Will We Ever Run Out of New Music? | Summary and Q&A

TL;DR

With an infinite number of possibilities for melodies, we will never run out of new music.

Key Insights

• #️⃣ The number of possible 5-minute audio files is larger than the total number of atoms on Earth or in the universe.
• ❓ Humans tend to gravitate towards certain patterns and melodies, resulting in commonalities between songs.
• 🤒 Common meter is a prevalent form of poetic meter in music, leading to similarities between lyrics in different songs.

Transcript

Hey, Vsauce. Michael here. And the iTunes store contains 28 million different songs. Last.fm carries 45 million songs and the Gracenote database of artists, titles, and labels contains 130 million different songs. That's a lot. If you were to listen to all of the songs in the Gracenote database one after the other in a giant playlist, it would take... Read More

Questions & Answers

Q: Will we ever run out of new music?

No, there are a virtually infinite number of possibilities for melodies, making it impossible to exhaust all the potential for new music.

Q: Why do so many songs sound similar?

Humans tend to gravitate towards certain patterns and melodies that they enjoy, resulting in similarities between songs.

Q: Can software compression predict how enjoyable a song will be?

Research has shown that the way a song compresses can help predict its enjoyability. Songs that are too simple or too complex tend to be less enjoyable.

Q: What is common meter in poetry and music?

Common meter refers to a form of poetic meter that is commonly used in songs and poems. Many popular songs, including the Pokemon theme song and Gilligan's Island theme, are written in common meter.

Summary & Key Takeaways

• The number of possible 5-minute audio files is larger than we can understand, containing every possible CD quality audio file.

• Calculations show that there are a huge number of possible melodies, even within limited parameters, making it unlikely that we will ever run out of new music.

• Commonalities between songs can be attributed to humans gravitating towards certain patterns and being influenced by what came before.