This article has been imported from chorus.fm for discussion. All of the forum rules still apply. Aisha Hassan & Dan Kopf, writing for QZ: The median length of Billboard Hot 100 songs dropped from over four minutes in 2000 to around three and a half minutes in 2018. Over the last few years, the number of songs in the Hot 100 under two and a half minutes skyrocketed from just around 1% of songs in 2015 to over 6% in 2018. So what happened? Streaming appears to be a big part of the story. In 2015, streaming overtook digital downloads as the music industry’s biggest source of revenue in the US. And streaming has dominated ever since: In 2015, it accounted for 34.3% of revenue, and that’s increased to 75% in 2018. In the process, many artists have adapted to the way their music is consumed. More streams make more money, but even then it’s not a lot, which is why volume is so crucial. Expand - View Original
That's really interesting. I wonder if they'll at some point switch to a YouTube-style system where amount of total play time is prioritized over the count number of plays. I'm not a huge fan of super-long tracks, but I do find that most songs I like are 3-3.5 minutes long.
Bad Religion, Joyce Manor, and Descendents have proven you can do the perfect pop song in under 2 minutes.
In my mind the average pop song has been between 3 and 3.5 minutes since I first started listening to music so this blows my mind.
Nearly every Beatles song is under 3 minutes so I think it lends itslef more to what the current trend is and not due to streaming necessarily.
Radio pop has become a formula...the same small group of songwriters are working with Maroon 5, Selena, Demi, Cardi, Nicki, etc. and the similarities in structure/tone of their songs has become very noticeable.
Have... you ever actually listened to any of them? This is so wrong, like wtf Pop threads always become messy on the front page as usual.