I love charts!

So, I found this very interesting set of graphs here: (there's more on the second page too.)
http://www.verysmallarray.com/

They detail various differences between the top 100 songs on Billboard's 2008 charts and the top 100 popular on Pitchfork (an indie rock news/review community) for the same time frame. Since indie rock seems to be the vogue these days I found it interesting to see comparisons drawn between the "old" rating system of Billboard and the "new" Pitchfork reviews.

The first thing that stood out to me is that the average/median "age first musically active" of all artist in Pitchfork's list is 21. Very very strongly 21.I'm going to have to take issue with this. Now, I'm going to make an unfair generalization, and probably get in to a lot of trouble but... To me, the majority of music labeled "indie rock" sounds the same. It sounds like immature, angsty, recycled noise, often infused with poor arrangement, mixing, and intonation. It sounds like it was written by a 21 year old with no prior musical activity. Wait a minute... oh - it makes sense now.

The next thing I find amusing is how geographically concentrated all of pitchfork's top US pics are - a staggering portion come from the NYC/Long Island/Connecticut area.

The last thing is that interesting is how fragmented the genres are on pitchfork. There are 37 separate genres represented on pitchfork's list, and only 24 on Billboard. BUT, if you listen to all the songs from pitchfork, they sound (to me at least) like they all come from the same genre. It seems like the artists are labeling themselves extravagantly in order to be unique and fresh, yet all producing the same sounds.

I guess my point from this would be that even though the new music scene prides itself on individuality and diversity, to a certain extent, it still suffers from limitations similar the "old" major label system. Is this bad? Maybe. Does it matter? Probably not.