As Streaming Booms, Songs Are Getting Faster and Shorter (japantoday.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: A new study finds that pop songs are getting faster as listeners' attention spans diminish. Instrumental openings to songs have shrunk dramatically over the past three decades and, to a lesser extent, the average tempo of hit singles has been speeding up, the research found. Hubert Leveille Gauvin, a doctoral student in music theory at the Ohio State University, analyzed the year-end top 10 on the US Billboard chart between 1986 and 2015. In 1986, it took roughly 23 seconds before the voice began on the average hit song. In 2015, vocals came in after about five seconds, a drop of 78%, he found. In a study published in Musicae Scientiae, the Journal of the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music, Leveille Gauvin linked the trend to the rapid rise of Spotify and other streaming sites that give listeners instant access to millions of songs. "It makes sense that if the environment is so competitive, artists would want to try to grab your attention as quickly as possible," he told AFP.

Comments

My research...

[Anonymous Coward]

...indicates that songs have only gotten longer and slower since the Ramones put out records in the 70's

Streaming Music

[Anonymous Coward]

A new study finds that pop songs are getting faster as listeners' attention spans dimi

Tl;DR

Re:30 years?

[umafuckit]

I do shudder a bit to think where it will all lead eventually, but the change has been going on for an incredibly long time (likely over a century) so to attribute it to services and companies that have only existed for a decade or two is rather nonsensical.

I wouldn't worry too much, these trends are apparently based on very mainstream stuff. "Hit songs" as the TFA puts it. There'll always be niches where these trends don't hold sway.

Re:The moral of the story is that

[Known Nutter]

It really whips the llama's ass.

There are young people who have no idea what that means.

Boring alternative theory

[radarskiy]

Songs no longer need to leave time at the beginning of the song for the DJ to give a station ID or otherwise talk over the intro to prevent home recording.

Re:The moral of the story is that

[imidan]

I used WinAmp for many years, and I still have no idea what that means.

Alternate hypothesis

[tomhath]

"It makes sense that if the environment is so competitive, artists would want to try to grab your attention as quickly as possible,"

There aren't any instrumentals because most "artists" today can't play a musical instrument or even sing. Concerts are just a backtrack with someone dancing around and lip-synching.

Re:The moral of the story is that

[hamburger lady]

it's a reference to wesley willis, a lo-fi recording artist from chicago who sadly passed away years back. he cut a million songs, most all of which were almost the same and included some reference of "whipping a [insert animal]'s ass".