Age Against the Machine: How Artist Maturation Counters the Decline of Acousticness in Popular Music

Music artists play a crucial role in shaping both regional and global sonic trends. While technological and cultural shifts are often credited with driving musical change, less is known about how an artist’s age influences stylistic evolution. Here, we examine how acousticness, that is, the extent to which a track features acoustic instrumentation, varies across an artist’s career. Using data from Spotify’s API, we analyse 45,478 tracks from 190 artists with a Generalised Additive Mixed Model (GAMM) to assess the relationship between acousticness and artist age, controlling for release year and genre. Results reveal a consistent positive association between artist age and acousticness, with artists tending to produce more acoustic music as they age, irrespective of their genre. However, the release year shows a strong negative effect, with newer music increasingly characterised by fewer acoustic features, likely reflecting broader industry trends such as digital production and evolving listener preferences. Our findings suggest a dynamic interplay between individual artistic development and external cultural forces, where ageing artists gravitate towards more organic sounds, even as popular music trends continue to favour synthetic production.