[steeleduncan]

This is related to the real reason key changes no longer chart, they are a cliche. You are no more likely to get a song with cheesy modulations into the Billboard top 100 than you are a book that starts "it was a dark and stormy night" into the New York Times bestseller list.

In Eurovision though, the cheese is part of the fun.

[adamc]

Trying to comprehend the idea that "key changes are cliche". No. Maybe certain patterns are cliche, but there are so many interesting things you can do with key changes that the remark is just silly.

But it isn't just key changes that have gone away. We used to let drummers speed up and slow down with the emotion of the song. Now we want everything on a grid for ease of production, we pitch-correct even when it isn't really needed, we sample sounds rather than have real musicians play. The result of all that is that songs have a narrower envelope of variation, and they tend to be more simplistic.

[musicale]

I think one reason for having fairly consistent pitch and rhythm in popular dance music is that it can make it easier for club DJs and can help to keep people moving. Digital DJ decks can help, but shifting pitch or tempo too far can sound (and feel) jarring and unnatural.

Though with traditional vinyl the pitch can shift as one record is sped up or slowed down to match the tempo of another. It can be challenging to simultaneously match both the tempo and tuning of two vinyl records.

As noted in the article, grid-based tools do seem to be designed to facilitate loop-based production. But Logic is also frequently used for soundtracks and certainly supports key and tempo changes. Moreover the chromatic piano grid used in many DAWs and sequencers seems more key agnostic than a staff with a key signature. Not only that, but some DAWs (Ableton Live for example) are very good at processing samples so that their rhythm and tuning can easily be adjusted.