  Analyzing the timeline of US, UK, German and Dutch music charts, we find that
the evolution of album lifetimes and of the size of weekly rank changes provide
evidence for an acceleration of cultural processes. For most of the past five
decades number one albums needed more than a month to climb to the top,
nowadays an album is in contrast top ranked either from the start, or not at
all. Over the last three decades, the number of top-listed albums increased as
a consequence from roughly a dozen per year to about 40.
  The distribution of album lifetimes evolved during the last decades from a
log-normal distribution to a powerlaw, a profound change. Presenting an
information-theoretical approach to human activities, we suggest that the
fading relevance of personal time horizons may be causing this phenomenon.
Furthermore we find that sales and airplay based charts differ statistically
and that the inclusion of streaming affects chart diversity adversely.
  We point out in addition that opinion dynamics may accelerate not only in
cultural domains, as found here, but also in other settings, in particular in
politics, where it could have far reaching consequences.
