In the past, music hits are made through selected handpicking done by producers. Radio stations were all-powerful then, and possess monopoly over people’s exposure to new musics. Now, music hits are predicted by big data of consumer purchases, streams and internet searches (from sites like Spotify, iTunes, SoundCloud etc.) and uses behavioral algorithms to predict which artist will be the next big thing.
And since we tend to listen to the same type of music over and over again, our brain associates to it much easier. When we put less effort to think about something, the more likely we are to like it.
10 songs that sent the most time in the billboard top 100 are made after 1991, even though it has existed for more than 60 years. Radios are getting more repetitive as well, with Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” played ±750,000 times which is much more than the most played music in the last decade, =-400,000 times.
So, repetitive pop music is just the artist responding to market incentives.