Posted October 16, 2012 By Presh Talwalkar. Read about me , or email me .

Does today’s pop music seem too loud and sound all the same? Do you have trouble hearing people in restaurant and bars?

These phenomena are well known, but what is the motivation and cause for them? Below I give a game theory analogy that explains the behavior.

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"All will be well if you use your mind for your decisions, and mind only your decisions." Since 2007, I have devoted my life to sharing the joy of game theory and mathematics. MindYourDecisions now has over 1,000 free articles with no ads thanks to community support! Help out and get early access to posts with a pledge on Patreon. .

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The “who’s louder” game

Two producers are competing to get his song played on the radio. The programmer will simply choose the song that sounds the loudest.

What’s the strategy for this game?

It’s simple. Each producer will try to top the other person and mix his song a bit louder than the other. Not too loud as to be alarming, mind you. But just loud enough to catch the radio programmer’s attention.

Slowly but surely music will progressively get louder and louder.

It sounds silly, but that’s essentially what has happened to pop music in America.

NPR has an excellent and detailed article on the phenomenon, dubbed the loudness wars. Do check out the infographic that highlights the progression of loud music over time.

The end result: pop music becomes louder and more homogenous. Scientists this year have confirmed this trend analytically by analyzing pop music over the last 50 years.

Yes, it’s now officially true that music is louder and sounds the same.

The dollar auction game

The music industry seems to have shot itself in the foot in a self-destructive war. The question is, if the end result was so predictable, why didn’t the loudness wars stop earlier?

A useful analogy is the dollar auction game. Imagine a professor holds a $1 bill for auction to a classroom. The bill is to be auctioned off, starting at $0 and increasing by 1 cent increments. The top bidder will get the dollar and pay the bid price. The hitch is the second bidder also has to pay the losing bid, but gets nothing.

The game usually proceeds as follows. Bidding proceeds quickly up to 99 cents because each bidder is happy to pay less than a dollar for the prize.

Things get interesting when the bid goes from 99 cents to $1. At this point, the highest bidder is just breaking even. It’s not really a great victory, but it is fine. What happens now?

The second highest bidder faces a decision. If the $1 bid prevails, then the second highest bidder is on the hook for 99 cents. Instead, the bidder can top the previous bid and call out $1.01. It is a bid that loses 1 cent–if it wins–but at least it avoids losing 99 cents.

You can imagine what happens next. The person who lost at $1 will bid up to $1.02, and a bidding war starts to see who loses less money.

Eventually the game ends when one person realizes the madness has gone on for too long, say at the $5 or perhaps even $20 level. Mathematically, there is no reason the bidding would ever stop.

This game captures the essence of the music loudness war: even though each person realized it was destructive to keep playing, each person felt justified in upping the ante to lose less.

The loudness game in bars

Consider a third game. Two bars decide how loud to set their music. People will more often visit the louder bar.

Again this is a simplistic way to view things. But it seems to model reality.

In the game, each bar will jack up the volume ever so slightly to please customers, until the noise becomes deafeningly loud.

The New York Times has a fantastic article about the phenomenon of loud music inside restaurant and bars.

A train going through downtown was measured at 84 decibels, just below the government health safety guideline of 85 decibels. The Times surveyed 37 restaurants, bars, and indoor stores. In over 1/3 of these places the sound level was found to be dangerous, with one reading as high as 105 decibels–nearly four times as loud–in a gym of all places!

Bars may even have a sinister reason for pushing the loudness. One study found that loud music increases alcohol consumption.

Here’s a table that illustrates the strategic similarities between the games:

Possible solutions

1. Don’t play the game

The only way to avoid the trap of the dollar auction game is not to play. It is always tempting to join the game, but the ultimate bidding war is foreseeable, and one should stay away.

Similarly, one could try to avoid pop music and loud bars. But this is a bit harder in practice as it is hard to change our environment.

2. Call for regulation

If the government is justified in banning smoking to prevent second-hand smoke concerns, then perhaps it is justified in regulating the loudness of indoor places.

I say this with a big IF. I am not proposing this is an appropriate solution, as I think people should be entitled to listen to loud music, if they wish. I am only pointing out that regulation is a possible way to avoid the trap of indefinite escalation.

3. Get earplugs

I am a fan of ear plugs. I am happy with my purchase, so long as I remember to bring them.

Loud noises above 90 decibels can cause permanent hearing damage. I hope to preserve my senses as long as I can, and so I decide to play the game of music with a little bit of protection.