I don't think you are missing anything. I see a stat like that and it reminds me of some stats in baseball that reveal nothing about how the game is actually played. Maybe I'm just old, but basing anything on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2022 is like basing a study on fine dining by only polling patrons of fast food establishments.
I don't know if this means anything deep. Like Steve, I think there's not much to be learned about fine dining from analyzing the market for hot pockets. HOWEVER: I do think that American pop has been sinking into a formulaic morass for decades, and it's only getting worse. So consider the graph a coincidence, but coupled with other data points (one being a massive erosion in the market for high-end musical instruments) and it does suggest something. Hip hop, like it or not, has stolen the oxygen from the markets for rock and pop, and producers are increasingly falling back on tested formulae because they are risk averse. You don't need a graph like this to realize that.
I don't think you are missing anything. I see a stat like that and it reminds me of some stats in baseball that reveal nothing about how the game is actually played. Maybe I'm just old, but basing anything on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2022 is like basing a study on fine dining by only polling patrons of fast food establishments.
I don't know if this means anything deep. Like Steve, I think there's not much to be learned about fine dining from analyzing the market for hot pockets. HOWEVER: I do think that American pop has been sinking into a formulaic morass for decades, and it's only getting worse. So consider the graph a coincidence, but coupled with other data points (one being a massive erosion in the market for high-end musical instruments) and it does suggest something. Hip hop, like it or not, has stolen the oxygen from the markets for rock and pop, and producers are increasingly falling back on tested formulae because they are risk averse. You don't need a graph like this to realize that.