Music is such a broad spectrum, it would be near impossible to cover all of the genres in this article. Rather, I would like to bring to light something I have noticed in the few months that I have been away at school. Since arriving at school, listening to the radio has become a regular for me, considering my dorm does not have a TV.

Of all the stations we listen to, New York stations are our go-to, and most are Top 40 hits. After a full day of listening to a variety of stations, I have concluded that the music industry has gone downhill in the past few years. This may be just a generalization but bear with me.

Okay, so let's take a station like 95.5 WPLJ, a fairly popular radio station based in New York City. If you listen for a solid two hours, you will hear at least two songs repeated, the same artist will appear more than once, and most songs will sound similar to the one before it. Unfortunately, that is how most music is broadcast to the public.

Now, this is not a jab at any of the artists who make their way up to the top of the charts because they put their all into their song, but it's sad how certain songs will be played over quality songs or artists. Take a song like "Work" by Rihanna.

This song, from 2016, was played on the radio nonstop. However, no one could understand a word she was singing. How can you sing along to the radio when you can't understand the artist? In recent years, more instances like these have occurred, especially in 2017. Camila Cabello's debut single after leaving the well-known girl group Fifth Harmony, "Havana", was basically incomprehensible. It wasn't until I looked up the words that I understood what she was even singing.

Aside from the actual words, similar sounding melodies can be heard in a variety of different songs. This will not include songs that got permission to either cover or sample another artists song. In recent news, Taylor Swift has been under fire for using a line in her song "Getaway Car", off of her newest album Reputation. The lyric, "X marks the spot/where we fell apart", can be seen verbatim in Hilary Duff's song "Breathe In. Breathe Out."

Though no formal lawsuit has been made, fans of Duff's are up-in-arms that she stole the lyrics. This is not the first occurrence in which an artist has stolen something from a previous song. Off of Panic! At The Disco's newest album, Death of a Bachelor, in the intro to "Don't Threaten Me With A Good Time", you can hear the distinct guitar riff from "Rock Lobster", a hit song by The B-52's. There are countless more, and I fear that stealing aspects of other artist's pieces without consent will go on forever.

Basically, if you look at the progression of the music industry within the past 5 years, you can see the downward progression of the originality in pop music and its radio time. If you want a great example of an original artist in the pop scene right now, look at Ed Sheeran. Not only does he write all of his own music, along with other artists, he also records most of the instrumentals for his songs, not one resembling another.