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The Economics of Streaming is Making Songs Shorter (qz.com)
Popular music is shrinking. From 2013 to 2018, the average song on the Billboard Hot 100 fell from 3 minutes and 50 seconds to about 3 minutes and 30 seconds. From a report: Six percent of hit songs were 2 minutes 30 seconds or shorter in 2018, up from just 1% five years before. Take Kendrick Lamar. One of the world's most popular musicians right now. The average track length on Lamar's breakout 2013 album good kid, m.A.A.d city is 5 minutes 37 seconds. All are 3 minutes 30 seconds or longer. On Lamar's most recent album DAMN., the average song is 3 minutes and 57 seconds. DAMN. won the Pulitzer Prize for music, going to show that this trend isn't necessarily lowering the quality of music. It's not just Lamar. The trend can be seen in albums of music's biggest stars, like the rapper and singer Drake, perhaps pop music's most dominant force.
In the hey day of AM radio the songs aimed for 2 min 30 seconds. It's not economics. And on top of that, comparing averages to individual songs is also silly. Half fo them will be longer than the median. Lastly Album oriented music tends to be longer than radio/stream oriented music because the former has a larger story telling context and the latter is about a catchy vibe.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
be more profitable for compamies selling tracks for download at 99c ?
whats the average 'album' length these days?
I buy my music from amazon then download it - I don't stream
THe logic of the article also makes no sense. The article says that people are paid per song not per minute so this makes shorter songs better. ummm no. People are not looping your song to fill an hour, so the length of your song has nothing to do with how often it gets played. And if there were pressure from that economy then streaming companies would prefer to stream longer songs so they pay less royalties to fill an hour. Artists would prefer to make longer songs so their songs would occupy more time in the listeners attention. Now would short attention span millennials prefer longer or shorter songs? I don't know but since they pay bulk montly rates they aren't economizing by preferring shorter songs.
SO there's no economic pressure here.
With AM radio, the shorter the songs the more frequent the advertisements, so there was a little economic pressure there. But not on the seconds time scale like this silly article is measuring. And streaming services don't have ads so that pressure is gone.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
If a song is less than 29 minutes and 37 seconds (which takes up one and a third sides of a record) then it's not worth listening to. Or at the very least, coding to as I am now (although to be totally accurate, I'm waiting for a build to finish).
Three Minutes, thirty seconds? Bah! Poseurs.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Who the fuck is Kendrick Lamar?
Long term trend is actually the reverse; although it might well be starting to turn around now for reasons that may or may not be related to streaming economics... but my grandparents and parents generations both lived with most hit music being sub-3 minutes. While my generation and my kids saw it climb to 4+ so its hardly a big deal its down a bit.
2010's: 4'26"
2000's: 4'10"
1990's: 4'14"
1980's: 4'08"
1970's: 3'55"
1960's: 2'59"
1950's: 2'36"
1940's: 2'41"
https://thelister.blogspot.com...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
It's 5:15 sec, which reminds me The Who.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
but it's only 5 minutes
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
...the shorter a rap song is, the less bad it is. Now if they can hit 0:00 it'd be perfect!
There's no incentive for any one artist to go shorter. An artist only benefits from other artists shortening their songs but you get no benefit from shortening yours. So why would any artist choose to shorten their art for the benefit of others but not themselves? Ad supported streaming services that I have seen simply display ads on the screen in the player not interrupt the music. Perhaps there are some but I'd doubt those would have any affect on the collective behavior of the industry as a whole.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
a song has melody and lyrics with some sort of form to it, like verse chorus bridge. Rap is "poetry" yapped over Loopz. Yo.
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In the middle of last century, the 45 rpm record did the exact same thing. Before that, pop songs would have long intros and the singer might not come in until the third chorus. For example, here's a Tommy Dorsey/Sinatra record from the 40's that was a big hit (it's a cool tune, so you should listen to it):
https://youtu.be/M_EPgmVaLWA
I wish some Tommy Dorsey/Sinatra tunes could have made it into the Fallout games. The song still comes in at 3:19, but the structure is pure 78 rpm.
Once the 45 rpm came out, it was one measure and the singer comes in. Verse/chorus/verse/chorus. Not even a bridge sometimes.
https://youtu.be/-eHJ12Vhpyc
It has been said that 3 minutes should be the outer limit for a pop song. One of the greatest records of all time had an average song length of about 2 minutes, and many songs much shorter. Here is a great song from The Ramones' self-titled first record that comes in at exactly 1:30. No fat, no filler, all pumping pure pop goodness.
https://youtu.be/K6GAGdBiJF0
You are welcome on my lawn.
If you like short songs like that, then Procol Harem put out "In Held 'Twas on I" on the Shine on Brightly album. Jethro Tull put out Thick as a Brick and A Passion Play. Both of which took both sides of an album at 22 minutes per side. Damn near any live version of a Led Zeppelin song will be around that long as well.
If your looking for long songs and like classical music, 17 minutes isn't difficult to find at all. Wagner's Der Ring is a 15 hour opera. In the past it was all but impossible to find a reasonably priced copy of it. But I found one a couple of years back that was $35 on 10 CDs. It's not.the best version that I have, but for the price, it's a bargain.
Of course songs are getting shorter due to streaming. When marketing wants to tout "streams per month" numbers the easiest way to increase that figure is by making songs shorter so streaming robots can loop them more times/month.
Cause I'm gonna get my money's worth dammit!
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
The popular singles may be getting shorter, and streaming may be becoming more common, but where's the proven connection? Perhaps shorter songs are simply more "attractive" to the demographic with a reduced attention span, and artists and their record companies are aiming for that market?
I'm under the impression that royalties are per-play. So if songs are shorter, fans will listen to more songs, many of them from the same record company, so the record company wants shorter songs.
I would think that royalties should be for the amount of time streamed. If your song is six minutes long, you get twice the royalties of a three minute song, but only if it's streamed as many times and listed to all the way through. (And if someone skips, they get the royalties for the portion listened to.)
Someone who knows exactly how the royalties work should correct me if I'm wrong or confirm my theory.
Streaming has changed modern music - but it is the song introduction that has changed, not the duration. A song has to "hook" people within the first 15 seconds or else the listener will hit next. When this happens, the streaming service does not have to pay the artist. With traditional radio, songs could start up slowly. This gave artists had more flexibility in how the music was presented. With streaming, artists have around 15 seconds to sell their tune. It is limiting - but the price one has to pay for the way streaming currently operates.
**Note; I have forgotten the exact time so 15 seconds might be off. But it is close to 15.
Even in the chorus before the first verse, listeners learn two of the things Meat Loaf's character won't do are "lie to you" and "forget the way you feel right now". Later "do it better than I do it with you" and "be screwing around" are added. I understand all this to mean he won't "cheat", or swing without Lorraine Crosby's character's permission. It wouldn't be infeasible for a shorter edit of the song to keep the same message.
30 minute shows on television use to be 22 minutes. Now some are 16-17 minutes.
Kids these days...
When we wanted a short song we'd sit back and listen to Napalm Death's You Suffer (2 seconds), or S.O.D.'s Diamonds and Rust -- full 6 seconds of acoustic glory.
I thought the only reason I kept hearing his crap music was because I had the misfortune to have landed in Toronto. Is he really pop musics most dominant force?
That's fucking depressing.
Modern "music" tends to involve 40 seconds of original lyrics. 20 seconds are given at the beginning, and 20 are repeated over and over again for 2 minutes. Cut out 30 seconds of this mindless repetition and nothing (more) of value will be lost.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
So they'll repeat the same lyrics 3 times instead of 4 or 5? Is that what you're saying?
"Everybody's naked underneath" -- The Doctor
As an old fart, I prefer to listen to a local BC that plays even Pink Floyd's Echoes and Atomheart Mother, both of them over 23 minutes.
who cares about the length of pop songs? certainly not the people listening to them or the mentioned 'stars' wouldn't be the stars they are.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
"You think songs are about message?"
Only the truly great songs. Regardless of length.
If there's no message, it's just fluff.
And fluff is just fine, fluff becomes the filler in-between, and must outnumber songs with a message in order for those songs to transcend the mundane and become the great songs in the first place.
Without the fluff, the meanings would just be lost in the noise.
It is hardly infantile.
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For some songs I get tired of hearing the chorus repeated. Did I say tired? Sometimes it is downright annoying/painful, once it goes from background to conscious (can't unhear).
Perhaps for some genres I would prefer a shorter track length.
There is a limit to the number of ways you can repeat a warble of "oh-oh-oh" before even the most mindless teenager gives up.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Ohh, I'm a dipshit for disagreeing with you
So we now see the true definition of infantile.
I'm a musician, and I disagree. The sonic and the lyric are intertwined to create the work.
Since you cannot argue like a rational human being, we can safely ignore your opinion.
Donald Trump, on a crusade to make Nixon look respectable
The article concludes with many different possible explanations. You're attacking a straw man, not the article logic.