At least, that's what a new study by a team of researchers led by Dr Alex Bentley at Durham Univ... Change is the only trend yo

Based on the findings, the researchers suggest that the popularity of things, be it names, music or even the breed of dogs, will change at a steady rate, regardless of population size.

However, since the time is takes for the trend to catch on is random, it cannot be predicted exactly which new fashions will replace the old ones.

Giving the example of popular singing competition American Idol, Dr Alex Bentley, a Lecturer in the Anthropology Department at Durham University said that though it was possible to predict which contestant would stay and which would be voted out of the show, foreseeing the final winner was still not possible.

"It's like American Idol. We can predict the steady production of new winners from programme to programme, but the randomness means we can't forecast the particular winners themselves," he said.

The trick, say the researchers, is to find the innovator with the next big hit. Celebrities, for example, get copied much more than random copying would predict.

"David Beckham in the early 2000's was an innovator with his haircuts but it's change itself that is actually in demand, more or less regardless of content. Madonna knows this -staying on top for two decades by changing her image constantly," Dr Bentley said.

As a part of their research, Dr Bentley collaborated with colleagues at California State University, Western Carolina University and Indiana University in the US.

They looked at the Billboard Top 200 chart and found that it turned over at a constant average rate for 30 years, from the 1950s to the 1980s. The number of albums entering and exiting the chart varied from day to day and month to month, but overall the average turnover was 5.6 percent per month for the full 30-year period. They discovered a similar consistency in turnover for the top baby names and dog breeds.

This real-world data was matched by computer simulations of a random copying model, in which with hundreds or thousands of individuals copy each other from one instant to the next, with a small proportion of innovators (2% or less). During the simulation, they kept track of the Top 40, Top 100 most popular 'fashions' and monitored their turnover. The model predicted continuous and regular turnover, consistent with the real-world data from the charts of baby names, music and dog breeds.

How quickly a list will change depends on the size of the list - a Top 100 changes proportionally faster than a Top 40 - but, surprisingly, the size of the population does not have an impact, the research found. Although a larger population means more new ideas, it also means more competition to reach the top, and the two balance each other out: the turnover on bestseller lists remains steady as population size changes.

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