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Will We Ever Run Out of New Music?

12 videos recommended on HN
YouTube
Cited on HN 3 times, 2015–2020, never outright recommended score 0
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

HN uses it as the reference for counting how many songs or melodies are possible from a finite set of notes.

Vsauce asks whether music will ever run out of new melodies. It counts the possible note combinations and discusses how common chord progressions and remixing affect originality.

“As for melodies - we won't run out of them anytime soon.” (HN, 2019)

3 citations · Explainers

3 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@throwmeback Feb 2019 Cites it
on HN thread Millennials still recognise songs from music’s 1960s-90s golden age, study finds
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I don't have much time because I'm at work, so I won't write everything I have on my mind. I've been in your spot before, I also have perfect pitch (which I'd argue is irrelevant to the discussion) and I severely disagree. There's more music being produced than ever before. There is a vast amount of music you didn't listen to yet - it's humanly impossible to sift through it all. There's obviously a lot of cheap, quickly produced music, but IMHO the way you describe it makes it feel like "music died 15 years ago". It didn't. E.g. we still have readily identifiable trends in music (eg. indie, vaporwave, chillwave, trap beats). Filling up concert halls isn't a viable way of measuring an artist's achievement in the internet age for me. People go to concert just because they know the band's name, because someone bought them a ticket or because the media built up the hype. As for melodies - we won't run out of them anytime soon. [this video]
Supports claim that we will not run out of melodies

Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.

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