The Sonic Characteristics of 2023’s Chart-Topping Songs
Last month, music-oriented analytics firm ChartCipher made waves in the release of its inaugural report that looks into the sonic characteristics of songs that made it to Billboard’s 2023 Streaming Songs chart.
Primary Genre Trends
In 2023, hip hop and pop were the top genres represented on the Billboard Streaming Songs chart, comprising 27% of songs each.
Country and rock followed at around one-fifth, and dance/club/electronic, R&B/ soul and Latin trailed distantly at just 9% of songs or less.
Country and rock were the biggest gainers of 2023. Country’s prominence more than doubled to 20% compared to 2022, largely thanks to an influx of hits by Morgan Wallen, Taylor Swift and Zach Bryan. Rock followed right behind at 19%, almost double its 2022 share.
While pop’s presence has remained relatively stable over the past few years, hip hop/rap has experienced a significant decline, seeing its prominence more than halved between 2020 and 2023.
Notable shifts in this matter would include Country (which experienced a 150% increase from 2022 to 2023), Rock (which experienced a 58% increase from 2022 to 2023) and Hip Hop (which experienced a -37% decrease from 2022 to 2023).
Lyrical Repetitiveness Trends
Songs on the Streaming Songs chart have been becoming lyrically less repetitive. Between 2019 and 2021, streaming hits that feature low lyrical repetition increased from 40% to 58% of songs, and have remained stable ever since.
Conversely, those that feature high to very high lyrical repetition continues to be few and far between. This part of the report, however, largely excludes songs with lyrics that are not in English.
Timbre (Tone/Quality) Trends
While darker timbres (which refers to a song’s tone/quality) remain the most common among streaming songs, they’ve been in decline since 2020, dropping from 65% of songs down to just 42% in 2023.
This is due in part to the decline of hip hop production influences on the chart. In contrast, songs with brighter timbres have been on the rise, increasing to 37% of songs in 2023, their highest level in over a decade.
Notable shifts in this regard can be underscored in by an increase of 37% for “brighter timbres” from 2022 to 2023, and a decrease by -25% of “darker timbres” from 2022 to 2023.
Key (Major VS Minor) Trends
From 2019 to 2022, songs written in major and minor keys ran neck and neck on the Streaming Songs chart.
However, 2023 saw a major surge in major keys, due in part to the decline of hip hop, a genre that commonly favors minor tonalities.
The firm was initially launched in 2022 by the MyPart and Hit Songs Deconstructed firms, with the intention to “empower music creatives and industry professionals with comprehensive, real-time insights into the DNA of today’s most successful songs, and the trends shaping the music charts.”
As a music analytics firm, ChartCipher believes that streams, engagement rates and other performance metrics only tell part of the story. It provides the missing variable in that equation in the form of data that reflects the compositional, lyrical and sonic qualities that’re largely definitive of hits.
In its first report titled “2023 ChartCipher Trend Report: Billboard Streaming Songs”, the firm used an AI matrix to extract granular data for the compositional, lyrical and sonic qualities of songs that charted Billboard’s Streaming Songs chart between January 1, 2023 to December 31, 2023.
It highlights the songs’ popular characteristics, spotlights upward and downward trends, and provides valuable insight on how the chart has been evolving in the past five years or so.
Here’s a breakdown of the report’s key findings, the full copy of which can be accessed via ChartCipher’s official online channels.