Where do I sign a petition for Spotify and Billboard etc. having separate charts for 0-14 year old demographics? They do have technical possibilities for that today. I swear it would solve this problem and break the illusion that melodies are dead and music getting uglier. It's just more and more kids consuming the market.
It's obvious that unexperienced listeners of young age prefer accessible music akin to nursery rhythms, we all prefer music we can access cognitively. We just need to admit that a working adult spends less time on Spotify than a child and less inclined to form his playlist according to what his classmates listen to.
This is an interesting idea and technically possible, although I think charts music was always made for teenagers and young adults since the early days. Studies show that our music taste doesn’t really develop beyond our teen years. For men, the most important period for forming musical taste is between the ages of 13 to 16. For women, the most important period is between 11 and 14, with 13 being the most likely age for when their favorite song came out.
The big difference is that today literally EVERYONE can make music at home cheaply - a $500,000 studio from back in the day can exist on your laptop for about $500. Also, with the invention of streaming and CD sales going down the drain, there's almost no need to go the old "record label-route" in order to make it in the industry. You can just upload your music to Spotify and pay ads on instagram and facebook. Now - the labels back in the day were actually GREAT at being the initial filters for music and quality. For all the hoopla on how creatively stifling or evil major record labels have been - they were actually awesome at opening or closing the door for those that were qualified - in all genres. They were the FILTERS! You had execs and A&R people who were skilled and qualified, often with accumulated decades of experience who would say “Yes - you are awesome - here’s a couple hundred thousand dollars, let’s make this record." Compare that landscape to today, where as I mentioned, technology has put music creation literally in the hands of anyone.
This leads to the music landscape being filled with super mediocre music - in VERY LARGE QUANTITIES. Keep in mind with the technology in the hands of literally everyone – we’ve gone from about 75,000 key new music releases PER YEAR, say in the year 2000 to today, where over 60,000 songs are being uploaded to Spotify EVERY SINGLE DAY! That’s not an exaggeration. Spotify is seeing a new track uploaded to its platform every 1.4 seconds.
This leads to drastic changes in the way songs are being written and music is being produced. Songs get shorter (because on Spotify, a stream counts as a stream after it was played for 30 seconds). So instead of having one song running 4 minutes, they now produce a songs that run 2 minutes with no intro and no bridge and so people can literally play the song two times in 4 minutes instead of just listening to it once - which, of course, means they are going achieve twice as much streams than a regular 3-4 minute song. Also, have you noticed that songs nowadays start with choruses - "Say So" is a good example. This is all due to streaming & competition.
The most important factor I have discovered is that popular music back in the day used to be "just beautiful", lovely melodies paired with nice words. Then rock'n'roll took over and with it the invention of riffs and hooks. Labels noticed that hooks made songs instantly more memorable and catchy. So they kind of balanced "hookiness" with "beautiful" parts. Nowadays, at least to me, a lot of songs that perform well in the charts only consist of hooks and no beautiful parts to go with it. A great example of a song with a "good balance" between hooky and beautiful is Max's "Dynamite" by Taio Cruz. It has tons of repetition in the verses to create memorable hooks and a beautiful melody in the chorus to balance it out. Another example of a good balance is Lady Gaga's "Poker Face". Tons of hooks and repetition paired with a beautiful chorus melody. Now compare these two songs to Doja Cat viral hit "moo". Here's the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXnJqYwebF8 No beautiful parts just hooks. And I can name tons of other example of this phenomenon.