Back in the day, the radio played songs by people or by bands. You had Madonna or Guns n Roses or Billy Joel or Yaz. Ok..no one listened to Yaz.

Today, all top 40 songs are collaborations. Madonna/BillyJoel; BillyJoel/GunsnRoses, etc.

How do mutual funds come into play here?

I look at today's top 40 as essentially a mutual fund. The songs are basically factory produced. To reduce risk and ensure a certain level of sales and airplay, two or three top 40 artists combine to “make” the song. It's essentially a mutual fund of music. They aren't trying for a 20% return but rather a steady 6.54% with a standard deviation of the ROI of about 1.24 points.

Mutual funds are boring.

Pop music is a mutual fund.

Using that valuable transitive property, Pop music is boring.

Now, what's next?

Obviously, index funds. Future pop music will no longer be a two or three party collaboration. but rather a collaboration of all artists currently deemed top40. The return will be 4.2% with a .15 point standard deviation. I don't know how we will deem top 40 but I presume this will be via a popular vote on a pseudo-reality tv show.

Now, some index funds are good. Think Band Aid. However, for every do they know it's Christmas, we will have 39 other songs in the top 40, each comprised of the same 40 artists in rotation all sounding essentially the same.

Then, there will be a music revolution. In 25 years, some upstart band will come out with an insane "new" song and blow everyone's minds with just a simple artist's name. At Christmas, the 10-year-olds will be listening to it and saying Great Uncle Jeff, Great Uncle Colby listen to this awesome song. And we'll dutifully listen, because we haven't turned on the radio in 7 years and then we'll blow their minds with our intricate knowledge of Sweet Child O Mine and regale them with tales of seeing the original band (they didn't know the song was a cover) in 1992 (they also didn't know time went back that far).