Are We Making Pop Music More Bland?

It used to be that executives decided on a pop song and had it played on the radio to familiarize people with it, but now the process is more data driven — record executives look at data about what songs people like online and make decisions about who to sign and what to play based on that.

Derek Thompson of The Atlantic says the process is making pop music much more bland because people like to hear music that sounds familiar.

• Read Derek Thompson’s piece “The Shazam Effect”

Guest

• Derek Thompson, senior editor at The Atlantic. He tweets @DKThomp.

Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.