In a New York Times article entitled “They Really Don’t Make Music Like They Used To”, the author Greg Milner discusses the dynamics of classic contemporary (not classical) music compared to current contemporary music.
No real surprise that a lot of the most popular music around is from decades ago, and that that music has a lot more Peak to Average Dynamic range than most contemporary music, although things are starting to swing back the other way a bit now thanks to normalisation of streaming services.
Read the article which includes some graphs and stats at: