“Substream” recordings: Some shifts in stature and alterations in song

Abstract

“Substream” recordings (performances at variance with current commercial “mainstream” song types) disseminate essentially regional material to a mass audience. This paper details the fluctuations in popularity of substream musics relative to mainstream (traditional pop and rock) musics and examines artist type and lyric content for number one records to indicate that substream material is usually performed by solo male vocalists and includes primarily narrative ballad and novelty songs, not the love songs typically reported by prior studies of popular music. Sub‐stream hits appear independent of general trends in sound recording and achieve popularity in times of industry stability as well as industry change. This evidence suggests that substream music success is generally unpredictable in nature.

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