Is Taylor Swift leading a new Pop revolution? A cross-generation analysis of Pop/Rock cover songs

José Luis Ortega

doi:10.12688/f1000research.125676.3

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Research Article

Revised

Is Taylor Swift leading a new Pop revolution? A cross-generation analysis of Pop/Rock cover songs

[version 3; peer review: 1 approved with reservations, 3 not approved]

José Luis Ortega ^1,2

PUBLISHED 12 Feb 2024

Author details Author details

¹ Joint Research Unit Knowledge Transfer and Innovation, (UCO-CSIC), Camposanto de los Mártires, Córdoba, 7 14004, Spain
² Institute for Advanced Social Studies, Camposanto de los Mártires,, Córdoba, 7 14004, Spain

José Luis Ortega
Roles: Conceptualization, Data Curation, Formal Analysis, Funding Acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project Administration, Resources, Software, Supervision, Validation, Visualization, Writing – Original Draft Preparation, Writing – Review & Editing

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This article is included in the AI for Music collection.

Abstract

Background

(Pop/Rock is experiencing deep transformations caused by the emergence of Web 2.0 and the online social networks, streaming services and the proliferation of TV contests. Cover songs afford the opportunity to explore how these changes would result in a new revalorization of Pop and Dance music. The aim of this paper is to find evidence of a changing pattern in cover songs by 21st-century artists. To this end, over 76,000 covers performed by artists who grew up in the 2000s were quantitatively analyzed.

Methods

SecondHandSongs.com was crawled to extract the cover relationships, and Allmusic.com to obtain the genre and starting decade of each performer.

Results

The results show that the current music panorama is dominated by Pop/Rock music and, for the first time since the 1960s, artists from the 2010s generation prefer to cover more songs by contemporary artists than by classic figures from the 1960s. Pop and Dance are the emerging sub-genres with the largest proportion of covered musicians, while Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber and Ed Sheeran are responsible for this changing trend.

Conclusions

These results provide an interesting opportunity to introduce quantitative studies in cultural studies about music, cinema and arts.

Keywords

Contemporary popular music; Cover songs; Pop/Rock; Taylor Swift, SecondHandSongs, digital humanities, popular culture

Corresponding author: José Luis Ortega

Competing interests: No competing interests were disclosed.

Grant information: This work was supported by the Spanish State Research Agency (AEI) under Grant reference CS02017-88354-R (INNOQUAL Project).
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Copyright: © 2024 Ortega JL. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

How to cite: Ortega JL. Is Taylor Swift leading a new Pop revolution? A cross-generation analysis of Pop/Rock cover songs [version 3; peer review: 1 approved with reservations, 3 not approved]. F1000Research 2024, 11:1273 (https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.125676.3) First published: 08 Nov 2022, 11:1273 (https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.125676.1) Latest published: 12 Feb 2024, 11:1273 (https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.125676.3)

Revised Amendments from Version 2

This new version improves the abstract including a better justification of the study. In addition, two new paragraphs were added to Introduction section to incorporate more background about the changes that Pop/Rock music is experiencing at the beginning of the 21st Century, and the possible changes in the use of cover songs due to new musical scenarios. Discussion has been also enhanced with more explanations of the results according to previous studies. In general, the paper has been enriched with more bibliography related to cover songs studies that reinforces the discussion and the context.

See the author's detailed response to the review by Tim Wall and Ben Torrens
See the author's detailed response to the review by Chinyere Celestina Esimone

Introduction

Pop/Rock has been the dominant music genre during the second half of 20^th century, when Rock & Roll suddenly emerged in the of 1950s. Several social, economic and technological changes promoted that traditional jazz-based styles were replaced by young and energized rock styles (Peterson, 1990). Today, Pop/Rock music is suffering similar changes motivated by social and economic transformations. From a technical point of view, discs are replaced by streaming, which implies a new way to consume and perceive the music (Lee et al., 2016; Mulla, 2022). The emergence of online social networks and Web 2.0 platforms is changing how musicians interact with the audience (Preston & Rogers, 2011; Gruzd & Hodson, 2021). And the use of free music publishing platforms (Vampr, SoundOn, Bandcamp) is reducing the number of intermediaries between artists and public (Hesmondhalgh et al., 2019; Qu et al., 2023). In consequence, all these changes might influence the content and meaning of the musical creation, transforming lyrics, instruments and performers.

In this sense, cover songs are having a new revalorization, as it becomes clear in the increasing appearance of tribute bands, which use covers to recreate the sound of classic bands or artists. Cover songs are also gaining importance in worldwide TV song contests, where contestants employ these songs to compete in voice and performing (Cvetkovski, 2015). And many of the new talents emerged from Youtube use this type of songs to attract audience and define their musical preferences (Constandinides, 2019). Therefore, the importance of cover songs in the today musical panorama, besides the technological and socio-economics changes aforementioned let us to explore the role of cover songs in the transformation of the current Pop/Rock music, hypothesizing that the quantitative analysis of cover songs would give some clues about to what extent the popular music is changing their influences and preferences.

With the proliferation of new forms of data collection (data repositories, public APIs and web scrapping), the appearance of more advanced processing tools (OpenRefine, R packages, etc.) and the increase of storage space, digital humanities are becoming established as reference discipline in the study of complex cultural and historical phenomena (Black, 2016). This freely accessible information is fostering new quantitative research fronts that are exploring historical, cultural and social phenomena from a quantitative perspective. In this sense, multiple web platforms are expanding, providing music information about releases (Discogs), artists (MusicBrainz, Allmusic), samples (Whosampled), lyrics (Genius) and cover songs (SecondHandSongs). This great variety of web sources offers the chance to explore the evolution and impact of contemporary popular music, and concretely, the influence among artists through cover songs.

SecondHandSongs¹ is a public database that gathered in 2020 the most complete list of covers (788,700), original songs (96,133) and artists (143,830). This site defines original performers as those that perform, record or release a song for the first time. A cover is then a version of the same song performed, recorded or released by subsequent artists. This definition excludes songwriters, who could be the original authors, but not the original performers. This database is limited to versions, including a list of covered songs and initial performers by artist (SecondHandSongs, 2020). This database is limited to versions, including a list of covered songs and initial performers by artist (SecondHandSongs, 2020).

Allmusic is a comprehensive music web database created in 1994 and owned by TiVo Corporation. The platform provides 30 million tracks and three million albums (Smith, 2016). However, the site’s most valuable information is the classification scheme. Each artist is arranged according to 21 genres and over 100 styles. Styles are not considered sub-categories of genres, but labels or keywords freely assigned to an artist. Allmusic also includes an artist’s active period expressed in decades. This information means that artists can be located in time and their influence tracked across decades.

Studying connections between musicians through cover versions provides an opportunity to analyze music performers’ influence on their contemporaries and later artists, build impact indicators and track links between music genres. In a previous study, the global network of artists connected through cover songs was modeled and analyzed (Ortega, 2021). One of the most important results was the detection of time patterns in covers. The results mainly pinpointed two waves in which songs were covered by artists raised in specific periods. Thus, a first wave involved performers from the first half of the 20th century who mainly covered artists from the 1920s, when Jazz music was booming. Meanwhile, a second wave, with performers from 1950–2000, preferred covering songs by musicians that started their musical career in the 1960s, the decade when Pop/Rock music took off (Hall, 2014; Ortega, 2024).

However, these results also suggested that musicians beginning their careers in the 21st century were again changing their preferences, choosing to cover more contemporary musicians than 1960s old Pop/Rock glories. That being the case, we would be witnessing a third wave in popular music. This study will thoroughly analyze contemporary musicians’ behavior when covering songs, to discover whether a third wave is emerging and who is responsible for the change.

The identification of patterns between covers and artists’ generations requires quantitative methods that measure the evolution and frequency of covers during the 21^st century. Therefore, a cover is defined as a fact (interpretation of a song previously performed by other artist) without a specific meaning. Then, this study does not want to explore the particular motivation of each musician for covering a song, neither the specific cultural, social or economic contexts that frame a cover. These question only can be resolve after to identify trend patterns that permit us to detect a different use of covers, suggesting a new meaning.

Related research

Important studies have focused on the transformations of popular music in the 21st century. From a business point of view, VanDen Heuvel (2020) perceived that artists are using sales and streaming to attract concert goers, rather than sales of recorded music as in the 20th century. Tan et al. (2020) examined how the new digital environment is influencing the business ecosystem of popular music, K-Pop, in Korea. Meier (2017) also emphasized the power of digital media in promoting popular music artists. Another important aspect is the role of social networks in the emergence of new artists and genres (Cayari, 2011). Verboord and van Noord (2016) observed that artists on the periphery with a good fan base in social networks could improve their visibility, while Oh and Lee (2013) described the importance of YouTube in the emergence of K-Pop. Other authors have pointed out the influence of TV song contests promoting new talent (Kjus, 2017).

Cover songs in contemporary popular music have always been studied from a theoretical and cultural perspective. Some authors (Weinstein, 1998; Coyle, 2002; Plasketes, 2005) have reported a loss of originality in covers, with actions of appropriation in some cases. Others (Cusic, 2005; Solis, 2010), however, have defended the value of cover versions in transmitting new styles and ideas. In this context, most analyses of covers are case studies that focus on content and the consequences for popular music. For example, Doktor (2008) analyzed cross-gender adaptations of the song Satisfaction, while Chu and Leung (2013) studied the importance of remakes in the fall of Cantopop.

From a quantitative perspective, the work of Anderson (2015), who quantified the wave of ‘adaptations’ in French Pop, is worthy of mention. Ortega (2021) was the first to map the entire network of cover songs between artists, revealing two clear musical waves: Jazz in the 1920s and Pop/Rock in the 1960s. And more recently, this same author (Ortega, 2024) used this song type to explain the emergence of Rock & Roll in the 1950s United States. There is, however, a gap in the exploration of cover songs and their role in transforming Pop/Rock music today.

Objectives

The main objective of this study is to find evidence of a changing pattern in cover versions by 21^st-century artists. In this way, a quantitative analysis attempts to measure the frequency of covers of contemporary musicians to other generations, genres and individual artists with the aim of describing a change in the use of covers. To that end, we analyzed covers between generations to discover which new artists or genres are leading these changes. Several research questions were formulated:

• Is there a pattern of change in contemporary music related to covers? Do the contemporary pop/rock musicians prefer to cover coetaneous artists or they prefer to keep paying tribute to the music legends of the 1960s?
• Would these changes be associated to specific music genres such as Pop/Rock? How has the covering of songs evolved in the Pop/Rock sub-genres?
• Which musicians are attracting more covers? Is this change due to only one artist or is there a generational pattern?

Methods

Study design

To answer these research queries this study requires a quantitative approach that extracts and processes a large cover songs dataset and measures the amount of versions between artists, genres and generations. This methodology would allow us to detect patterns and behaviors that indicate changes in the covering of songs in the 21^st century. Due to this, at no time, this study attempts to resolve questions related to the meaning implicit of covers or to explore the motivations behind this action. These questions should be formulated using different approaches, such as surveys or case studies.

This research is then based on the analysis of quantitative data extracted and compiled from two web sources: SecondHandSongs and Allmusic. The first one was used to extract the connections between original and versioned songs. This site was selected because it is the most comprehensive source of cover songs. Allmusic was selected for extracting the music gender and starting decade of each artist. The reason for using this platform is because it is the only database that classifies artists by decade and music genre. A web crawler was built to sequentially extract information about performers and cover songs. This task was accomplished during January 2020. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, using R packages and Excel for the tables and graphs.

Data extraction

After the selection of the web sources, several scripts in WebQL were written to extract specific items from each source:

SecondHandSongs: The first step was to design a crawler to extract the internal ID of each performer. The platform assigns a sequential number, then numbers from 1 to 175000 were automatically generated (no more than 175000 artist codes were detected) and these codes were inserted in the url: https://secondhandsongs.com/artist/{artist code}/covers#nav-entity. This page shows the list of cover songs by each artist. Song titles, song codes, performers, performers code, artist, artist code, nationality, born date and dead date were extracted from this web page.143,707 artists were retrieved, a 99.9% of the total number of artists reported by the site in that date.

Allmusic: As with SecondHandSongs, sequential IDs are assigned to each performer. Codes from mn0000000001 to mn0003600000 were generated and added to the url: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/{artist code}. Information about the fields title, active, genre and styles were extracted from the section Artist details, resulting in 871k performer profiles.

Data matching

The next stage was to match the artists list of SecondHandSongs with the Allmusic’s one. However, this process was problematic because an artist’s name could be written differently in each platform. Thus, certain characters, such as ampersands and punctuation marks, were removed or replaced by letters (Iron & Wine by Iron and Wine, Eli “Paperboy” Reed by Eli Paperboy Reed). In other cases, different variations of names were normalized (B.R.M.C. became Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Tatu became t.A.T.u); synonymy between different artists (Nirvana, 1960s British pop band and Nirvana, 1990s American alternative band) was solved by adding a digit to the name. Finally, a total list of 106k artists (73.8% of the initial sample) and 855k (96.6% of the total songs indexed in the platform) cover and original songs were obtained.

For this analysis, 11,614 soloists and bands starting their music career in the 21st century were selected and 76,177 covers associated with these artists were identified, along with the name, genre and decade in which the covered artists initially appeared.

Data cleaning

In SecondHandSongs, each cover has an ID because a song could have a different title from the cover version. Translations and reworking of lyrics could cause slight variations between the original song and the cover (i.e., “That’s all right” by Arthur Crudup and “That’s Alright Mama” by Bob Dylan). Therefore, links between artists were established according to the number of times an artist covered another, regardless of song title. In the rare event that an artist covered the same song more than once, it was counted as a different version.

Medleys were removed because they include parts from more than one song and SecondHandSongs does not accurately identify which performer is the author of each part. Samples were also removed because they do not reuse an entire song.

SecondHandSongs usually assigns a generic unknown to traditional songs or when the original performer is unknown. These covers were removed because no connection can be created between artists. The platform also joins the codes of two or more artists when they perform together (e.g., Jennifer López and Ll Cool J, Holly Golightly and The White Stripes). These cases were duplicated and the same song was assigned to each artist.

Results

First, the distribution of artists by genre and sub-genre on the current music scene is important to identify which music genres are more popular in the 21st century. Figure 1 shows that over half the musicians belong to Pop/Rock (55.6%), while Alternative/Indie Rock (40.3%) and Pop (37.3%) are the most salient sub-genres within Pop/Rock. Other important genres today, but with considerably fewer artists, are Jazz (8.3%), Electronic (6.4%) and Country (5.1%). Therefore, Pop/Rock music is currently the most dominant music genre and both aspects, Rock (Alternative/Indie Rock) and Pop, are the principal sub-genres in similar proportion. The full dataset can be found under Underlying data (Ortega, 2022).

Figure 1. Sunburst showing the proportion of artists that started their career in the 21st century by musical genre and sub-genre.

Figure 2 depicts the proportion of artists’ covers according to decade and by the music genre of the performers. This graph illustrates differences between genres when they are covered by artists from other periods and pinpoints which artists from different decades exert most influence in each genre. Thus, for example, the artists most covered by Latin singers are those who started their career in the 1960s (32.6%), while performers raised in the 1950s (20.8%) are the biggest influence for Blues artists. The general pattern is that in most genres covers are mainly of artists from the 1960s, ranging from 33.6% of Children’s to 18.1% of Vocal music. This result can be interpreted in two ways. First, most genres are mainly influenced by artists from the 1960s, when Pop/Rock appeared. Second, 1960s music cuts across all genres: Reggae, Rhythm and Blues (R&B) and Country musicians also cover artists from the 1960s, many of them Pop/Rockers. This would suggest that 1960s music influences all kinds of music today.

Figure 2. Heat map with the percentage of covers of artists raised in different decades by music genre.

But not all genres follow this pattern. Some pre-Rock genres with a glorious past retain their connections with previous periods. Jazz, Blues and Vocal focus their covers on artists who emerged before the 1950s, a time when these genres flourished and hit their height of popularity. Thus, Jazz performers mainly cover songs from the 1920s (19.6%), Blues from the 1950s (20.8%), and Vocal music from the 1920s (16.1%) and 1930s (16.3%).

Also worthy of mention is the particular case of Stage & Screen, a genre with a high percentage of covers of artists from the 1990s (20.9%) and 2000s (33.7%). These outlier values stem from The Piano Tribute Players, a band specializing in adapting songs by successful artists to piano pieces for movie soundtracks. Interestingly, this example shows how today’s artists value the influence of their contemporaries, using them as recent classics. This issue will be explored further below.

As we have seen in Figure 1, more than half of current music is made by Pop/Rock musicians. However, Figure 2 indicates a more homogeneous distribution of covers throughout the decades. The graph shows that Pop/Rock performers only covered 22.9% of songs from 1960s artists, while other covers are distributed across other decades, such as the 1970s (15.8%) and 1980s (12.6%). This pattern could suggest that today’s Pop/Rockers are influenced by a wide range of musicians from different periods, not only by 1960s artists.

Figure 3 gives a detailed view of Pop/Rock covers, distinguishing those performed by generations from the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s. It illustrates how the cover preferences of different generations of musicians change according to when artists began their careers. Thus, for example, 13.1% of the cover songs made by the 1990s generation was of 1950s artists, while the 2010s generation covered 17.2% of songs by 1970s artists.

Figure 3. Bar graph with the percentages of Pop/Rock covers of artists from different decades by performers emerging in the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s.

In general, the graph shows that the 1960s remains the decade of reference for generations from the 1990s (29.2%) and 2000s (25.1%). However, artists from the 2010s have changed this pattern and, for the first time, prefer to cover more songs by contemporary artists from the 2000s (21.9%) than by 1960s oldies (16.1%). In fact, this change in trend already occurred in the 1990s when the following generations began covering more young artists than older ones. For example, 7.3% of 1990s performers were covered by their contemporaries, and 9.5% and 14.8% by the generations of the 2000s and 2010s, respectively. For musicians from the 1980s, 1970s and 1960s, the pattern is just the opposite. 1990s artists, for example, cover more songs by artists from those decades than from the 2000s and 2010s generations.

Figure 4 represents the evolution of Pop/Rock musicians’ genre preferences when they come to cover songs by artists from different generations. Thus, for example, the most covered artists from the 1960s are Pop (14.3%) and R&B (12.5%) performers. In the 1980s, however, the most covered artists are Alternative/Indie Rock (9.9%), Pop (9.7%) and Hard Rock (9.6%) musicians.

Figure 4. Trend graph with the percentage of covers of Pop/Rock performers of different generations grouped by music sub-genre.

The aim was to observe whether today’s Pop/Rock performers’ preference (Figure 3) for covering contemporary artists has some connection with music sub-genres. The graph clearly shows that Alternative/Indie Rock (16.1%), Pop (13.5%) and Dance (5.9%) versions proliferated in the 2010s. This increase is especially significant in Dance (Δ562%) and Pop (Δ40%) in the 2000s. Interestingly, Pop made by 1960s–1980s generations fell from favor, stalled in the 1980s–2000s and firmly bounced back in the 2010s. These results suggest that 21st-century Pop/Rock artists are covering more contemporary musicians due to a possible reevaluation of Pop and the emergence of Dance music.

Finally, Table 1 ranks the ten artists most covered by musicians from the 2000s and 2010s. This comparison clearly shows how 2000s performers’ preference for classic 1960s artists is being replaced that of 2010s artists for contemporary Pop/Rock singers. Thus, the most covered artists in the 2000s are key figures in the history of Pop/Rock such as The Beatles (3.1%), Bob Dylan (1.7%) and David Bowie (.8%), all raised in the 1960s. Also appreciable is the emergence of covers of more recent artists like Queen (.62%), Bruce Springsteen (.57%) or Pink Floyd (.41%), though they belong to the 1970s and 1980s.

Table 1. Top 10 ranking of the artists most covered by the 2000s and 2010s generations.

2000s				2010s
Name	Sub-genre	Covers	Covers %	Name	Sub-genre	Covers	Covers %
The Beatles	British Invasion	972	3.09%	Taylor Swift	Pop	208	1.58%
Bob Dylan	Folk/Country Rock	549	1.74%	The Beatles	British Invasion	160	1.22%
David Bowie	Soft Rock	237	0.75%	Justin Bieber	Dance	135	1.03%
Elvis Presley	Rock & Roll/Roots	230	0.73%	Ed Sheeran	Singer/Songwriter	129	0.98%
Queen	Hard Rock	194	0.62%	Adele	Pop	115	0.87%
Bruce Springsteen	Hard Rock	180	0.57%	Katy Perry	Dance	111	0.84%
Bing Crosby	Vocal	141	0.45%	Rihanna	Dance	101	0.77%
Pink Floyd	Hard Rock	128	0.41%	Maroon 5	Alternative/Indie Rock	91	0.69%
The Rolling Stones	Hard Rock	122	0.39%	David Bowie	Soft Rock	90	0.68%
Ramones	Punk/New Wave	121	0.38%	Bob Dylan	Folk/Country Rock	89	0.68%
TOTAL		31,481		TOTAL		13,167

However, the ranking of the most covered artists in the 2010s reveals a radical change in positions, with many more 21st-century artists now appearing. For the first time, The Beatles are no longer the most covered band since the 1960s. Taylor Swift (1.58%) has replaced them as the most covered artist by the 2010s generation. Other important contemporary performers such as Justin Bieber (1.03%), Ed Sheeran (.98%) and Adele (.87%) also figure among the most covered. This weighty presence of contemporary performers in the top positions demonstrates that this change is not caused by specific stars only. Rather there is a genuine generational shift in preferences for more covers of contemporaries than of 1960s Pop/Rock classics. The table also indicates that the most frequent sub-genres of these top covered artists are Pop (Taylor Swift, Adele) and Dance (Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Rihanna), which fits with the results shown in Figure 4.

Discussion

Quantitative analysis of cover songs between music artists offers the opportunity to track the influence and impact of musicians on their contemporaries and next-generation artists. A broader perspective, encompassing genres and the decades when performers began their careers, can provide insights into the evolution of popular contemporary music since the early 20th century. Concretely, more than half of all active performers of 21st-century music are Pop/Rock musicians. Since appearing in the 1960s, Pop/Rock music has grown considerably and is today the main music genre in popularity and releases (Resnikoff, 2016; Music & Copyright, 2018). One explanation for the continuity of this genre is that, since the 1960s, some of its most salient founders, such as The Beatles, Bob Dylan and Elvis Presley, have been covered by subsequent generations (Ortega, 2021) and are the main reference for current popular music. That today performers from many different genres such as Latin, Reggae, Rap or R&B are increasingly covering 1960s artists is a sign that Pop/Rock influence transcends genres.

However, results have shown that early Pop/Rock is starting to lose ground. Artists raised in the 2010s are tending to cover more songs by contemporary 21st-century artists than classic performers from the 1960s (Crane, 2005). This change in trend arises mainly from Pop and Dance music, the sub-genres most covered by Pop/Rock performers today. Unlike the 1960s Pop/Rock revolution, this new wave has not emerged from a new music genre attempting to replace old music traditions, but from an internal revolution or reevaluation of Pop music. Bolstered by Dance music, a transformation is giving rise to a new language and new inspirations. Headed by Taylor Swift, a new generation of Pop and Dance artists are becoming the main influence of current Pop/Rock music and perhaps of up-and-coming artists. Young artists raised in the 21st century like Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber and Ed Sheeran are the most covered artists in the 2010s, overtaking classic stars like The Beatles, Bob Dylan and David Bowie, who had led the ranking of the most covered artists since the 1960s. The reasons behind this generational replacement could be related to the aforementioned changes in popular music in the 21^st Century. The appearance of new media (i.e., YouTube, TikTok) is favouring the emergence of new and independent talents that cover songs from their contemporary idols (Cayari, 2011), acting as sounding boards amplifying today’s hits (Constandinides, 2019; Vizcaíno-Verdú & Contreras-Pulido, 2020). In the same way, TV song contests (i.e., Idol, The Voice) popularize new young artists, who mainly opt to cover songs by today’s idols faced with the absence of an own repertory (Kjus, 2017). In general, these findings suggest a re-signification of the cover song, displacing the negative conception of lack of originality or appropriation. In its place, versions should be considered as a way to define the performer’s own style, while she/he pays tribute to their musical origins. Thus, cover is now viewed more as a re-adaptation than a re-production (Magnus, 2022).

Nevertheless, these results should be considered cautiously, given the limitations in the data. The categorization of analyzed units might produce misclassifications and the creation of spurious groups. In our study, the Dance sub-genre is somewhat imprecise and many artists in this category could also belong to Pop (i.e., Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Rihanna). Therefore, this music genre classification should be seen in perspective.

A more important limitation is associated with the completeness of the data. Many databases often lack comprehensive data of the latest events, depicting an incomplete picture of recent years. That the number of covers in the 2010s is less than half of the 2000s could indicate that SecondHandSongs has yet to index all the cover songs from recent years. Although the number of covers has dropped since the 1950s (Ortega, 2021), new records could complete this picture in the future. Further studies are needed to confirm these results and uncover more clues about this generational change.

Conclusions

Several conclusions can be drawn from the results of this study. The findings reveal a clear change in pattern in contemporary popular music concerning covers. Pop/Rock artists raised in the 2010s are covering more songs by contemporary musicians than by the music legends of the 1960s. This change means that important 1960s figures like The Beatles and Bob Dylan are no longer the most covered artists for the first time since the 1960s. Dance and Pop sub-genres—the sub-genres most covered by the 2010s generation—are responsible for this transformation. This new wave is led by Taylor Swift and followed by emerging 21st-century figures like Justin Bieber, Ed Sheeran and Adele, who are the most covered by the 2010s generation. These results allow us to conclude that the quantitative study of cover songs between artists can be a good approach to understanding the evolution of musical influences.

Data availability statement

OSF: Is Taylor Swift leading a new Pop revolution? A cross-generation analysis of Pop/Rock cover songs. https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/9JRGC (Ortega, 2022).

This project contains the following underlying data:

• Cover_songs.csv [list of performers and cover songs]

Data are available under the terms of the Creative Commons Zero “No rights reserved” data waiver (CC0 1.0 Public domain dedication).

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Footnotes

1 https://web.archive.org/web/20200129161939/

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Version 3

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Competing interests

No competing interests were disclosed.

Grant information

This work was supported by the Spanish State Research Agency (AEI) under Grant reference CS02017-88354-R (INNOQUAL Project).
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.125676.3

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© 2024 Ortega JL. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Ortega JL. Is Taylor Swift leading a new Pop revolution? A cross-generation analysis of Pop/Rock cover songs [version 3; peer review: 1 approved with reservations, 3 not approved]. F1000Research 2024, 11:1273 (https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.125676.3)

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ApprovedThe paper is scientifically sound in its current form and only minor, if any, improvements are suggested

Approved with reservations A number of small changes, sometimes more significant revisions are required to address specific details and improve the papers academic merit.

Not approvedFundamental flaws in the paper seriously undermine the findings and conclusions

Version 3

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Reviewer Report 16 Sep 2024

Thomas Calkins, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

Not Approved

https://doi.org/10.5256/f1000research.162256.r253027

Before getting to my comments for the author, I want to make sure to mention that I went out of my way to avoid reading the comments of other reviewers. I realize that the journal is pursuing a kind of radical transparency which is wholly unlike the traditional review process, and that is noble, but I also do not want other opinions to color my own. I think there is still value in that. If what I say here aligns with the other reviewers, it probably means that those criticisms warrant attention.

Having gotten that out of the way, I think there is a germ of an interesting project here. I think the data, as flawed as it may be, can probably lead to some interesting findings even beyond what the author has produced here. Speaking as a sociologist of culture, we tend to accept that there is a degree of imprecision in cultural data. But my criticisms will also come from that perspective as well.

First, let us get the stylistic issues out of the way. There are some slightly unclear sentence structures, and I recommend that the author revises the manuscript with an eye for these. Some examples here include “changes promoted that traditional jazz”, “born date” (instead of date of birth), and then I think the author means “music genre” and not “music gender”. I do not think these sink the paper, and probably require very little work to fix throughout.

But I have some concerns about the framing of the paper, and the claims of causality, which we cannot really isolate with this kind of data. The author can speculate on these causes, but then it needs to be explained as such. Here is where I also criticize the title of the paper. The title of the paper is quite compelling, but it may not fully align with the content and focus of the research presented. I do not think this paper needs that to be read by scholars. I think the author can come up with something also clever and which aligns more with the scope of the paper and the findings. And, then there are some missed opportunities for a deeper discussion about why the findings matter and some other possible causes that I will mention below.

But let us go page by page.

Page 1. Here, I think the major issue is in the framing of the paper. Paragraph one is unclear and tends to signal to the reader that the story is about how Pop/Rock has overcome Jazz, and the role of technological change. But the data points to a different story: about musical choices made by artists and performers with regards to recording music. If that is the case, then the opening paragraph should go right to the heart of that matter. It’s currently quite scattershot. Also: I do think readers will be up in arms about the use of (any) genre schema, but I think it is important to justify the choice here with a source. Taking the schema as it is here, I think My Bloody Valentine and John Denver would both fall under Pop/Rock. This is the kind of thing that inspires the worst in readers, especially academics of music of many stripes. I think the author has to address it. Also: how do we know that there is an increase in tribute bands? Is there a citation for this?

I think identifying the intended audience here would be helpful. To me, I think it’s sociologists of culture that study things like charts and the music industry. Or, it is scholars of the creative industries that want to better understand how social and technological changes may shape the decision-making process of artists. The author cannot tell the reader much about the actual process of an individual artist (and that is ok), but about broader patterns. What I recommend here is Richard Peterson’s work on firm concentration and music charts. To some degree there is also a story about risk aversion and management not just by the “industry” (as we typically think of it), but maybe also artists themselves. Here, I think there is also possible parallels to the film industry, in terms of this move towards endless sequels. To me, that seems like a better way to open the paper.

In other words, tell us what a specific group of academics already know, what they do not know (yet), what this lack of knowledge costs them, and then the proposed research question/plan. Do this in the first two paragraphs, and then either condense all of the material on data into one paragraph or move it all to a section on “data”. As it reads right now, it sounds like the author wanted to work out the technical issues involved and explore the data, which is a perfectly reasonable way to begin quantitative research regardless of what our professors taught us in undergrad. But, then the author has to make a space for the reader, who might not care about the technical marvel of working out the data: they want to know how reading this paper will help them understand something better that they want to understand well.

Page 2. Here, I think the first paragraph has some confusing sentences with regards to time. In the second paragraph there is a phrasing of a sentence which suggests that the author will determine “who” is causing the change. I would shy away from making promises about causality. I found difficulty in understanding the following sentence: “[t]hese question only can be resolve after to identify trend patterns that permit us to detect a different use of covers, suggesting a new meaning”. Can the authors please rework this for clarity.

Going to my earlier comments, I think paragraph 5 is a much better place to start the framing of the paper. Why should readers care about cover songs? That is one of the major issues of this paper: it does not make the case to the reader why they should care. I think the admission to the reader that the author set out to find a changing pattern, in paragraph seven, is a misstep. It suggests that they are not approaching the project from a perspective where falsifiability is possible. I do not think that this is the author’s train of thought, but this phrase is going to draw the ire of scientific readers. I think there is also ample room to expand the “Related research” section, given the word count of the journal.

Page 3. I do see the author make concerted effort to let the reader know that this story is not about the “meaning” of these songs throughout the paper. I appreciate this, but it is probably best to just leave this for the limitations section of the conclusion. I appreciate how the author highlights the challenges of working with the data, as any social scientist working with large, user-generated data like this is likely familiar. It is imperfect, and at some point the researcher has to make tough decisions about how far they can go to improve the data. But, here I think the author can also take the opportunity to justify why this is still a useful if flawed dataset.

Page 4. I’m not entirely convinced that the paper needs the analysis around figure 1. I think a better use of the space might be to just summarize these findings in a couple of sentences, send the reader to a supplemental (with figure 1). I would suggest keeping the next set of results (heat map) and then expand the analysis using (for example) regression analysis (knowing full well that the modelling would not be terribly sophisticated given the few variables).

Page 5. Here, my only comment is, what the author might be detecting is a story of “lag”. What the author might have found is that the cultural dominance of the baby boomers, which cast a long shadow on subsequent generations (especially with regards to the valorization of their music), might have already waned. I think here there are also technological factors related to engagement and content creation. Maybe artists are using contemporary covers to drive up engagement from the generation that would know those songs (as opposed to a Simon and Garfunkel B-side from 50 or so years ago). The data can not show this, but these are things to consider further when speculating on possible causes. The author does some of this, but it is largely implied or under-theorized.

Page 6. Here, I think Figure 3 is useful, but Figure 4 less so, because of the scaling of the Y-axis. I think it communicates these major changes, when in actuality these are small in terms of percentages. For example, telling the reader that Dance had a 562% change may be mathematically correct, but then the reader sees the actual percentages in Figure 4, and the sense is that the findings are inflated by the author. I would suggest using a different strategy here that describes these shifting trends, but recognizes that the fluctuations happen within a few percentage points.

Page 7. There are some issues with regards to clarity here. I think the statement “[h]eaded by Taylor Swift, a new generation of Pop and Dance artists are becoming the main influence of current Pop/Rock music and perhaps of up-and-coming artists” tends to suggest to the reader that these artists are the star of this story, but actually the story is about all of the other musicians that have selected their music to cover. That is what is actually making up this data: a lot of unfamous people producing music. Here, I can also recommend including more “production of culture perspective” sociologists (Peterson and Anand, 2004).

Page 8. Again, getting back to the matter of Taylor Swift, I will reiterate that the story is really about these larger patterns of musicians, who have shifted towards interpreting the material of the only equivalent to a “Prince/Madonna/U2” level megastar that is currently relevant to younger cohorts. And so, I think it is important to tell the reader this instead of implying that Taylor Swift the person is causing x, y or z.

Is the work clearly and accurately presented and does it cite the current literature?

Partly
Is the study design appropriate and is the work technically sound?

Partly
Are sufficient details of methods and analysis provided to allow replication by others?

Yes
If applicable, is the statistical analysis and its interpretation appropriate?

Partly
Are all the source data underlying the results available to ensure full reproducibility?

Yes
Are the conclusions drawn adequately supported by the results?

Partly

References

1. Peterson R, Anand N: The Production of Culture Perspective. Annual Review of Sociology. 2004; 30 (1): 311-334 Publisher Full Text

Competing Interests: No competing interests were disclosed.

Reviewer Expertise: Sociology of culture (with a focus on music production and consumption), cultural and creative industries, quantitative methods, urban sociology.

I confirm that I have read this submission and believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to state that I do not consider it to be of an acceptable scientific standard, for reasons outlined above.

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Reviewer Report 21 Aug 2024

Finn Upham, RITMO Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Rhythm, Time and Motion,, University of Oslo,, Oslo, Norway

Not Approved

https://doi.org/10.5256/f1000research.162256.r293722

Using a distinct dataset, this paper shows an interesting generational shift in recording artists' choices of who to cover. Unfortunately there are substantial gaps in the information about cover song dataset employed and non-trivial inconsistencies between the data preparations described and the data published and reported graphically. After independent exploration of the current Secondhandsongs database, also I disagree with some of the interpretation of the datasets' properties and its relationship to the literature cited. As such, I can not recommend this paper for indexing in its current form. If the presentation of the dataset is improved, the publish data corrected, methods and results harmonised to describe all data reported on, and the discussion tempered to reflect the actual data and analysis performed, this could be a useful view into changes in covering practices.

My principle concern with this paper is the lack of information about the cover song dataset presented within the paper, what is in the Secondhandsongs database and what of it remains after cleaning and matching with AllMusic. The author's interpretation of results suggest they have not yet recognised the limitations of its generalizability.

Cover song performances are relatively common occurrences. Some genres of music do not require musicians to be composers or songwriters, but in those where fresh material is expected for each new recordings, cover song recordings can still be released as tribute to respected artists and performed as interesting material to interpret in more casual settings than the recording studio. Some musicians, make carriers out of covering recording artists in the genres of pop and rock, for live performance (wedding bands, tribute bands) or for niche renditions (a capella, instrumentals). Covering other artists' work is also extremely common practice for amateur and developing musicians, of great pedagogical value and also a reliable means of engaging new listeners, whether while busking on the street or via recordings releases on social media, or when performing on TV talent shows.

This paper presents the Secondhandsongs database as "the most complete list of covers (788,700), original songs (96,133) and artists (143,830)". In my exploration of the website, I agree that the database is of excellent quality in the metadata information capture per entry, and I wouldn't be surprised if its catalogue is greater in number than any except those tasked with managing composer royalties. However, that does not mean it is a good sampling of cover song uses or a reliable representation of "the current music scene".

From the information presented in this article, the reader doesn't get an idea on who constructed this data base, whether live performances or recordings of covers were being counted, or if there were any kind of performance quality constrain of what might be counted. Once the paper explained how the scrapped data was to be combined with the AllMusic database, I realised the analysis would only be of covers by register recording artists, but that still did not clarify between publication conditions (published recording release or any creditable performance/broadcast) or any biases in the database's construction. A dataset of this size is very informative, but that doesn't means it isn't systematically missing components of the cultural use of cover songs now or in the past.

With only a hyperlink to the website [broken in the online review interface, btw], I had to answer these question myself, and the results of that exploration challenge some of the results as reported. [Note: Websites are not reliable permanent objects. A sufficient description should be in the text and a link to an archived version for the website's FAQ would be more trustworthy long term, even if the FAQ and About page on this website is sorely lacking.]

In making an account on the website, I learned that the Secondhandsongs cover song database is a specifically a collection of:
A) Published cover recordings
B) That are listed in recording databases or retrievable from a select set of media distribution platforms
C) Submitted and reviewed by the website's users and editors.

As such the selection of covers described is wideranging and relatively open but nowhere near complete. Below I explain the implications of these conditions on what this cover song database can be expected to represent.

PERFORMANCE CONTEXT

An extremely important restriction that is not articulated in the paper nor terribly clearly in the website is that Secondhandsongs only catalogues covers that are "Published Recordings". Live performances are not counted. This restriction has some funny consequences on the "covers" of pre-recording era music, but even for songs that have an existent original recording, this limitation cuts out whole categories of cover song performances. From a musicians perspective, this is a major limit for two reasons: effort and money. The amount of music an artist releases as a recording is usually a polished fraction of what they perform live (or livestream) and even less of what they play for practice. This effort threshold may make it more likely that these covers are particularly meaningful or valuable to the covering artist but those are far from the only factor deciding what to record and release. The other issue is that published recordings (are supposed to) involve licensing, a more complex legal and financial demand on the covering artist than the royalties that might be due from playing the same cover live. By restricting its coverage to published recordings (on some registered platforms), Seacondhandsongs is taking advantage of music licensing information in the metadata of cover recordings to corroborate user submitted information. Considering the effort that goes into managing composer rights on the supporting databases, this is a power quality control per entry, but it also excludes real cover performance that aren't imbedded in that legal infrastructure.

Cover performances without recordings on (select license managing) media platforms can be submitted if there is a corresponding recording industry catalog number, i.e. if the cover was released on a music recording album published by a label that participated in the US music industry's commercial infrastructure. This identifier again allows metadata from other online databases to encourage consistency in this user-submitted database, but at the cost of excluding live covers of old and music outside of this historically problematic industry.

RECORDING PLATFORM CONSTRAINTS

The Secondhandsongs cover song database has hard restrictions on which cover recordings can be included based on where they are posted online. The submission process currently propritises video (Youtube), but also accepts audio sources like Spotify, Apple Music, and Bandcamp. This restriction is a substantial constrain as cover songs have been an extremely popular on excluded audio platforms like SoundCloud, and (non-US owned) video platforms like Tik Tok.

To give some scale to this oversight: The song Winter Bear by V (of BTS) was originally published on SoundCloud and covered at least 400 times on that platform (and at least dozens if not hundreds of times more on Youtube.) Were these cover recordings submittable, 400 covers would put this obscure song in to the top 300 most covered songs in the current Secondhandsong database. This is not because the song is so popular, but the current submission criteria is cutting out distinctly active spaces for the sharing of cover recordings.

One reason Soundcloud has so many covers is its spotty copyright oversight (currently and previously). This makes it a convenient platform for amateur musicians who aren't in a position to manage the legal complexity or costs of licensing when the recordings won't generate revenue. This also makes this platform a favourite for genres of music that use a lot of sampling and engage with copy righted material is ways that current licensing systems disadvantage (IMO). While online platforms rise and fall in prominence, Soundcloud is still a favourite for sharing DJ sets, many shades of EDM, fresh beats, and rap. (example discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/dubstep/comments/1cxogjt/lets_just_all_collectively_agree_that_soundcloud/)

The exclusion of Soundcloud may be for legal and technical reasons, but it is a substantial systematic exclusion that affects some genres of music and certain types of artists' recorded covers.

USER SUBMISSION BIAS

Besides these structural restrictions of what covers can make it into the Secondhandsong dataset, there are also noticeable biases in what types of covers the websites users choose to submit. It only takes a few dives to see surprising and consequential gaps in this databases coverage.

For example, covers for and by the globally renown South Korean group BTS. Absent is Born Singer, their cover of J Cole's Born Sinner republished in their global chart topping compilation album Proof (2022). Also missing is Butter covered by Lizzo on the BBC Live Lounge (with 1.8 million views on YouTube). By the stature of all of these artists, it would be reasonable to expect these instances to be present, but somehow they are not. There is, however, an entry for the a cappella cover of Butter by (white) youtuber duo Sam Tsui & Casey Breve (with 105 440 views) and BTS's cover of (white British) Coldplay's Fix You on MTV Unplugged.

Scrolling through the registered covers of songs by Taylor swift, it looks like a substantial amount of covers included here (vs available on YouTube) are by cover-music artists: musicians who primarily publish cover versions of songs. The cultural implications of coverings by such creators is different from that of original musicians occasionally performing works by other artists that are meaningful or influential to them. What are the repertoire priorities of wedding bands vs indie singer-songwriters vs dedicated tribute bands? Publication platforms like YouTube strongly reward artists that catch the current interest with a cover of a song that is popular right now, and the Secondhandsongs database may be similarly used as another way of making a cover visible to interested listeners.

This patchiness in cover submission suggests the database has limited reach and visibility. Kpop fans are famously thorough and active in bring their idols' recognition online, but BTS's ARMY has not found this website. Coverage instead favours those with a chance to be in the know: those artists and properties for whom cover song recordings are of a major interest, or fans thereof. (The coverage Glee (TV) is extensive.) By virtue of being user-constructed, this database will miss a lot of high profile artists, even when their occasional cover recordings are beloved.

Another demonstration of inconsistent coverage is the spotty inclusion of covers produced for TV broadcast. The database reports 2944 entries explicitly tagged as being from TV talent shows, which is fewer than were performed over the 17 season of American idol. Rather that catalogue a whole show, the TV talent show entries in the Secondhandsong database are often from highlight compilation albums, 12 or more tracks selected to reflect a season. But even with this limited depth, the coverage internationally of these cover performances is abysmal. The X Factor [GB] only has entries from the last three of 16 seasons of covers, while X Factor [Fi] only has entries from 2010 when the program ran for another 8 years, and there are no apparent entries from the 9 seasons of the Estonian version of the Idol/Superstar franchise, Eesti otsib superstaari. Similar incompleteness is reflected in the apparent absence of covers from shows like The Hidden Singer (South Korea and others) and Our song (China).

This geographic/linguistic bias is evident in the statistics reported by the site itself, publishing a list of artists included by country. [https://secondhandsongs.com/statistics/stats_country_artists] At present, the database's Artists by Country list shows a strong Anglo-Western bias, with 80 K artists from the US and 20 K from the UK while only capturing 3191 from Japan, the second largest music market in the world (IFPI Global Music Report, 2011-2024). That is less than Norway's 3493 artists in the database. Looking south, 684 total from South Africa (the largest music market in Africa) and only 134 from India, suggesting a strong cultural constraint related to industry and platform use differences, as well as the limited visibility of this website site.

The above demonstrates how the Secondhandsongs database has strong geo-linguistic biases, which honestly is to be expected of an english language user-generated database that is not that well known.

QUALITY

Lastly, this database does not seem to have any specific official quality restrictions but it looks to have very few poor performances featured. Presumably there are some rules, but they are not easily assessed from the public documentation. However, as the amount of amateur covers available on YouTube is endless and the entries I can find look to be almost all of profession quality, there is either a user-culture-defined or editor-enforced quality constraint on what gets entered. Either way, I think it's fair to consider this database to be mostly a collection of professional musician recordings, rather than a view into the "amateur" song covers that are more commonly published (if not as often consumed) online.

With this as context, here are some implications for this paper:

First and foremost, the Secondhandsong database must reported as being a user-submitted and reviewed database of published cover recordings released commercially and/on a select set of online streaming platforms. This is not all kinds of covers but a specific type of covers by structure and a particular subset of music according to user-submission bias.

Other factual features of the database:
- This English language website has been operating since 2004 and has been registering between 7000 and 15 000 cover song performances a month since 2016 (outlier peaks in 2021).
https://secondhandsongs.com/statistics/stats_performances_over_time
- The user base is predominantly Millennial and Gen X, with no reporting on nationality.
https://secondhandsongs.com/statistics/stats_users_born
- The database as a demonstrable cultural bias in its coverage https://secondhandsongs.com/statistics/stats_country_artists

The initial database is a sampling of song covers that gives a view into professionally released cover songs mostly within the Anglo commercial music market, with some additional biases for genre by their relationship to specific music distribution platforms and the recording industry itself. This paper's analysis of the Secondhandsong database further narrows the covers to only those by artists within the Allmusic database, i.e. registered artists with recordings released with a Music Label (according to current Xperi submission form). That presumably takes out some of the smaller artists' self-submitted YouTube covers and widens the gap between this dataset and the contemporary online cover song landscape with its plethora of amateur, emerging, and non-anglophone artists.

Note: "Allmusic is a comprehensive music web database created in 1994 and owned by TiVo Corporation." Allmusic is a comprehensive database of music RECORDINGS published by MUSIC LABELS. That's not all recorded music, not all music available online, and certainly not all music. Also TiVo is now called Xperi.

The real composition of the database used for analysis is somewhat in conflict with the literature used in the introduction and related research because many of those instances of cover songs used in social media and in the changing music industry are systematically outside of this dataset's coverage. It has almost no record of Cantopop (today there are only 83/279/148 artists from China/Hong Kong/Taiwan, and that's before many are filtering out by AllMusic's limited scope), skips all instances of covers performed live or on livestream (the industry's new focus and frontier), and has demonstrably terrible coverage of TV talent shows. This dataset does not match the cultural context built with the supporting literature.

A more useful introductions would accurately description of what the database is, explain what the researcher believes this database can say of the contemporary music landscape, and present fewer references to music and circumstances outside of the data's scope of generalisability. It's OK to use some as arguments that cover songs are common and popular today, but the fact that these are not instances included in the database is important to acknowledge.

On the Objective:
Even with the caveats on the database, I think it's fair to use this dataset to try to answer the questions presented. A generational change in covering choices should measurable in the covers that make it into this database, even if the database is not a thorough representation of how covers performed by artists today.

On to the Methodology:

The quantitative work performed is clever, particularly the choice to focus on the artist attributes rather than song details. The description of matching information from Allmusic and the strategies for cleaning up those connections seems reasonable for this scale of dataset and sufficient for this effort between corpus studies and big data.

Unfortunately, the "Underlying dataset" available in the OSF repo doesn't include AllMusic performer IDs, the associated genres, or any other information reportedly mapped from AllMusic. Considering how much researcher discretion went into the construction of that mapping and how volatile genre classifications are generally, this is a pretty big chunk of relevant information to exclude. [Also the researcher should clean up the html tags, they are difficult to handle in a csv file. Maybe there was something wrong with the file output, but the csv file should be replaced to have at least the mn codes and preferably all the information that survived any messaging.]

One point on terminology: "Start of their career" and "raised in X decade" mean different things in colloquial English (north American and European). When talking about human beings, the time in which they were "raised" refers to their childhood and teenage years, usually before artists' entrance into the music industry. An industry term that might be more useful is "debut". Whether talking of debuting decade or debut albums, this term would make some of the analysis and discussion easier to follow.

Within the topic of the data analysis and preparations, I think it would be fair to exclude some of the more poorly defined genres from the information reported. These genre categories within these datasets are designed for a different purpose than cultural analysis. They are functional rather than critical, and if some can be recognised as unreliable or confusing at the data cleaning stage, that is a good reason to cut them out of the analysis reporting. The obvious issue here is Stage & screen, which is an outlier that is dominated by a single artist (group?) with a novel and odd covering condition that is quite different from the way performing music artists (as opposed to film music producers) engage with popular culture. This instance of covering could be in the discussion but doesn't need to complicate the results.

On the Results:

This opens with the claim of describing "the current music scene". As from all the above, I feel it is extremely important to report instead that this first figure is a description of the dataset, reporting on the distribution of genres and subgenres of INCLUDED covering artists that debuted after 2000. (Allmusic allows multiple subgenres, were all counted or only the first per entry?) This dataset is limited for many reasons already discussed and the figure should be referred and labeled in a way allows a reader to understand how subsequent trends should be interpreted, given the obvious biases in what is captured. For example, the categories of R&B/Hip Hop (Rap under this system) have been comparable to the streaming popularity of the combined Pop/Rock in the US for the last several years (ex: https://www.statista.com/chart/30580/market-volume-share-of-most-popular-music-genres-in-the-us/). And yet it is a much smaller proportion of this data sets. This may be in part because of the researcher choice to excludes sampling, or other ways that cover-like behaviours within the genre of rap are poorly caught and classified by the Secondhandsoung structure.

Alt caption Figure 1: Sunburst showing the assigned (exclusive) genres and subgenres of covering and covered 21st c. debuted artists in the evaluated dataset

Figure 2 is labeled in a way that is ambiguous. If I understand correctly, this figure describes the distribution of covered artists debut decades per covering-artists' genre. Each row is the set of covers released by 21st C cover artists identified as belong to this genre in AllMusic, and the distribution shows the relative prominence of the debuting decade for the original artists of the covered songs. As such, classical music's distribution shouldn't sum to more than 25% because most of that repertoire premiered before these decades, but because of how badly SecondHandSongs handles pieces that existed before audio recording technology, its instead a blurry picture of which surviving recordings have been chosen as an earliest representatives.

It would be interesting to see the plot of "covered decade" to be compared to a similar plot organised by the date of covered song's release. The information is available. Is the stickiness of the 1960s because of the artists that broke out in this time or is it really always going back to the music released in this era? The discussion could make more explicit connections to the changing dissemination technologies over the years.

Speaking of different cover uses, it is very weird to read a discussion of jazz, vocal (often meaning vocal jazz) and blues calling back to the 1920-1950s without ever acknowledging that songs from these years form the majority of the "standards" still used by performers today. These more improvisatory performance styles have long worked off of a narrow canon. The percentage of original jazz music songs has always been small, relative to the newer genres of pop and rock that insist every single be new material. Jazz artists often making names on their renditions more than their songwriting. Same goes with holiday music, and the ambiguity of traditional pieces with origins that predate the artists that first performed them in the data set.

Terminology: "Thus, Jazz performers mainly cover songs from the 1920s (19.6%)" the word "mainly" suggests a majority of covered songs come from the 1920, but these number say this is only the most popular category (plurality). The distribution for jazz is so smooth in those early decades that "mainly" is doubly misleading.

"As we have seen in Figure 1, more than half of current music is made by Pop/Rock musicians." No. More than half of the covers in this dataset fall into AllMusic's exceptionally inclusive category of Pop/Rock. Many other genre classifications do not tuck heavy metal in beside Singer/songwriter.

Figure 3 is difficult to interpret. The earlier definition of artists included in this analysis specified performers debuting in the 21st C. Figure 3 reports a distribution for artists debuting in the 1990's, i.e. the end of the 20th Century. What is the actual cut off date for the covering artists included? "For this analysis, 11,614 soloists and bands starting their music career in the 21st century were selected and 76,177 covers associated with these artists were identified, along with the name, genre and decade in which the covered artists initially appeared." This suggests that the inclusion criteria was artists with an "Active" field on AllMusic starting with either 2000s, or 2010s, or 2020s for debut albums published right before 2021. If that's not true, please explain. These three distributions make a convincing case for a change in artist behaviour and it's the main point of the paper, but this figure shouldn't be a product of the data as described so far.

At this point, Figure 4 looks to be highlighting flaws in the dataset rather than helping the analysis. What is Alternative/Indie rock in the 1960's? Heavy metal from the 60's also feels like an edge case as it popped up right at the end of that decade. It's consistent with the stated classification scheme by artist debut rather than covered songs original release date, but it looks kind of wrong. The change from the 2000s to 2010s is very interesting, as are the suggests trajectories from the 1960s to 1990s but I can't help but wonder how much this has to do with biased genre and artist coverage in the original SecondHandSongs collection.

Table 4 would be stronger if it included data of top covered artists from the 1990s. (In case that data is actually kicking around somewhere.) Also would be helpful to have the assigned debut decades and genres for the covered artists showing on this chart, as these individual cases will be good reminders to the reader of what these really means.

Discussion

"Concretely, more than half of all active performers of 21st-century music are Pop/Rock musicians. " No, again, by construction this dataset can't be trusted to proportionally reflect the music industry, US, Anglo western, or global. Also the references cited do not treat Pop and Rock together as a single genre category. AllMusic really is a bit weird for going against industry genre practices and lumping them together.

"That today performers from many different genres such as Latin, Reggae, Rap or R&B are increasingly covering 1960s artists is a sign that Pop/Rock influence transcends genres." To make this claim, why not show the actual distribution of pop/rock artists covered from the 1960s? Figure 2 can only be used to infer this relationship with the assumption because of the broadness of the pop/rock genre. The claim may be true but it isn't supported by results as far as I can interpret.

Overall, the discussion needs to be reframed to respect the limitations of the dataset. While a change in covering behaviour is visible in these measurements, the relationship between these counts and the broader music scene must be explained with care. Patterns within a genre in this uneven sample of cover music can be informative, with the caveat that less represented genres may not have the same definition and biases in the sample may obscure or amplify some categories of covering artists. Instead of claiming these results express emerging social media and TV talent show attention to contemporary artists, explain how these trends may be related despite how these forms of covers are not (well) represented in the dataset.

Is the work clearly and accurately presented and does it cite the current literature?

Partly
Is the study design appropriate and is the work technically sound?

Partly
Are sufficient details of methods and analysis provided to allow replication by others?

Partly
If applicable, is the statistical analysis and its interpretation appropriate?

Yes
Are all the source data underlying the results available to ensure full reproducibility?

No
Are the conclusions drawn adequately supported by the results?

Partly

Competing Interests: No competing interests were disclosed.

Reviewer Expertise: Music technology, Music Psychology, Music theory, Mathematics, Data science

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VERSION 2

PUBLISHED 27 Jan 2023

Revised

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Reviewer Report 18 Dec 2023

Chinyere Celestina Esimone, Department of Music, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Anambra, Nigeria

Approved with Reservations

https://doi.org/10.5256/f1000research.143487.r225921

The Title of the work is very captivating and perfect. The data collection method was specified and explained, and the analysis was done accurately.
However, the Abstract need to be reconstructed. A brief explanation of the Topic should be seen before the method of Data Collection and Analysis and Result is mentioned. That is lacking.
There was no explanation of the keywords mentioned. The literature review was poorly incorporated into the Data explanations. This is not correct for a paper to be widely viewed. The entire work was not justified, making it look unserious and unacademic.

Is the work clearly and accurately presented and does it cite the current literature?

Partly
Is the study design appropriate and is the work technically sound?

Partly
Are sufficient details of methods and analysis provided to allow replication by others?

Yes
If applicable, is the statistical analysis and its interpretation appropriate?

Yes
Are all the source data underlying the results available to ensure full reproducibility?

Yes
Are the conclusions drawn adequately supported by the results?

Yes

Competing Interests: No competing interests were disclosed.

Reviewer Expertise: Music Pedagogy, Music in Early Childhood Education, Youths in/and Music, and general music.

I confirm that I have read this submission and believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard, however I have significant reservations, as outlined above.

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Author Response 13 Apr 2024

José Luis Ortega, Institute for Advanced Social Studies, Camposanto de los Mártires,, 7 14004, Spain

13 Apr 2024

Author Response

Thank you so much for your helpful and positive comments, which let me to improve the paper.

The Title of the work is very captivating and perfect. The data ... Continue reading Thank you so much for your helpful and positive comments, which let me to improve the paper.

The Title of the work is very captivating and perfect. The data collection method was specified and explained, and the analysis was done accurately.
However, the Abstract need to be reconstructed. A brief explanation of the Topic should be seen before the method of Data Collection and Analysis and Result is mentioned. That is lacking.
Abstract has been modified. I have included a couple of lines about the background of the study, justifying why cover songs analysis would be a suitable way to observe changes in the preferences of contemporary musicians.
In addition, Introduction has been enlarged with two paragraphs to give context to the study. The first one enumerates some of the most important changes in the 21^st Century Pop/Rock music; and the second one describes the new uses of cover songs, which is favoring a new appreciation.

There was no explanation of the keywords mentioned. The literature review was poorly incorporated into the Data explanations. This is not correct for a paper to be widely viewed. The entire work was not justified, making it look unserious and unacademic.
The discussion of the results has been enhanced with more reasons about the possible causes that would explain that contemporary musicians prefer cover today songs. The bibliographic references have been almost duplicated to describe the current musical panorama and its transformations. This bibliography is also used to support the discussion about the current meaning of cover songs regarding today’s musical creation.
Thank you so much for your helpful and positive comments, which let me to improve the paper.

The Title of the work is very captivating and perfect. The data collection method was specified and explained, and the analysis was done accurately.
However, the Abstract need to be reconstructed. A brief explanation of the Topic should be seen before the method of Data Collection and Analysis and Result is mentioned. That is lacking.
Abstract has been modified. I have included a couple of lines about the background of the study, justifying why cover songs analysis would be a suitable way to observe changes in the preferences of contemporary musicians.
In addition, Introduction has been enlarged with two paragraphs to give context to the study. The first one enumerates some of the most important changes in the 21^st Century Pop/Rock music; and the second one describes the new uses of cover songs, which is favoring a new appreciation.

There was no explanation of the keywords mentioned. The literature review was poorly incorporated into the Data explanations. This is not correct for a paper to be widely viewed. The entire work was not justified, making it look unserious and unacademic.
The discussion of the results has been enhanced with more reasons about the possible causes that would explain that contemporary musicians prefer cover today songs. The bibliographic references have been almost duplicated to describe the current musical panorama and its transformations. This bibliography is also used to support the discussion about the current meaning of cover songs regarding today’s musical creation.
Competing Interests: No competing interests were disclosed. Close
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COMMENTS ON THIS REPORT

Author Response 13 Apr 2024

José Luis Ortega, Institute for Advanced Social Studies, Camposanto de los Mártires,, 7 14004, Spain

13 Apr 2024

Author Response

Thank you so much for your helpful and positive comments, which let me to improve the paper.

The Title of the work is very captivating and perfect. The data ... Continue reading Thank you so much for your helpful and positive comments, which let me to improve the paper.

The Title of the work is very captivating and perfect. The data collection method was specified and explained, and the analysis was done accurately.
However, the Abstract need to be reconstructed. A brief explanation of the Topic should be seen before the method of Data Collection and Analysis and Result is mentioned. That is lacking.
Abstract has been modified. I have included a couple of lines about the background of the study, justifying why cover songs analysis would be a suitable way to observe changes in the preferences of contemporary musicians.
In addition, Introduction has been enlarged with two paragraphs to give context to the study. The first one enumerates some of the most important changes in the 21^st Century Pop/Rock music; and the second one describes the new uses of cover songs, which is favoring a new appreciation.

There was no explanation of the keywords mentioned. The literature review was poorly incorporated into the Data explanations. This is not correct for a paper to be widely viewed. The entire work was not justified, making it look unserious and unacademic.
The discussion of the results has been enhanced with more reasons about the possible causes that would explain that contemporary musicians prefer cover today songs. The bibliographic references have been almost duplicated to describe the current musical panorama and its transformations. This bibliography is also used to support the discussion about the current meaning of cover songs regarding today’s musical creation.
Thank you so much for your helpful and positive comments, which let me to improve the paper.

The Title of the work is very captivating and perfect. The data collection method was specified and explained, and the analysis was done accurately.
However, the Abstract need to be reconstructed. A brief explanation of the Topic should be seen before the method of Data Collection and Analysis and Result is mentioned. That is lacking.
Abstract has been modified. I have included a couple of lines about the background of the study, justifying why cover songs analysis would be a suitable way to observe changes in the preferences of contemporary musicians.
In addition, Introduction has been enlarged with two paragraphs to give context to the study. The first one enumerates some of the most important changes in the 21^st Century Pop/Rock music; and the second one describes the new uses of cover songs, which is favoring a new appreciation.

There was no explanation of the keywords mentioned. The literature review was poorly incorporated into the Data explanations. This is not correct for a paper to be widely viewed. The entire work was not justified, making it look unserious and unacademic.
The discussion of the results has been enhanced with more reasons about the possible causes that would explain that contemporary musicians prefer cover today songs. The bibliographic references have been almost duplicated to describe the current musical panorama and its transformations. This bibliography is also used to support the discussion about the current meaning of cover songs regarding today’s musical creation.
Competing Interests: No competing interests were disclosed. Close
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Reviewer Report 22 Sep 2023

Tim Wall, Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research, Birmingham City University, Birmingham, UK

Ben Torrens, Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research, Birmingham City University, Birmingham, UK

Not Approved

https://doi.org/10.5256/f1000research.143487.r161648

In its present form, this article should not be indexed because it does not demonstrate sufficient understanding of the object of study, the existing work in the field and the implications of applying these methods to the selected data sets.

The response suggests the author remains interested in contributing to the field of popular music studies by offering insights from data analysis. This is an area of great potential. However, the response suggests this potential is not clearly understood nor its methodological implications accepted.

There has been a redrafting of some early sections in the resubmission, but some of the fundamental issues have not been addressed. While the research questions are a little clearer, the changes have not addressed the issues raised in the review about objectives and method. In its present form, the article does point to some interesting patterns. However, the limits of these are not identified and discussed, and the author goes beyond an identification of patterns and offers conclusions which cannot be drawn.

The section on related research should set out the contributions to the field on which this new study will build and the issues academics in the field have been tackling. This section does not currently do this. While the studies cited are about ‘covering’, this does not provide the foundation required.

Stating that something is a fact does not make it something true of the world. More importantly, if the research and the article are to make a contribution to the field of popular music studies, such an empiricist view of what is a ‘cover’ will need to be outlined and the value of taking an ahistorical definition not used by anyone in the field will have to be explained. This would constitute a challenge to all major work in the field in the last fifty years, and this published work would need citing and critiquing.

The objectives make apriori assumptions about earlier patterns of music making, using models of popular music epoch and genre which have been extensively critiqued. While these assumptions are commonplace in vernacular discussion about music, they do not represent a strong foundation for quantitative studies. These assumptions are expressed as questions that are not rooted in larger issues of debate in the field or the culture under examination. It is now hard not to conclude that the motivation for the research is based entirely on a vernacular hypothesis.

The author’s response takes the position that the original review did not understand the research and the original article. This is not the case. The review was not based upon a “misunderstanding between (about the difference between?) fact and meaning”. As the review made plain, ‘cover’ is a highly variable term both synchronically and diachronically. The understanding of this variability and these changes have been explored extensively in the literature and research on popular music practices. Research that seeks to contribute to this field must work within a recognition of this extant research and, where necessary, show in what way it is faulty.

Unless there is a clear sense of what is meant by a 'cover', then assigning recordings to the category of a 'cover' is not consistent across music cultures and over time. Conflating the cultural practice of ‘covering’ with other practices which seem superficially similar is not an effective foundation for the stated objectives. A 'cover' is not in any simple terms ‘recording musical material composed by someone other than the performer’. Musicians did not ‘cover’ the songs of others when they recorded musical material composed by someone other than themselves before ‘covering’ became a musical practice. This is the insight provided even by the one historically-focused source cited by the author.

When the category of things being compared over time is variable, it is not possible to draw conclusions about change over time. This is a question of core category definition, and not an issue imported from qualitative research. This is a central issue for any quantitative study. Asserting that an approach is scientific does not make it good science.

Specifically, in relation to quantitative analysis, facts are the products of our assumptions and analytical frameworks. Asserting that any act of performing music written by others is a ‘cover’ is to use an ideological category which emerged in one specific area of music production culture, at a very specific time, and generalise it to all synchronic music cultures and to apply it retrospectively to all past cultures.

If the author seeks to address a different academic audience, the present research, although severely limited in conception, could be used to test the proposition that quantitative studies can reveal useful patterns, or to discuss the challenges of applying this methodology in this area, or the research could be reconsidered using better definition of the coding categories. At the moment, the research does not reveal what it claims to reveal. Ironically, given the author’s response, this is because they confuse facts with causation.

Competing Interests: No competing interests were disclosed.

Reviewer Expertise: Tim Wall is Professor of Radio and Popular Music Studies and Ben Torrens is a researcher in popular music production cultures.

We confirm that we have read this submission and believe that we have an appropriate level of expertise to state that we do not consider it to be of an acceptable scientific standard, for reasons outlined above.

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VERSION 1

PUBLISHED 08 Nov 2022

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113

Reviewer Report 30 Nov 2022

Tim Wall, Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research, Birmingham City University, Birmingham, UK

Ben Torrens, Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research, Birmingham City University, Birmingham, UK

Not Approved

https://doi.org/10.5256/f1000research.138009.r155272

The research makes a contribution to quantitative data retrieval and analysis of popular music, which are relatively neglected, and the use of recent and now readily-available datasets is very welcome. The wider implementation of approaches like this has real value for rethinking the assumptions of existing qualitative research done in the field, and for unearthing new findings.

There are, though, some fundamental problems with clarity of research question, the concept of a cover, and models of history and generation used in the research.

The explicit questions provided seek answers to patterns which are not defined. The first question seems to assume only who was covered, by whom and when are important. The second attributes agency to an undefined concept of genre as a determining force. Finally, the articulation of the third question suggests musicians whose songs attract covers somehow have agency in determining the cover activities of other musicians. It isn’t clear that the methods proposed can answer these sorts of questions, even if they were articulated with less ambiguity. Ultimately, this leads the author to seem to ascribe the trend they have identified in the data, solely to artist intention.

There is, though, a set of potentially interesting methodological questions that could be posed through such research about the degree to which we can know things through such research and the extent of the limitations of these approaches. Such a study would be particularly valuable given the rarity of these sorts of approach.

To be more successful in revealing important aspects of covering as a popular music practice, we need a clear definition of what we mean by a cover. The research does not take full advantage of the existing literature (which is effectively cited) on covers, or on the history of popular music in order to create a specific activity.

This links to the need for a fuller grasp of a history of popular music practices. Specifically, the idea of a cover is a relatively new one which emerged at a point in the 1960s in which artists increasingly recorded songs they had themselves written, and the songs became indelibly linked to their performance by the ‘original’ artist. The widespread split between artist and repertoire role in the preceding decades meant that all artists shared a wide repertoire of songs written by professional songwriters. Performing and recording a song that had previously been recorded by another group or artist, therefore, was not always considered as ‘a cover’ in the ‘pop/rock’ world, as the author implies. Nor do similar practices carry the same connotations in different popular music cultures, for example in jazz, where the common repertoire is established as a canon of standards.

A more historical sense of popular music would also allow for a more developed idea of artist generation and consideration of any other important factors, like strategic input of music industry organisation, practices and key figures, or significant cultural phenomena resonating with the cover version like Radio 1’s Live Lounge in the UK or ‘Carpool Karaoke’ in the US.

Is the work clearly and accurately presented and does it cite the current literature?

Partly
Is the study design appropriate and is the work technically sound?

No
Are sufficient details of methods and analysis provided to allow replication by others?

Partly
If applicable, is the statistical analysis and its interpretation appropriate?

No
Are all the source data underlying the results available to ensure full reproducibility?

Yes
Are the conclusions drawn adequately supported by the results?

No

Competing Interests: No competing interests were disclosed.

Reviewer Expertise: Tim Wall is Professor of Radio and Popular Music Studies and Ben Torrens is a researcher in popular music production cultures.

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Author Response 31 Jan 2023

José Luis Ortega, Institute for Advanced Social Studies, Camposanto de los Mártires,, 7 14004, Spain

31 Jan 2023

Author Response

This review starts from a misunderstanding between fact and meaning. A cover is a fact and its definition is presented in the Introduction: “A cover is then a version of ... Continue reading This review starts from a misunderstanding between fact and meaning. A cover is a fact and its definition is presented in the Introduction: “A cover is then a version of the same song performed, recorded or released by subsequent artists.” However, the meaning or idea of cover would change throughout time, and it depends on the sociological, cultural and historical context. The problem here is that you never would know the meaning if you do not previously analyze the fact. That is, it is impossible to know why musicians cover songs if you do not describe patterns and trends that point to changes in the use of covers. For example, the number of covers increases in the period 1900-1950, but from 1960s this practice went down until 2000s. Why? Because there was a change in the meaning. In the 1920s, during the jazz era, cover could be associated with an instrumental use for developing technical skills (standards). But from 1960s, pop/rock emerged and the meaning changed (Ortega, 2021). Now, covers would be a sign of lack of originality and could only be used for tribute.

An example of this confusion between fact and meaning is the following comment: “Specifically, the idea of a cover is a relatively new one which emerged at a point in the 1960s in which artists increasingly recorded songs they had themselves written, and the songs became indelibly linked to their performance by the ‘original’ artist.” Covers as fact exist since the start of the recorded music in the first decades of the 20^th century. Therefore, they did not “[emerge] at a point in the 1960s”. That which did emerge in the 1960s is a new way of understanding a cover. But that new idea of cover cannot be known if you do not uncover changes in its evolution.

“Performing and recording a song that had previously been recorded by another group or artist, therefore, was not always considered as ‘a cover’ in the ‘pop/rock’ world, as the author implies.” A cover as a fact is the same all the time. Duke Ellington performing “Yellow Dog Blues” by the Prince’s Band in 1928 is the same action as Nirvana's cover of “Song of a Gun” by The Vaselines in 1990, but the meaning of those actions is different. We know different meanings because the frequency of covers in the jazz era is much higher than in the 1990s, which suggests that the meaning is different. Therefore, you need to detect a pattern and then suggest a meaning. The contrary is just interpretations based on speculations, and not on scientific evidence.

To reinforce the objectives of the paper, I have decided to rewrite this section to better explain the aim of the paper and to present more precise research questions. A paragraph has also been introduced in Introduction and Study design to emphasize that this is a quantitative study based on the processing and analysis of a large data set of cover songs. Those sections explain now that this approach is the most suitable to answer research questions on the evolution and changes in the covering of songs in the 21^st century.
This review starts from a misunderstanding between fact and meaning. A cover is a fact and its definition is presented in the Introduction: “A cover is then a version of the same song performed, recorded or released by subsequent artists.” However, the meaning or idea of cover would change throughout time, and it depends on the sociological, cultural and historical context. The problem here is that you never would know the meaning if you do not previously analyze the fact. That is, it is impossible to know why musicians cover songs if you do not describe patterns and trends that point to changes in the use of covers. For example, the number of covers increases in the period 1900-1950, but from 1960s this practice went down until 2000s. Why? Because there was a change in the meaning. In the 1920s, during the jazz era, cover could be associated with an instrumental use for developing technical skills (standards). But from 1960s, pop/rock emerged and the meaning changed (Ortega, 2021). Now, covers would be a sign of lack of originality and could only be used for tribute.

An example of this confusion between fact and meaning is the following comment: “Specifically, the idea of a cover is a relatively new one which emerged at a point in the 1960s in which artists increasingly recorded songs they had themselves written, and the songs became indelibly linked to their performance by the ‘original’ artist.” Covers as fact exist since the start of the recorded music in the first decades of the 20^th century. Therefore, they did not “[emerge] at a point in the 1960s”. That which did emerge in the 1960s is a new way of understanding a cover. But that new idea of cover cannot be known if you do not uncover changes in its evolution.

“Performing and recording a song that had previously been recorded by another group or artist, therefore, was not always considered as ‘a cover’ in the ‘pop/rock’ world, as the author implies.” A cover as a fact is the same all the time. Duke Ellington performing “Yellow Dog Blues” by the Prince’s Band in 1928 is the same action as Nirvana's cover of “Song of a Gun” by The Vaselines in 1990, but the meaning of those actions is different. We know different meanings because the frequency of covers in the jazz era is much higher than in the 1990s, which suggests that the meaning is different. Therefore, you need to detect a pattern and then suggest a meaning. The contrary is just interpretations based on speculations, and not on scientific evidence.

To reinforce the objectives of the paper, I have decided to rewrite this section to better explain the aim of the paper and to present more precise research questions. A paragraph has also been introduced in Introduction and Study design to emphasize that this is a quantitative study based on the processing and analysis of a large data set of cover songs. Those sections explain now that this approach is the most suitable to answer research questions on the evolution and changes in the covering of songs in the 21^st century.
Competing Interests: No competing interests were disclosed. Close
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COMMENTS ON THIS REPORT

Author Response 31 Jan 2023

José Luis Ortega, Institute for Advanced Social Studies, Camposanto de los Mártires,, 7 14004, Spain

31 Jan 2023

Author Response

This review starts from a misunderstanding between fact and meaning. A cover is a fact and its definition is presented in the Introduction: “A cover is then a version of ... Continue reading This review starts from a misunderstanding between fact and meaning. A cover is a fact and its definition is presented in the Introduction: “A cover is then a version of the same song performed, recorded or released by subsequent artists.” However, the meaning or idea of cover would change throughout time, and it depends on the sociological, cultural and historical context. The problem here is that you never would know the meaning if you do not previously analyze the fact. That is, it is impossible to know why musicians cover songs if you do not describe patterns and trends that point to changes in the use of covers. For example, the number of covers increases in the period 1900-1950, but from 1960s this practice went down until 2000s. Why? Because there was a change in the meaning. In the 1920s, during the jazz era, cover could be associated with an instrumental use for developing technical skills (standards). But from 1960s, pop/rock emerged and the meaning changed (Ortega, 2021). Now, covers would be a sign of lack of originality and could only be used for tribute.

An example of this confusion between fact and meaning is the following comment: “Specifically, the idea of a cover is a relatively new one which emerged at a point in the 1960s in which artists increasingly recorded songs they had themselves written, and the songs became indelibly linked to their performance by the ‘original’ artist.” Covers as fact exist since the start of the recorded music in the first decades of the 20^th century. Therefore, they did not “[emerge] at a point in the 1960s”. That which did emerge in the 1960s is a new way of understanding a cover. But that new idea of cover cannot be known if you do not uncover changes in its evolution.

“Performing and recording a song that had previously been recorded by another group or artist, therefore, was not always considered as ‘a cover’ in the ‘pop/rock’ world, as the author implies.” A cover as a fact is the same all the time. Duke Ellington performing “Yellow Dog Blues” by the Prince’s Band in 1928 is the same action as Nirvana's cover of “Song of a Gun” by The Vaselines in 1990, but the meaning of those actions is different. We know different meanings because the frequency of covers in the jazz era is much higher than in the 1990s, which suggests that the meaning is different. Therefore, you need to detect a pattern and then suggest a meaning. The contrary is just interpretations based on speculations, and not on scientific evidence.

To reinforce the objectives of the paper, I have decided to rewrite this section to better explain the aim of the paper and to present more precise research questions. A paragraph has also been introduced in Introduction and Study design to emphasize that this is a quantitative study based on the processing and analysis of a large data set of cover songs. Those sections explain now that this approach is the most suitable to answer research questions on the evolution and changes in the covering of songs in the 21^st century.
This review starts from a misunderstanding between fact and meaning. A cover is a fact and its definition is presented in the Introduction: “A cover is then a version of the same song performed, recorded or released by subsequent artists.” However, the meaning or idea of cover would change throughout time, and it depends on the sociological, cultural and historical context. The problem here is that you never would know the meaning if you do not previously analyze the fact. That is, it is impossible to know why musicians cover songs if you do not describe patterns and trends that point to changes in the use of covers. For example, the number of covers increases in the period 1900-1950, but from 1960s this practice went down until 2000s. Why? Because there was a change in the meaning. In the 1920s, during the jazz era, cover could be associated with an instrumental use for developing technical skills (standards). But from 1960s, pop/rock emerged and the meaning changed (Ortega, 2021). Now, covers would be a sign of lack of originality and could only be used for tribute.

An example of this confusion between fact and meaning is the following comment: “Specifically, the idea of a cover is a relatively new one which emerged at a point in the 1960s in which artists increasingly recorded songs they had themselves written, and the songs became indelibly linked to their performance by the ‘original’ artist.” Covers as fact exist since the start of the recorded music in the first decades of the 20^th century. Therefore, they did not “[emerge] at a point in the 1960s”. That which did emerge in the 1960s is a new way of understanding a cover. But that new idea of cover cannot be known if you do not uncover changes in its evolution.

“Performing and recording a song that had previously been recorded by another group or artist, therefore, was not always considered as ‘a cover’ in the ‘pop/rock’ world, as the author implies.” A cover as a fact is the same all the time. Duke Ellington performing “Yellow Dog Blues” by the Prince’s Band in 1928 is the same action as Nirvana's cover of “Song of a Gun” by The Vaselines in 1990, but the meaning of those actions is different. We know different meanings because the frequency of covers in the jazz era is much higher than in the 1990s, which suggests that the meaning is different. Therefore, you need to detect a pattern and then suggest a meaning. The contrary is just interpretations based on speculations, and not on scientific evidence.

To reinforce the objectives of the paper, I have decided to rewrite this section to better explain the aim of the paper and to present more precise research questions. A paragraph has also been introduced in Introduction and Study design to emphasize that this is a quantitative study based on the processing and analysis of a large data set of cover songs. Those sections explain now that this approach is the most suitable to answer research questions on the evolution and changes in the covering of songs in the 21^st century.
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VERSION 3 PUBLISHED 08 Nov 2022

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Tim Wall, Birmingham City University, Birmingham, UK

Ben Torrens, Birmingham City University, Birmingham, UK
Chinyere Celestina Esimone, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Nigeria
Finn Upham, University of Oslo,, Oslo, Norway
Thomas Calkins, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

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16 Sep 2024 | for Version 3

Thomas Calkins, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

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Not Approved

Is the work clearly and accurately presented and does it cite the current literature?

Partly
Is the study design appropriate and is the work technically sound?

Partly
Are sufficient details of methods and analysis provided to allow replication by others?

Yes
If applicable, is the statistical analysis and its interpretation appropriate?

Partly
Are all the source data underlying the results available to ensure full reproducibility?

Yes
Are the conclusions drawn adequately supported by the results?

Partly

References

1. Peterson R, Anand N: The Production of Culture Perspective. Annual Review of Sociology. 2004; 30 (1): 311-334 Publisher Full Text

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No competing interests were disclosed.

Reviewer Expertise

Sociology of culture (with a focus on music production and consumption), cultural and creative industries, quantitative methods, urban sociology.

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9 Views

21 Aug 2024 | for Version 3

Finn Upham, RITMO Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Rhythm, Time and Motion,, University of Oslo,, Oslo, Norway

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Not Approved

Is the work clearly and accurately presented and does it cite the current literature?

Partly
Is the study design appropriate and is the work technically sound?

Partly
Are sufficient details of methods and analysis provided to allow replication by others?

Partly
If applicable, is the statistical analysis and its interpretation appropriate?

Yes
Are all the source data underlying the results available to ensure full reproducibility?

No
Are the conclusions drawn adequately supported by the results?

Partly

Competing Interests

No competing interests were disclosed.

Reviewer Expertise

Music technology, Music Psychology, Music theory, Mathematics, Data science

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27 Views

18 Dec 2023 | for Version 2

Chinyere Celestina Esimone, Department of Music, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Anambra, Nigeria

27 Views Cite this report Responses(1)

Approved With Reservations

Is the work clearly and accurately presented and does it cite the current literature?

Partly
Is the study design appropriate and is the work technically sound?

Partly
Are sufficient details of methods and analysis provided to allow replication by others?

Yes
If applicable, is the statistical analysis and its interpretation appropriate?

Yes
Are all the source data underlying the results available to ensure full reproducibility?

Yes
Are the conclusions drawn adequately supported by the results?

Yes

Competing Interests

No competing interests were disclosed.

Reviewer Expertise

Music Pedagogy, Music in Early Childhood Education, Youths in/and Music, and general music.

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Author Response

13 Apr 2024

José Luis Ortega, Institute for Advanced Social Studies, Camposanto de los Mártires,, 7 14004, Spain

Thank you so much for your helpful and positive comments, which let me to improve the paper.

The Title of the work is very captivating and perfect. The data collection method was specified and explained, and the analysis was done accurately.
However, the Abstract need to be reconstructed. A brief explanation of the Topic should be seen before the method of Data Collection and Analysis and Result is mentioned. That is lacking.
Abstract has been modified. I have included a couple of lines about the background of the study, justifying why cover songs analysis would be a suitable way to observe changes in the preferences of contemporary musicians.
In addition, Introduction has been enlarged with two paragraphs to give context to the study. The first one enumerates some of the most important changes in the 21^st Century Pop/Rock music; and the second one describes the new uses of cover songs, which is favoring a new appreciation.

There was no explanation of the keywords mentioned. The literature review was poorly incorporated into the Data explanations. This is not correct for a paper to be widely viewed. The entire work was not justified, making it look unserious and unacademic.
The discussion of the results has been enhanced with more reasons about the possible causes that would explain that contemporary musicians prefer cover today songs. The bibliographic references have been almost duplicated to describe the current musical panorama and its transformations. This bibliography is also used to support the discussion about the current meaning of cover songs regarding today’s musical creation.

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No competing interests were disclosed.

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Reviewer Report

28 Views

22 Sep 2023 | for Version 2

Tim Wall, Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research, Birmingham City University, Birmingham, UK

Ben Torrens, Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research, Birmingham City University, Birmingham, UK

28 Views Cite this report Responses(0)

Not Approved

Competing Interests

No competing interests were disclosed.

Reviewer Expertise

Tim Wall is Professor of Radio and Popular Music Studies and Ben Torrens is a researcher in popular music production cultures.

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Reviewer Report

113 Views

30 Nov 2022 | for Version 1

Tim Wall, Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research, Birmingham City University, Birmingham, UK

Ben Torrens, Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research, Birmingham City University, Birmingham, UK

113 Views Cite this report Responses(1)

Not Approved

Is the work clearly and accurately presented and does it cite the current literature?

Partly
Is the study design appropriate and is the work technically sound?

No
Are sufficient details of methods and analysis provided to allow replication by others?

Partly
If applicable, is the statistical analysis and its interpretation appropriate?

No
Are all the source data underlying the results available to ensure full reproducibility?

Yes
Are the conclusions drawn adequately supported by the results?

No

Competing Interests

No competing interests were disclosed.

Reviewer Expertise

Tim Wall is Professor of Radio and Popular Music Studies and Ben Torrens is a researcher in popular music production cultures.

Respond to this report

Responses (1)

Author Response

31 Jan 2023

José Luis Ortega, Institute for Advanced Social Studies, Camposanto de los Mártires,, 7 14004, Spain

This review starts from a misunderstanding between fact and meaning. A cover is a fact and its definition is presented in the Introduction: “A cover is then a version of the same song performed, recorded or released by subsequent artists.” However, the meaning or idea of cover would change throughout time, and it depends on the sociological, cultural and historical context. The problem here is that you never would know the meaning if you do not previously analyze the fact. That is, it is impossible to know why musicians cover songs if you do not describe patterns and trends that point to changes in the use of covers. For example, the number of covers increases in the period 1900-1950, but from 1960s this practice went down until 2000s. Why? Because there was a change in the meaning. In the 1920s, during the jazz era, cover could be associated with an instrumental use for developing technical skills (standards). But from 1960s, pop/rock emerged and the meaning changed (Ortega, 2021). Now, covers would be a sign of lack of originality and could only be used for tribute.

An example of this confusion between fact and meaning is the following comment: “Specifically, the idea of a cover is a relatively new one which emerged at a point in the 1960s in which artists increasingly recorded songs they had themselves written, and the songs became indelibly linked to their performance by the ‘original’ artist.” Covers as fact exist since the start of the recorded music in the first decades of the 20^th century. Therefore, they did not “[emerge] at a point in the 1960s”. That which did emerge in the 1960s is a new way of understanding a cover. But that new idea of cover cannot be known if you do not uncover changes in its evolution.

“Performing and recording a song that had previously been recorded by another group or artist, therefore, was not always considered as ‘a cover’ in the ‘pop/rock’ world, as the author implies.” A cover as a fact is the same all the time. Duke Ellington performing “Yellow Dog Blues” by the Prince’s Band in 1928 is the same action as Nirvana's cover of “Song of a Gun” by The Vaselines in 1990, but the meaning of those actions is different. We know different meanings because the frequency of covers in the jazz era is much higher than in the 1990s, which suggests that the meaning is different. Therefore, you need to detect a pattern and then suggest a meaning. The contrary is just interpretations based on speculations, and not on scientific evidence.

To reinforce the objectives of the paper, I have decided to rewrite this section to better explain the aim of the paper and to present more precise research questions. A paragraph has also been introduced in Introduction and Study design to emphasize that this is a quantitative study based on the processing and analysis of a large data set of cover songs. Those sections explain now that this approach is the most suitable to answer research questions on the evolution and changes in the covering of songs in the 21^st century.

View more View less

Competing Interests

No competing interests were disclosed.

Alongside their report, reviewers assign a status to the article:

Approved - the paper is scientifically sound in its current form and only minor, if any, improvements are suggested

Approved with reservations - A number of small changes, sometimes more significant revisions are required to address specific details and improve the papers academic merit.

Not approved - fundamental flaws in the paper seriously undermine the findings and conclusions

[1] Anderson K: Song ‘adaptations’ and the globalisation of French pop, 1960–1970. Fr. Cult. Stud. 2015; 26(3): 330–342. Publisher Full Text

[2] Black ML: The World Wide Web as complex data set: Expanding the Digital Humanities into the twentieth century and beyond through Internet research. Int. J. Humanit. Arts Comput. 2016; 10(1): 95–109. Publisher Full Text

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Is Taylor Swift leading a new Pop revolution? A cross-generation analysis of Pop/Rock cover songs

Abstract

Background

Methods

Results

Conclusions

Keywords

Revised Amendments from Version 2

Introduction

Related research

Objectives

Methods

Study design

Data extraction

Data matching

Data cleaning

Results

Figure 1. Sunburst showing the proportion of artists that started their career in the 21st century by musical genre and sub-genre.

Figure 2. Heat map with the percentage of covers of artists raised in different decades by music genre.

Figure 3. Bar graph with the percentages of Pop/Rock covers of artists from different decades by performers emerging in the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s.

Figure 4. Trend graph with the percentage of covers of Pop/Rock performers of different generations grouped by music sub-genre.

Table 1. Top 10 ranking of the artists most covered by the 2000s and 2010s generations.

Discussion

Conclusions

Data availability statement

References

Footnotes

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