  The ubiquity of digital music consumption has made it possible to extract
information about modern music that allows us to perform large scale analysis
of stylistic change over time. In order to uncover underlying patterns in
cultural evolution, we examine the relationship between the established
characteristics of different genres and styles, and the introduction of novel
ideas that fuel this ongoing creative evolution. To understand how this dynamic
plays out and shapes the cultural ecosystem, we compare musical artifacts to
their contemporaries to identify novel artifacts, study the relationship
between novelty and commercial success, and connect this to the changes in
musical content that we can observe over time. Using Music Information
Retrieval (MIR) data and lyrics from Billboard Hot 100 songs between 1974-2013,
we calculate a novelty score for each song's aural attributes and lyrics.
Comparing both scores to the popularity of the song following its release, we
uncover key patterns in the relationship between novelty and audience
reception. Additionally, we look at the link between novelty and the likelihood
that a song was influential given where its MIR and lyrical features fit within
the larger trends we observed.
