Michael as examples.
Shelfie: We found this through Google scholar by searching for pop music and internet.
Interiano, M. et al. “Musical trends and predictability of success in contemporary songs in and out of the top charts.” Royal Society Open Science, May 2018. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.171274.
This paper analyzes songs released in the United Kingdom between 1985 and 2015 to understand how success correlates with acoustic features. The paper aims to answer the question of how to predict success based on musical features. There seems to be a clear downward trend in “‘happiness’” and “‘brightness’” as well as a slight upward trend in “‘sadness.’” There are some very interesting data analyses including that successful songs are more party-like than average songs and successful songs are more danceable than average songs. Analyzing the influence of the internet and technology using this paper can be very helpful because dancing and partying have heavy ties to media portrayals. For example, many television series and movies promote partying.
Shelfie: This source was obtained by searching for the success of popular music based on acoustic features through the UCLA library. Keywords that the paper have are music evolution, complex social dynamics, and temporal trends.
Jones, S. “Music That Moves: Popular Music, Distribution and Network Technologies.” Cultural Studies 16, no. 2 (2002): 213–32. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502380110107562.
This article provides a critique of the music consumption through a cultural lens as opposed to a purely industrial analysis of distribution. It further situates music within a cultural and geographic context to provide a spatial distribution of music in relation to new media technologies. What is most interesting is that information practices such as sharing remain. New media has only changed the medium of distribution and not its practice, which is to say that collectors of vinyl records remain collectors even if the records have been substituted with mp3 files. This article references copyright law and history to provide a thorough analysis of the evolution of music throughout this specific time and culture. By referencing the events and transition periods outlined in the articles, we can situate our findings in history and provide a well-rounded viewpoint of the impact technology had on popular music.
Shelfie: This article was obtained using the UCLA Library Online Database by searching “the internet’s influence of popular music ”. A link to the article is provided in the citation.
Lau, P. “The new millennium music technology rocket network technology.” Canadian Musician 22, no. 32 (January 2000). https://search.proquest.com/docview/216497101?accountid=14512.
This article is about “new millennium music technology,” specifically on how new age musicians communicate: online. The author begins by saying “if you haven't heard about how this technology utilizes the Internet for music you definitely will soon.” This showcases the immense and sudden popularity of technological music and music in general. The article looks at two creators of an online communication platform for musicians, rocket network technology. Rocket network technology allows musicians to send audio to others, exchange comments, and even look up vocals. This digital technology is just one of an array of online tools that has caused the infinite expansion of music.
Shelfie: We looked up on JSTOR music and technology.
Lopes, P. "Innovation and diversity in the popular music industry, 1969 to 1990." American Sociological Review (1992): 56-71. https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2096144.pdf?casa_token=LNgr22CIKQ0AAAAA:eLhBn2UUs2iZTpGHWgyGnYSaaamQ23F7w_e7MDfozpddndbPBFKkHzzdEpnoG2s_28bO7IPsmEWv5MShkAQKCX350_R-RF_YeP4HnumadFXIu7u_KAbm.
This article draws upon the Billboard Top 100 in a very unique way during the time period of 1969 - 1990 in evaluating the changes in the popular music industry and how this influenced the diversity of songs, which was defined by the number of different Top 10 singles and Number One singles each year, with increasing numbers meaning increasing diversity. Importantly, this period was after the era of top singles; it was when albums were the preferred form of packaging and distributing music. As a result, the top companies produced the music of at least 80% of the artists, which is counterintuitive to the idea of diversity and innovation if only a few major players are able to participate in the market. However, the oligopolization has still allowed for innovation and diversity to thrive in the market, suggesting that other factors - like organization - come into play. We think this article is significant because it acts as a strong precursor to the exponential innovation and openness in music we saw in the period immediately after, given the boom of the Internet.
Shelfie: We used key terms like innovation and popular music together while searching the Google Scholar database for published, peer-reviewed journal articles. This was to better understand the effects of a transforming music industry on music itself.
Mondak, J. "Cultural heterogeneity in capitalist society: In defense of repetition on the billboard hot 100." Popular Music & Society 13, no. 3 (1989): 45-58. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03007768908591362.
This source addresses the idea of homogeneity in popular music and asserts that although repetition has increased on the Billboard Hot 100, rather than seeing it as a negative for diversity in music, it should be looked at in terms of the longevity of popular songs. Mondak looks at the number of song entries and new artists on the Billboard Hot 100 for every year, and makes his arguments based off of those averages. Since the Hot 100 is a weekly list, he further argues that repetition is the goal for many of these songs and artists, so it would be warranted, compared to TV shows which are normally reviewed on an annual basis. This source is important to our research because we need to know if the mechanisms behind the chart ratings are reliable and accurate accounts of music popularity, given that it is the only determinant of popularity in our data set. While affirming the quality of the ranking protocol and publication, it also points to some interesting trends our dataset reveals, in terms of an increase in artist and genre repetition and commonality over time. It is also important to note that this analysis only uses evidence from the Billboard Hot 100 which is an important detail given that many analyses and reports on popular music throughout history have been from multiple sources, but this one aligns with the specific source of our dataset, adding to its relevance in our research.
Shelfie: This source was obtained through a search using the keyword “Billboard Hot 100” in Google Scholar. The full article was obtained from Taylor & Francis Online, a journal accessible to UCLA students and faculty.
Percino, G. et al. “Instrumentational Complexity of Music Genres and Why Simplicity Sells.” PLOS ONE 9, no. 12 (December 2015). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0115255.
This source looks at the musical complexity of different songs and if the simplicity or complexity of certain genres has any impact on their popularity in sales and reception. It uses a highly detailed formula to determine the complexity of songs, the DISCOG discography database, and record sale data to determine these conclusions. The results show that far more albums are produced with simplistic musical elements and style. Our research similarly looks at chord progressions and different harmonic frequencies and their appearances in popular music determined by the Billboard Hot 100. One of our research questions refers to the structure of music and if “popular” music has changed over time, specifically with the advent of the internet and the rise of certain sounds and instruments.
Shelfie: This source was obtained through a keyword search using “music genre” and “harmonics” in the UCLA library articles engine.
Pinch, T. and Karin Bijsterveld. “Sound Studies: New Technologies and Music.” Social Studies of Science 34, no. 5 (October 2004): 635–48. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0306312704047615?journalCode=sssb#articleCitationDownloadContainer
This article mainly focuses on the technological advances in music manipulation and production, but also hints on the development of new ways people have been consuming music throughout history. The author elucidates the change from artists and producers using sound clips of real instruments being played to digitally rendered and perfected manifestations of musical instruments. This allowed artists to tinker with many different sounds and types of music at little to no cost because they didn't have to pay for expensive recording booths and state-of-the-art sound systems. With more opportunity at their fingertips, artists are now able to take advantage of their creativity and create music that is brand new. We can use this information about the change in data diversity we have found in this article to find trends within our data at articulate the same observation.
Shelfie: We found this article by searching Google Scholar for an article about new technology and the effects its had on the music industry throughout the years. We was only able to view a small blurb at home so we had to unlock it on campus.
Jones, S. "Music and the Internet." Popular Music 19, no. 2 (2000): 217-230. https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/A5006DB488B19BEE5E79B4EB7CA18097/S026114300000012Xa.pdf/music_and_the_internet.pdf.
This source argues that the internet had a significant impact on how music is produced, consumed, and distributed. It points to technological advances that have shaped these three categories like digital audio workstations, new encoding and decoding techniques, and even the addition of CD players to computing devices. These breakdowns of the importance of different technologies are important to our research because the Billboard Hot 100 relies completely on the different ways that music is consumed and distributed, and we are looking into if the internet or certain technologies had an impact on those ratings and consequent popularity. It further dives into music production and how music sounds different because of new technological sound-making abilities, which is another part of our research in looking at how these advances change the music that people listen to and genres rising in popularity with the advent of these technologies.
Shelfie: This source was obtained using the keywords “popular music” and “internet” in a Google Scholar search, and further access was given through Cambridge University Press.
Pareles, J. “With A Click, A new era of music dawns”. New York Times, November 1998. https://search.proquest.com/docview/431079224?accountid=14512.
This article focuses on the piracy of music and how technology is destroying the industry. It is interesting because many people would agree that technology has expanded the industry. However, the author of this article is stating that the Internet has created a mass amount of illegal downloads and shares of music. People are no longer needed CDs due to MP3 players (the use of MP3 player gives us a sense of the time period for this article, but it being written early makes us wonder what this author thinks of music now, about free streaming such as Soundcloud). Internet has created a vast amount of music piracy which has led to economic downfall to many musicians, which then led to only the big and rich music industries and musicians to be in the top billboard 100. This may have caused the genres of music to remain the same throughout the early era of the internet.
Shelfie: Jstor Music AND internet
Shapero, D. “The Impact of Technology on Music Stars’ Cultural Influence.” Elon Journal of Undergraduate Research in Communications 6, no. 1 (2015). http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1134/2/the-impact-of-technology-on-music-stars-cultural-influence.
This source explores the impact of technology by assessing how users relate with music celebrities and how they utilize their music. The evidence consists of a survey which focuses on questions addressing where audiences follow music celebrities and which app they prefer listening to music. The results of this study were important in identifying how twitter is the most important form of social media for audiences to connect with music artists along with Spotify being the most important form of music engagement among younger audiences. This would be useful for our paper in analyzing how social media and music sources like Spotify created diverse trends in music over the years. The different themes that occur over the eras might be connected to these forms of technology extensively.
Shelfie: We did a general search on google about “The impact of technology on the
music industry” and this article from Student Pulse Journal showed up. We like the article
because the survey conducted as part of the method made it more interactive and
relatable.
Street, John. "‘Fight the power’: The politics of music and the music of politics." Government and Opposition 38, no. 1 (2003): 113-130. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/1477-7053.00007.
Looking at Pop Music’s engagement with politics as a way to convey political commentary. Article looks at how cultural capital and politics are entangled. Uses election campaigns as an example of how music has been used to support a political message. Author sees popular music as a signifier of power, “one which works to malign effect” (116). Look at the USSR and the censorship of pop music and says that this is not necessarily a signifier of the potency of music but of the politicization of music by the state. By doing so this becomes a self fulfilling prophecy where a potentially previously impotent song becomes seen as politically charged in popular culture. Article also looks at popular music as a “ritual of resistance” as subcultures mimic popular culture to have an alternative impact (121). Article also views how music influences politics, cites examples in blues and folk.
Shelfie: We found this by looking in google scholar key words: popular music, politics, power and history.
Williams, J. "Authentic identities: Straightedge subculture, music, and the internet." Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 35, no. 2 (2006): 173-200. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891241605285100.
This article looks at the development of subculture music movements and how the internet has impacted their growth. States there is a dialectic relationship between music and identity where music is the cause of and the consequence of subculture. Additionally musical experiences allows individuals to identify with a particular subculture. Looks at the academic history in understanding what a subculture is. Studies people who use the internet as a primary way to experience music versus those who use the internet to supplement their consumption. Sees subculture as a revolt against mainstream norms and popular music). Doesn’t see popular music as dominant to subculture music as this creates an inaccurate power dynamic as the genres inform each other. Concludes that there is a strict divide in the way people perceive using the internet for music, those who go to venues in person strictly see it as a way to communicate those who use it primarily see it as a powerful tool in digital space.
Shelfie: We looked in google scholar keywords: subculture, identity, internet, authenticity, straightedge, scene.
This paper describes a new explanation for the success of cultural products, specifically music, and why certain products outperform their peers. A song’s position in feature space predicts its success. In addition to the artist familiarity, genre affiliation, and institutional support, the song’s perceived proximity to its peers influences its position on the Billboard’s Hot 100 charts. Interestingly, songs that sound too similar to previous productions are less likely to succeed; this means that popular songs have some degree of differentiation. Trying to connect this paper to the influence of the internet and technology will be very helpful because the findings of the paper show audience consumption behavior and product competition that likely rises from more publicity on the internet.
Shelfie: This paper was obtained by researching the psychology of popular music through the UCLA library. We also briefly examined the American Sociological Review.
Aucouturier, J. and Francois Pachet. "Representing musical genre: A state of the art." Journal of New Music Research 32, no. 1 (2003): 83-93. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1076/jnmr.32.1.83.16801?casa_token=x67nH3Mqyb8AAAAA:CToK2vzUbZdIIQJaLObmdMlcx9N6Q2n7RTsxc3fJ_jw2QraPNoaJahAPke1F_G01RYrIyftlIkjHZw.
Musical genre in this article is conceptualized as intentional or extensional; like the Popular Music dataset, it seeks to quantify aspects of music and see if there is anything to offer in terms of genre classification. It argues that timbre is not useful for distinguishing genres as rock and pop use similar instrumentation, while others have much more dramatic differences. Data mining techniques that involve thinking about time during the analysis. This will be helpful in furthering the genre analysis during the age of the Internet as we think about progressing to more advanced techniques for a shorter time period.
Shelfie: We used key terms like genre and popular music together while searching the Google Scholar database for published, peer-reviewed journal articles. This was to better understand the statistical techniques in use for quantifying music, and think about ways to pair linguistic, qualitative analysis with the quantitative aspects of music, such as timbre.
Boyle, J. et al. “Factors Influencing Pop Music Preferences of Young People.” Journal of Research in Music Education 29, no. 1 (April 1981): 47-55. https://doi.org/10.2307%2F3344679.
This paper examines the self-reported reasons of students for popular music preferences. The students ranged from grades five, seven, nine, eleven, and college. The results of the paper revealed that melody, mood, rhythm, and lyrics were the most important reasons for music preference. In fact, the sociocultural variables were generally viewed as less important. Also, the different grade levels have their differences in terms of the importance of the variables. This could lead to interesting discussion regarding technology use among different grades of students; the varying technology use can have varying effects on the important variables of music at a certain grade level.
Shelfie: This paper was obtained by researching how popular music affects children using Google Scholar; the source was able to be read because we were using UCLA’s wifi, eduroam.
Bruno, A. and G. Peoples. “The Top 10 Music Startups of 2011.” Billboard 124, no. 42: 25-28. https://search.proquest.com/docview/906774335?accountid=14512.
This article looks at the top 10 music startups of 2011. The introduction paragraph of this article is the most interesting and notable for our research topic. It states that “new startups [are] aimed at solving the problems of the evolving music market with innovative technologies and creative business models.” It goes on to state that the problems of music with regards to technology are mainly in the discovery of the music. This then makes us wonder if the emergence of the internet created such an infinite amount of music so that it became more and more difficult for users to find music. This would then cause the top music, the billboard hot 100, to be less diverse. On the contrary, the infinite expansion of music could have caused a greater diversity in music. However, we think the latter is false because of the rest of the article. It has quick summaries of the top 10 music startups of 2011; a list decided by billboard. This may cause some bias in the music industry. The startups were decided on how much diversity they may bring into the music industry.
Shelfie: JSTOR music, technology, pop
Christenson, P. et al. “What has America been singing about? Trends in themes in the U.S. top-40 songs: 1960-2010.” Psychology of Music (2018): 1-19. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0305735617748205.
This resource explains the trends in lyrical themes of music which featured on the US top 40 songs. The article explores the content of songs based on references like romance, alcohol, drugs, religion, race and so on to analyze the changing themes of the popular songs. The results found through analysis are important as they show a continuation but also a change in certain trends. For example, songs have always showcased the theme of boys and girls and references to lifestyle. However, there have been changes from romanticized songs to more sexual references. These results help understand how the particular era affected these themes. This would be useful for our project because we are examining the impact on the diversity of music. Such trends will help further connect how technology and internet changes contribute to such lyrical and theme changes overtime.
Shelfie: We obtained this source from the sage journal. We specifically entered the “changing themes in music” and came across this article from the journal.
Clarke, D. “Defining twentieth- and twenty-first-century music”. Twentieth-Century Music 14, no. 3 (2017): 411-462. https://search.proquest.com/docview/1985625349/fulltext/E15F9F8B85ED42CFPQ/1?accountid=14512.
This article argues that there is a defining distinction between twentieth- and twenty-first- century music, and that this defining distinction can be found in the “highly cultural” aspect of popular music. This means that because popular culture is so ingrained in popular music, clear transformative periods can be seen between the songs of the twentieth- and twenty-first- century. This article references the evolution of music around technological advances as an example of the clear dividing line between musical eras. This provides us with multiple authors’ view on how the introduction and evolution of the internet and other technologies created and transformed popular music. This will help us determine the breadth of the impact technology had on the songs and genres that showed up in the Billboard Hot 100 lists.
Shelfie: This article was found via the UCLA Library Online Database by searching “technology’s impact on music”. A link to the article is provided in the citation.
Edmondson, J. Music in American Life: An Encyclopedia of the Songs, Styles, Stars, and Stories That Shaped Our Culture [4 Volumes] : An Encyclopedia of the Songs, Styles, Stars, and Stories That Shaped Our Culture. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2013. Vol 4. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=658627&site=ehost-live.
Volume 4 of this encyclopedia dedicates a section to discussing the relation between technology and popular music. For example, it references early hip hop as an example of how technology influenced the generation of new genres and music styles. It also discusses technology’s impact on the creation of mass audiences, and how this new idea of a mass audience inspired an entire new way of creating music. This encyclopedia brings together an extensive collection of references and resources, as well as its own primary sources, to compile and summarize the generally-accepted ways technology impacted music. By having an almost unbiased reference point, we can situate our findings within the widely accepted viewpoints and facts expressed in the encyclopedia.
Shelfie: This encyclopedia was discovered through a Google Scholar search by typing in “technology and music resources”. The link is provided in the citation.
Frith, Simon. “Plugged In.” The Cambridge Companion to Pop and Rock. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
We read a single chapter of this book because it mainly focused on the technological aspects of music and music production throughout recent history while the book as a whole focused on the entire history of pop and rock. In this source the author takes a very strong stance that there are no longer any vestiges of pre-internet music/music production in current music/music production due to the drastic changes that technological advancements of recent year have made to the industry. He makes the argument that both sides of music, the producing and consumption, have been altered. During production they now have to consider the fidelity of all the devices they are using all the way from microphones to music synthesizers to speakers. New technologies also made it possible for new ranges of timbre and harmonic to be picked up and expressed to the crowd, allowing for new styles of music. This is especially interesting because we can look at time periods where new technology has come out and observe the new types of singing styles that followed.
Shelfie: We found this source by searching “effects of music software on music production” in google scholar. An article about this book came up and we then looked through the book and found this relevant chapter on Google Books.
Gerard, J. et al. "Evaluating the impact of the internet on barriers to entry in the music industry." Supply Chain Management: An International Journal 10, 2005. https://doi.org/10.1108/13598540510624179.
This source specifically looks into how technological advancement has restructured the entire supply chain management for music companies in the recent few decades. The change from physical records of music to simple MP3 files shook the entire music industry, for it created shift from exploiting your copyright to having to protect it from piracy and reproduction. This has also lowered the barrier to entry of new music production allowing small artists to enter the arena instead of large music production monopolies controlling all new development. With the development of streaming and sharing music online for a fixed monthly fee, there were little to no barrier to entry which allowed the market to be flooded with new talent, perspectives, and taste. We are relating this to our research question by demonstrating that with this new influx of talent, it creates a larger diversity of sounds (timbre and harmonic) and thus larger diversity of sounds on the Billboard Top 100.
Shelfie: We came in contact with this source by searching for the key terms ‘napster’ and ‘music industry’ on Google Scholar and then purchasing the article because the abstract was relevant.
Gouyon, F. et al. "Evaluating rhythmic descriptors for musical genre classification." Proceedings of the AES 25th International Conference, 2004: 196-204. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.77.6115&rep=rep1&type=pdf.
This article was interesting in that it acknowledged the subjectivity in assigning songs genres fairly early on. This is in spite of utilizing rhythmic and harmonic descriptors, the same way our dataset did while using principal component analysis and k-means clustering. Here, the article focuses on ballroom music in particular - genres like waltz, Salsa, etc. to help classify songs using only this “musical metadata”. What was found that is that the 8 descriptors they used wasn’t enough; they needed to incorporate more to be reflective of the genre classification of the excerpt from a ballroom song. It solidifies the case for us to either consider other rhythmic and musical factors in a song, or look towards other features in a dataset in our own research and thinking about the diversity of music in the age of the Internet.
Shelfie: We used key terms like rhythm and popular music together while searching the Google Scholar database for published, peer-reviewed journal articles. This was to better understand the statistical techniques in use for quantifying music.
Haynes, Jo and Lee Marshall. “Beats and tweets: Social media in the careers of independent musicians.” New Media & Society 20, no. 5 (2017): 1973-1993. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1461444817711404.
The resource specifically focuses on individual musicians and how they use social media in their careers. Instead of exploring the broad dynamics of social media, it focuses on the “institutional analysis” of social media. So, it explores the dynamics of social media in the music industry and a specific understanding of musicians and their relation with it. The resource is important in understanding the strong relationship between musicians, audience and social media. Through the study, we see social media being useful for musicians only if they have an established popularity with the audience as opposed to those new to the industry. Overall, the article is useful in understanding the pros and cons of social media and how musicians use it for their success. This would be important in exploring how social media contributed to certain musicians/trends being more popular in a particular era compared to others. It will also help see the change from previous time periods.
Shelfie: The use of key terms like “impact of social media and internet” on musicians in my google search ledusto the sage journal, which had this article.
Hayward, Philip. "Enterprise on the new frontier: music, industry and the Internet." Convergence 1, no. 2 (1995): 29-44. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/135485659500100206.
Article discusses use of internet by producers and pop musicians between 94-95’. Was written in 1995, before the emergence of streaming services and six years before the iPod. Findings show that most music websites are for promoting the band or created by fans. Article sees the internet primarily as a medium to raise attention about certain artists and make money. Looks at websites for Madonna and Michael Jackson to see how they were successful for the artist. See the internet as a place for music distribution as well. Foresees a lot of the issues we see now such as piracy. Sees the internet as a way for artists to gain independence looking at Prince and George Michael as examples.
Shelfie: We found this through Google scholar by searching for pop music and internet.
Interiano, M. et al. “Musical trends and predictability of success in contemporary songs in and out of the top charts.” Royal Society Open Science, May 2018. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.171274.
This paper analyzes songs released in the United Kingdom between 1985 and 2015 to understand how success correlates with acoustic features. The paper aims to answer the question of how to predict success based on musical features. There seems to be a clear downward trend in “‘happiness’” and “‘brightness’” as well as a slight upward trend in “‘sadness.’” There are some very interesting data analyses including that successful songs are more party-like than average songs and successful songs are more danceable than average songs. Analyzing the influence of the internet and technology using this paper can be very helpful because dancing and partying have heavy ties to media portrayals. For example, many television series and movies promote partying.
Shelfie: This source was obtained by searching for the success of popular music based on acoustic features through the UCLA library. Keywords that the paper have are music evolution, complex social dynamics, and temporal trends.
Jones, S. “Music That Moves: Popular Music, Distribution and Network Technologies.” Cultural Studies 16, no. 2 (2002): 213–32. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502380110107562.
This article provides a critique of the music consumption through a cultural lens as opposed to a purely industrial analysis of distribution. It further situates music within a cultural and geographic context to provide a spatial distribution of music in relation to new media technologies. What is most interesting is that information practices such as sharing remain. New media has only changed the medium of distribution and not its practice, which is to say that collectors of vinyl records remain collectors even if the records have been substituted with mp3 files. This article references copyright law and history to provide a thorough analysis of the evolution of music throughout this specific time and culture. By referencing the events and transition periods outlined in the articles, we can situate our findings in history and provide a well-rounded viewpoint of the impact technology had on popular music.
Shelfie: This article was obtained using the UCLA Library Online Database by searching “the internet’s influence of popular music ”. A link to the article is provided in the citation.
Lau, P. “The new millennium music technology rocket network technology.” Canadian Musician 22, no. 32 (January 2000). https://search.proquest.com/docview/216497101?accountid=14512.
This article is about “new millennium music technology,” specifically on how new age musicians communicate: online. The author begins by saying “if you haven't heard about how this technology utilizes the Internet for music you definitely will soon.” This showcases the immense and sudden popularity of technological music and music in general. The article looks at two creators of an online communication platform for musicians, rocket network technology. Rocket network technology allows musicians to send audio to others, exchange comments, and even look up vocals. This digital technology is just one of an array of online tools that has caused the infinite expansion of music.
Shelfie: We looked up on JSTOR music and technology.
Lopes, P. "Innovation and diversity in the popular music industry, 1969 to 1990." American Sociological Review (1992): 56-71. https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2096144.pdf?casa_token=LNgr22CIKQ0AAAAA:eLhBn2UUs2iZTpGHWgyGnYSaaamQ23F7w_e7MDfozpddndbPBFKkHzzdEpnoG2s_28bO7IPsmEWv5MShkAQKCX350_R-RF_YeP4HnumadFXIu7u_KAbm.
This article draws upon the Billboard Top 100 in a very unique way during the time period of 1969 - 1990 in evaluating the changes in the popular music industry and how this influenced the diversity of songs, which was defined by the number of different Top 10 singles and Number One singles each year, with increasing numbers meaning increasing diversity. Importantly, this period was after the era of top singles; it was when albums were the preferred form of packaging and distributing music. As a result, the top companies produced the music of at least 80% of the artists, which is counterintuitive to the idea of diversity and innovation if only a few major players are able to participate in the market. However, the oligopolization has still allowed for innovation and diversity to thrive in the market, suggesting that other factors - like organization - come into play. We think this article is significant because it acts as a strong precursor to the exponential innovation and openness in music we saw in the period immediately after, given the boom of the Internet.
Shelfie: We used key terms like innovation and popular music together while searching the Google Scholar database for published, peer-reviewed journal articles. This was to better understand the effects of a transforming music industry on music itself.
Mondak, J. "Cultural heterogeneity in capitalist society: In defense of repetition on the billboard hot 100." Popular Music & Society 13, no. 3 (1989): 45-58. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03007768908591362.
This source addresses the idea of homogeneity in popular music and asserts that although repetition has increased on the Billboard Hot 100, rather than seeing it as a negative for diversity in music, it should be looked at in terms of the longevity of popular songs. Mondak looks at the number of song entries and new artists on the Billboard Hot 100 for every year, and makes his arguments based off of those averages. Since the Hot 100 is a weekly list, he further argues that repetition is the goal for many of these songs and artists, so it would be warranted, compared to TV shows which are normally reviewed on an annual basis. This source is important to our research because we need to know if the mechanisms behind the chart ratings are reliable and accurate accounts of music popularity, given that it is the only determinant of popularity in our data set. While affirming the quality of the ranking protocol and publication, it also points to some interesting trends our dataset reveals, in terms of an increase in artist and genre repetition and commonality over time. It is also important to note that this analysis only uses evidence from the Billboard Hot 100 which is an important detail given that many analyses and reports on popular music throughout history have been from multiple sources, but this one aligns with the specific source of our dataset, adding to its relevance in our research.
Shelfie: This source was obtained through a search using the keyword “Billboard Hot 100” in Google Scholar. The full article was obtained from Taylor & Francis Online, a journal accessible to UCLA students and faculty.
Percino, G. et al. “Instrumentational Complexity of Music Genres and Why Simplicity Sells.” PLOS ONE 9, no. 12 (December 2015). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0115255.
This source looks at the musical complexity of different songs and if the simplicity or complexity of certain genres has any impact on their popularity in sales and reception. It uses a highly detailed formula to determine the complexity of songs, the DISCOG discography database, and record sale data to determine these conclusions. The results show that far more albums are produced with simplistic musical elements and style. Our research similarly looks at chord progressions and different harmonic frequencies and their appearances in popular music determined by the Billboard Hot 100. One of our research questions refers to the structure of music and if “popular” music has changed over time, specifically with the advent of the internet and the rise of certain sounds and instruments.
Shelfie: This source was obtained through a keyword search using “music genre” and “harmonics” in the UCLA library articles engine.
Pinch, T. and Karin Bijsterveld. “Sound Studies: New Technologies and Music.” Social Studies of Science 34, no. 5 (October 2004): 635–48. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0306312704047615?journalCode=sssb#articleCitationDownloadContainer
This article mainly focuses on the technological advances in music manipulation and production, but also hints on the development of new ways people have been consuming music throughout history. The author elucidates the change from artists and producers using sound clips of real instruments being played to digitally rendered and perfected manifestations of musical instruments. This allowed artists to tinker with many different sounds and types of music at little to no cost because they didn't have to pay for expensive recording booths and state-of-the-art sound systems. With more opportunity at their fingertips, artists are now able to take advantage of their creativity and create music that is brand new. We can use this information about the change in data diversity we have found in this article to find trends within our data at articulate the same observation.
Shelfie: We found this article by searching Google Scholar for an article about new technology and the effects its had on the music industry throughout the years. We was only able to view a small blurb at home so we had to unlock it on campus.
Jones, S. "Music and the Internet." Popular Music 19, no. 2 (2000): 217-230. https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/A5006DB488B19BEE5E79B4EB7CA18097/S026114300000012Xa.pdf/music_and_the_internet.pdf.
This source argues that the internet had a significant impact on how music is produced, consumed, and distributed. It points to technological advances that have shaped these three categories like digital audio workstations, new encoding and decoding techniques, and even the addition of CD players to computing devices. These breakdowns of the importance of different technologies are important to our research because the Billboard Hot 100 relies completely on the different ways that music is consumed and distributed, and we are looking into if the internet or certain technologies had an impact on those ratings and consequent popularity. It further dives into music production and how music sounds different because of new technological sound-making abilities, which is another part of our research in looking at how these advances change the music that people listen to and genres rising in popularity with the advent of these technologies.
Shelfie: This source was obtained using the keywords “popular music” and “internet” in a Google Scholar search, and further access was given through Cambridge University Press.
Pareles, J. “With A Click, A new era of music dawns”. New York Times, November 1998. https://search.proquest.com/docview/431079224?accountid=14512.
This article focuses on the piracy of music and how technology is destroying the industry. It is interesting because many people would agree that technology has expanded the industry. However, the author of this article is stating that the Internet has created a mass amount of illegal downloads and shares of music. People are no longer needed CDs due to MP3 players (the use of MP3 player gives us a sense of the time period for this article, but it being written early makes us wonder what this author thinks of music now, about free streaming such as Soundcloud). Internet has created a vast amount of music piracy which has led to economic downfall to many musicians, which then led to only the big and rich music industries and musicians to be in the top billboard 100. This may have caused the genres of music to remain the same throughout the early era of the internet.
Shelfie: Jstor Music AND internet
Shapero, D. “The Impact of Technology on Music Stars’ Cultural Influence.” Elon Journal of Undergraduate Research in Communications 6, no. 1 (2015). http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1134/2/the-impact-of-technology-on-music-stars-cultural-influence.
This source explores the impact of technology by assessing how users relate with music celebrities and how they utilize their music. The evidence consists of a survey which focuses on questions addressing where audiences follow music celebrities and which app they prefer listening to music. The results of this study were important in identifying how twitter is the most important form of social media for audiences to connect with music artists along with Spotify being the most important form of music engagement among younger audiences. This would be useful for our paper in analyzing how social media and music sources like Spotify created diverse trends in music over the years. The different themes that occur over the eras might be connected to these forms of technology extensively.
Shelfie: We did a general search on google about “The impact of technology on the
music industry” and this article from Student Pulse Journal showed up. We like the article
because the survey conducted as part of the method made it more interactive and
relatable.
Street, John. "‘Fight the power’: The politics of music and the music of politics." Government and Opposition 38, no. 1 (2003): 113-130. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/1477-7053.00007.
Looking at Pop Music’s engagement with politics as a way to convey political commentary. Article looks at how cultural capital and politics are entangled. Uses election campaigns as an example of how music has been used to support a political message. Author sees popular music as a signifier of power, “one which works to malign effect” (116). Look at the USSR and the censorship of pop music and says that this is not necessarily a signifier of the potency of music but of the politicization of music by the state. By doing so this becomes a self fulfilling prophecy where a potentially previously impotent song becomes seen as politically charged in popular culture. Article also looks at popular music as a “ritual of resistance” as subcultures mimic popular culture to have an alternative impact (121). Article also views how music influences politics, cites examples in blues and folk.
Shelfie: We found this by looking in google scholar key words: popular music, politics, power and history.
Williams, J. "Authentic identities: Straightedge subculture, music, and the internet." Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 35, no. 2 (2006): 173-200. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891241605285100.
This article looks at the development of subculture music movements and how the internet has impacted their growth. States there is a dialectic relationship between music and identity where music is the cause of and the consequence of subculture. Additionally musical experiences allows individuals to identify with a particular subculture. Looks at the academic history in understanding what a subculture is. Studies people who use the internet as a primary way to experience music versus those who use the internet to supplement their consumption. Sees subculture as a revolt against mainstream norms and popular music). Doesn’t see popular music as dominant to subculture music as this creates an inaccurate power dynamic as the genres inform each other. Concludes that there is a strict divide in the way people perceive using the internet for music, those who go to venues in person strictly see it as a way to communicate those who use it primarily see it as a powerful tool in digital space.
Shelfie: We looked in google scholar keywords: subculture, identity, internet, authenticity, straightedge, scene.