Music Is Becoming Less Complex Over Time, And We Don’t Really Know Why

Music is an important part of human life, found in every society that we know of. As such, it’s pretty interesting to learn how the art form is changing over time, and with the advent of new musical technology and improved accessibility of music over the centuries and recent decades. 

“Previous studies have suggested that content circulating in fast, interconnected, and algorithmically curated environments is subject to simplification processes, as seen in the case of song lyrics and social media comments,” the team writes in their study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed. “This raises an important question: is a similar trend occurring in the contemporary musical landscape?”

Measuring the complexity of music is no simple task in itself. For the study, researchers from the Sapienza University of Rome and the University of Padova used tools from network science to analyze music of various genres over the centuries.

“We analyze[d] a dataset of approximately 20, 000 MIDI files categorized into six macro-genres, choosing to represent musical compositions as weighted directed networks where notes are nodes and transitions are edges,” the team explained. “This approach systematically explores structural differences across genres and offers a potential method for measuring musical complexity and its trends over time.”

In simple terms, by assigning notes to “nodes” – see the circles in the video below – and representing any transition between the notes as connecting lines – “edges” – the team could then analyze how complex a piece of music is. Where one note repeatedly transitioned to another note, the connecting line was thickened, making analysis easier.

Using this network analysis, the team found some surprising results, though not necessarily out of line with previous research. Overall, they found that musical complexity has declined over the centuries, with classical being much more complex than modern music. However, even classical music is not immune from this trend, and has become less complex as time goes on. 

One exception to the rule of diminishing complexity was jazz, though only for a brief period.

“Notably, Classical music exhibits a declining trend, whereas Jazz shows an initial increase in its complexity in its early days, followed by a decline and eventual stabilization,” the team writes. “In contrast, the other genres maintain relatively flat patterns, with efficiency values comparable to those of Classical and Jazz in recent years.”

Previous research has found that melodies are getting simpler in more recent times, first occurring at the onset of disco, new wave, and stadium rock in around 1975, and again with the rise of hip-hop, electronic music, and MTV. However, it’s not like these new genres are responsible for the decline in complexity of music, with the new study finding that complexity has gone down within all genres studied. 

While it’s not clear why music is getting less complex, the team suggests that it could be to do with technological advancements, allowing more people to compose music, among other factors.

“The observed trend of musical simplification reflects broader societal changes, including the influence of global interconnectedness, rapid content dissemination, and the algorithmic curation of music consumption,” the team wrote, adding “overall, our study highlights that the democratization of the composition process and the advent of new technologies and platforms have fostered the development of genres characterized by reduced complexity relative to earlier eras.”

It is also important to note that while music may be getting simpler in terms of melody, it may also be getting more complex in other ways. Music was played on fewer instruments in the past, for example, while modern music may involve many layers of different textures.

“My guess is that other aspects of music are getting more complex and melodies are getting simpler as a way to compensate,” Madeline Hamilton, co-author of the previous research, explained at the time.

Further research is needed, but perhaps this new way of analyzing it – through the use of network analysis – could help clear up the mystery of why music appears to be getting simpler over time.

The study is available via arXiv.