Empirical and interpretive work on the structure of recorded music
Original research on how the production of popular music has changed across six decades. The work pairs measured datasets with interpretive essays. The empirical work stands on its own; the interpretive work asks what the measured shifts mean for listeners, music makers, and civic life.
The Gridification of Popular Music, 1960 through 2025
Does ‘Perfect’ Music Make Us Worse at Democracy?
Contrasting Taylor Swift's Opalite (standard deviation 0.02 BPM) with Fleetwood Mac's Dreams (standard deviation 1.82 BPM), the essay uses Susanne Langer's account of presentational symbolism to argue that the difference between the two recordings is categorical rather than stylistic. The civic stakes follow from that distinction.
Read the essay (PDF) ↓ Companion essayYou’ve Been Listening to AI Music for 25 Years
The relevant inflection point in popular music production was not the arrival of generative AI. It was the institutionalization of Beat Detective in Pro Tools TDM 5.1 in 2001. Once human performance was routinely sliced, quantized, and reassembled to a grid, the structural distinction between human and machine production collapsed. Generative AI followed the logic that grid-based correction had already established.
Read the essay (PDF) ↓How the research connects to the certification
The Musical Form Institute's certification programs verify production process. The research published here documents, at scale, what gridification looks like across six decades of popular recording. The dataset does not certify anything itself. It provides the public empirical context against which the certification's claim becomes legible: that a Certificate of Embodied Production marked recording preserves human timing and decision-making against a measurable baseline of what unmarked recordings now typically are.
This research is conducted by Jeffrey Anthony and published by the Musical Form Institute, which is its canonical home. It is reproduced here as part of the public argument behind The Take Matters.