Hip hop revolutionised music more than the Beatles or Rolling Stones, a new study has claimed.
Researchers from Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) and Imperial College London, with help from music website Last.fm, analysed 17,000 songs from the US Billboard Hot 100 charts, 1960 to 2010, to chart the evolution of pop.
The study claimed that the music of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones only followed existing musical trends rather than creating a brave new pop world.
Instead, researchers discovered that the most important musical revolution was when hip hop first stormed the charts back in 1991.
Matthias Mauch from the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science at QMUL, lead author of the paper, said:
‘For the first time we can measure musical properties in recordings on a large scale. We can actually go beyond what music experts tell us, or what we know ourselves about them, by looking directly into the songs, measuring their makeup, and understanding how they have changed.’
The researchers used signal processing and text-mining to analyse the musical properties of songs.
Their system automatically grouped thousands of songs by patterns of chord changes and tone. This method enabled researchers to statistically identify trends across the history of popular music.
Visit Centre for Digital Music to find out more.
Researchers from Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) and Imperial College London, with help from music website Last.fm, analysed 17,000 songs from the US Billboard Hot 100 charts, 1960 to 2010, to chart the evolution of pop.
The study claimed that the music of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones only followed existing musical trends rather than creating a brave new pop world.
Instead, researchers discovered that the most important musical revolution was when hip hop first stormed the charts back in 1991.
Matthias Mauch from the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science at QMUL, lead author of the paper, said:
‘For the first time we can measure musical properties in recordings on a large scale. We can actually go beyond what music experts tell us, or what we know ourselves about them, by looking directly into the songs, measuring their makeup, and understanding how they have changed.’
The researchers used signal processing and text-mining to analyse the musical properties of songs.
Their system automatically grouped thousands of songs by patterns of chord changes and tone. This method enabled researchers to statistically identify trends across the history of popular music.
Visit Centre for Digital Music to find out more.
