Five decades of US, UK, German and Dutch music charts show that cultural processes are accelerating

TL;DR

This study analyzes decades of music chart data from the US, UK, Germany, and the Netherlands, revealing an acceleration in cultural processes evidenced by faster album rankings and increased chart diversity over time.

Contribution

It introduces an information-theoretical framework to explain the acceleration of cultural dynamics and highlights the impact of streaming on chart diversity.

Findings

Album lifetimes have shortened from over a month to immediate or not at all.

Number of top albums increased from about 12 to 40 annually.

Distribution of album lifetimes shifted from log-normal to powerlaw.

Abstract

Analyzing the timeline of US, UK, German and Dutch music charts, we find that the evolution of album lifetimes and of the size of weekly rank changes provide evidence for an acceleration of cultural processes. For most of the past five decades number one albums needed more than a month to climb to the top, nowadays an album is in contrast top ranked either from the start, or not at all. Over the last three decades, the number of top-listed albums increased as a consequence from roughly a dozen per year to about 40. The distribution of album lifetimes evolved during the last decades from a log-normal distribution to a powerlaw, a profound change. Presenting an information-theoretical approach to human activities, we suggest that the fading relevance of personal time horizons may be causing this phenomenon. Furthermore we find that sales and airplay based charts differ statistically and that the inclusion of streaming affects chart diversity adversely. We point out in addition that opinion dynamics may accelerate not only in cultural domains, as found here, but also in other settings, in particular in politics, where it could have far reaching consequences.