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> according to an analysis of more than 350,000 top 40 hits Wow, that's a lot of "top 40 hits". More than 134 new "hits" per week for the last 50 years! Are th
by jl6 3y ago
> according to an analysis of more than 350,000 top 40 hits
Wow, that's a lot of "top 40 hits". More than 134 new "hits" per week for the last 50 years! Are these really all "popular" songs? Because that number seems like the analysis must cut well into the long tail too.
- dist-epoch 3y agoProbably multiple top 40 charts from multiple countries.
- 1123581321 3y agoThe method in the paper seems different than what was reported. They used a last.fm dataset of two billion listens across 50 million songs. They enriched the data and restricted the study to 1990-2020 to create a balanced dataset of the 350k songs for training their stat tools. Then they analyzed 2,400 songs per genre with that, 12,000 total. I didn't see "top 40" mentioned in the paper.
- eddieroger 3y agoTop 40 is a descriptor, not a list. Every genre can have their own Top 40, though it is most commonly associated with pop music (again, a term that doesn't specifically mean what it says). And there's not a unique Top 40 for any given time period - for example, in the US we had both American Top 40 with Casey Kasem and Rick Dees and the Weekly Top 40s, so that's a potential 80 right there (despite there was usually overlap).
- CPLX 3y agoBillboard publishes dozens and dozens of charts every week each with various formats and criteria.
- antifa 3y ago> Are these really all "popular" songs? I'm not totally sure why what plays on the radio plays on the radio, but I feel like there's a mix of what's actually popular and what was selected to become popular by industry insiders.