Experiment IV
Tom’s experiment, as he rightly points out, is run with a sample of people who are clearly interested in this type of thing. As such, they actively seek out artists’ blogs and the like to find new music by these artists (amongst the variety of other ways they discover music).
It’s certainly interesting to see that traditional media does not account for where these people find their music. What I think is perhaps a more interesting experiment, at least with respect to what the state of ‘pop music’ is today, would be to try this out, Family Fortunes style, with a random sample of a hundred people.
In a distribution of people, from ‘not into music’ to ‘obsessive about it’, I am probably amongst the top few percent, if not the top one percent - I have several thousand records; however, I don’t think I search things out like the guys on Freaky Trigger (nor am I as specifically interested in popular music). In fact, I think I can prove this by pointing out that my answer to every single one of these questions would have been “haven’t heard it”. I can absolutely guarantee that my mum would say the same thing. I can also guarantee that this wasn’t true thirty years ago. However, my mum was never really all that interested (though this probably makes her an ideal candidate for this experiment). My dad was. He’d have been able to tell you what was what until probably 10-15 years ago, but again, I think he would have serious trouble identifying any of these.
So I have a sample of two, and I think something’s changed. I just think pop is not as popular as it used to be. Not by a long shot. I would like to get a random sample if it were possible. Actually, of course it’s possible; I just can’t be bothered.
