The ADAMNET: How Technology has Transformed Pop Music

My interest in rock music never ventured much past the edge of the pop world.? Only a few titles have made it into my playlist.? The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, or U2 are not in my playlists.? Queen and Journey are probably the only bands that I would have paid to see live. ?Growing up, however, I heard these bands on the radio.? So even though it was not my favorite music, I still heard these bands if they became popular.

As Y2K approached, the days of Queen and Journey were quickly fading,? Then the radio brought me a new favorite rock band.? Maroon 5 and its lead singer, Adam Levine, seemed to emerge out of nowhere.? When I heard the first few singles from their album, Songs About Jane, I thought they would once again drag me to the edge where pop and rock meet.? To me, they were a modern blend of rock and Levine’s vocals were clearly identifiable.? I fully expected that they would have a sound that would match that first album for the foreseeable future.?

That did not happen.? Where the Rolling Stones and U2 seemed to have a sound, Maroon 5 stopped sounding like they were marooned.? Instead, what happened is they became embedded in the fabric of pop music.? I could now find songs of theirs I hated (Animals).? Just when I thought they might be back to their origins (Girls like you), they would throw in a piece that just didn’t work for me.? Cardi B took Finesse by Bruno Mars from good to great.? Cardi B and Maroon 5 were neither good nor great for me.

How pop music used to work

The story of Maroon 5 is emblematic of all the changes that have completely transformed pop music.? The group began with four of its members, Adam Levine, Jesse Carmichael, Mickey Madden, and Ryan Dusick who attended the Brentwood School (Burns, 2013). The four of them formed the band called Kara’s Flowers in high school, which was named after a girl that they were all infatuated with. ?They were playing a party in Malibu when an indie manufacturer Tim Allen led them to Reprise Records and producer Rob Cavallo.? This led to their first CD, The Fourth World, released in 1997.? While Levine’s vocals are identifiable and the sound is reminiscent of what they would produce five years later, the approach did not grab hold and their single Soap Disco never made it up the charts.?

With the flop of their album came great disappointment, and the band went their separate ways to attend college.? Levine and Carmichael moved to Long Island, New York while Madden and Dusick enrolled at UCLA.? Growing up in a more sheltered part of the world, had in a way blunted Levine’s musical development.? In New York, Levine heard R&B, gospel, and hip-hop from many of his Black classmates.? His musical tastes blossomed when he blended a whole new world of music with the sounds he had learned growing up. This new sound returned with them to LA and the band once again began rehearsing.?

After performing at the Viper Room, James Diener, David Boxenbaum, and Ben Baker at Octone Records were enthused by how good Kara’s Flowers sounded live and knew that they would be able to attract a lot of followers. Octone also had a different view of pop music.? Rather than just working on them selling a reasonable number of albums and turning a quick profit, Octone worked on developing the band.?

Octone did two things to promote the band.? First, they changed the band’s name from Kara’s Flowers to Maroon 5. Second, Octone chose to promote the band using a few select stations in the US, 91X in San Diego, The Buzz in Houston, The Edge in Dallas, The End in Salt Lake City, WRAX in Birmingham, WLIR in Long Island, and The Peak in Spokane. They had them play live gigs and announced on the stations that they could get the band’s album for a very low price at a local record store.? Slowly the niche market of rock stations across the country made the band’s presence known to many of the trendsetters.? It took from July 2002 to December 2003 for the single “Harder to Breathe” to peak at number 4 on the charts.?

This slow move to the top seemed pretty normal back in the day of records and CDs.? Little did I know that it would change dramatically within a few years.? And with this change my ability to see Maroon 5 as the new rock band slowly drifted away.

So Many Hits, So Little Time: Pop Music

The voyage to the top has changed in today’s music world.? Let’s try a little musical trivia game to illustrate the point.? Name artists of the top albums in the late 20th century.? Think of a few examples.? Okay, now think about who might be the greatest-selling artists more recently.? I will pick the decade of the 2010s as more recent.? Think who these newer artists might be. Hint, it is not Maroon 5.

Work by Schneider and Gros (Schneider & Gros, 2019) has documented exactly how music has changed over time by looking at the path that albums have taken to the top of the charts and how long those albums have remained there.? Their work covers top albums in the UK, US, German, and Dutch charts.? To make things simpler I am going to focus on the US Billboard Top 200 and Top 100.? The artists of the top albums in the Billboard 200, meaning those that spent the most weeks among the 200 best albums are Pink Floyd, Bob Marley and the Wailers, Journey, Metallica, and Guns N’ Roses.? If we consider the top 100 only Bob Marley and Metallica make it from the old bands.? From the new artists, we have Adele, Kendrick Lamar, and Imagine Dragons.? So the newer artists tend to be in the top 100 but not 200. The older artists tend to be in the top 200 but not the top 100.?

Schneider and Gros noted that the trend was not just for the very top albums. It was true of albums in general.? Namely, in the past, albums would rise slowly up the charts, eventually reach the top or close to the top post, and then slowly begin their descent.? The old trajectory was similar to the one seen for Maroon 5’s first album.? It would involve slowly creating a buzz for a band.? Over time, a single and eventually an album could rise to the top.

The change in this rise to the top can be seen in the two figures below.? The first shows the rank at which number-one albums entered the top 100 in their first week and the second week in which they were in the top 100.

What you can see is that in the past top albums did not start at the top of Billboard's top 100.? In 1973, a future number 1 album would start on average at rank 45 and then move down to around the 20th place.? This trend was pretty stable from 1973 up until 1983.? In the late 1980’s we can see that trend dropped off a cliff.? Top albums would enter the top 100 at the top and stay there.? By 2018, the top albums started higher and stayed there.? The last piece of data that is not in the figure is how long the albums stay in the top 100.

The length of time that albums would stay in the top 100 was very similar.? In the past, top albums would spend about 30 weeks in the top 100 in 2018 they would spend about 20 weeks.?? So, as we move into the 2000’s you can see that virtually all top albums start at the top and drop off more quickly.? What we see is a general acceleration in the rise and fall of the top albums.? ?????????

Emergence in the Distribution of pop music

One of the questions that comes up is what might be the cause that leads to the increased

speed with which top albums rise. One possible reason might be the speed with which the music can be distributed.? The figure below from the Recording Industry Association of America shows this very nicely.

The main trend?is from albums in dark blue, to cassettes in light blue during the early 1980’s.?CDs began to dominate sales in the middle of that decade and continue doing so as we transition to the 21st century.? The industry changer, music downloads, brought about by Napster only lasts a short while.? By 2014 we see that music streaming overtakes all the other types of music formats.?? Using this logic would lead us to conclude that musical format is the cause and faster rises to the top is the effect.??

However, we could dig deeper. The increase in streaming was also shadowed by a similar rise in the use of social media during this time.? Social media allows people to share their ratings of albums and for information about an album’s release to spread among people.? The distribution also helps.? Streaming is so fast that an album can be released today and heard by millions of people instantaneously.??

In the case of pop music, many of these changes came across time.? Lots of little technical advances across many different fields, telecommunications, computer chips, storage, and speed, led to other changes such as the movement from records to cassettes to CDs to file sharing to streaming.? These changes did not just alter how albums rose to the top.? They changed the nature of pop music entirely (Interiano et al.).? Today’s hits are likely to be sung by a female pop star, sadder and more danceable.? This trend has been in place for the last 30 years.?

Fast or Slow It Is Still Emergent

The story of Maroon 5 shows how quickly the music landscape has changed.? Even with the release of their second album, It won’t be soon before long, they still sounded like Maroon 5 to me. But then at some point, they began to sound less and less like Maroon 5.? Their experimentation with other genres and collaborations with other artists continued.?

As time went by, Maroon 5 began to blend into what was pop music in general.? They were no longer distinguishable.? As time passed, they maintained much of their commercial success, but the music started to sound like everyone else.? Their albums often rose quickly but the songwriting was done by larger and larger groups of people. The interesting part is that the change had always been there.? Kara’s Flowers had already evolved when it became Maroon 5. So my feelings that Maroon 5 had changed was a fallacy. Adam Levine was always open to change and that is what led to his success and to that of his band.

One thing to notice is that this change does not have one identifiable cause.? In the history of pop music, all the changes started through technological advances.? Faster chips, more memory, and the internet led to faster distribution.? Social media came in and accelerated the process even more.? We could try to blame one thing but is a collusion of lots of little forces that work together to transform a whole industry.? As a researcher, I find these “Emergent” phenomena fascinating.?

The interesting thing is that Levine and Maroon 5 came on the cusp of fundamental transformation.? This in a way has allowed him to become an icon for the pop star.? He is ultimately successful beyond belief.? However, his success is the product of a long gradual rise to the top with a lot of little forces working together to keep him (and his group) there.? In short, it is not so much Adam vs. The Internet.? Rather it is Adam combined with the internet.?? It might be aptly labeled the ADAMNET. ?

References

Burns, K. (2013). Maroon 5: Biography, Songs, and Lyrics. Kindle E-Book.?

Interiano, M., Kazemi, K., Wang, L., Yang, J., Yu, Z., & Komarova, N. L. Musical trends and predictability of success in contemporary songs in and out of the top charts. Royal Society Open Science, 5(5), 171274. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.171274

Schneider, L., & Gros, C. (2019). Five decades of US, UK, German and Dutch music charts show that cultural processes are accelerating. Royal Society Open Science, 6(8), 190944. https://doi.org/doi:10.1098/rsos.190944

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