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Ask Slashdot: Will Technology Disrupt the Song?
An anonymous reader writes: The music industry has gone through dramatic changes over the past thirty years. Virtually everything is different except the structure of the songs we listen to. Distribution methods have long influenced songwriting habits, from records to CDs to radio airplay. So will streaming services, through their business models, incentivize a change to song form itself? Many pop music sensations are already manufactured carefully by the studios, and the shift to digital is providing them with ever more data about what people like to listen to. And don't forget that technology is a now a central part of how such music is created, from auto-tune and electronic beats to the massive amount of processing that goes into getting the exact sound a studio wants.
The "sound" of a badly encoded MP3 is already influencing the way people sing - it's almost as if they think those artefacts and unwanted harmonics are something that makes a voice a good singing voice, because that's what they hear when someone holds a long or high note. Bloody hateful.
Time is 100% relevant to this discussion. Music history is littered with examples of songs that have had their structure and duration altered as a result of outside forces. Donovan had to make a decision when recording "Hurdy Gurdy Man" whether to include all 3 verses he wrote, or 2 verses and a guitar solo, as there wasn't time to have 3 verses plus a solo within 3 minutes. The Byrds had loads of songs where even more verses were cut out to keep them down to a radio-friendly length. While radio stations aren't as anal about running times these days, you still won't hear a 10-minute song on the radio. And there's no disputing that that particular limitation had a deep effect on much of the music of the previous century.
As for how streaming services will affect music - I think a lot of the pressures they put on writers are similar to radio. They work better with shorter pieces of music that are free-standing in the sense that they will work when played between any two other songs. So, less emphasis on things like thematic consistency (both in lyrics and music). Really the only thing I see different in streaming (vs. radio) is that in streaming it's easier to skip a particular song, so the listener is able to shut himself out more from experimentation. He can decide within 15 seconds if a song presents a sound he deems to be acceptable, and whether he wants to skip it. Whereas on the radio, he would be "forced" to listen to the whole track. I don't think this will be much of an issue though, since radio stations as well as streaming services both usually cater to a specific genre anyway - they're certainly not hotbeds of experimentation.