5 ms·
Songs are getting shorter
- hobbitstan 4y agoDo artists still release radio edits of their singles? Back in the 90s, I was always a little pissed off when my fave bands did that. It was likely their record labels, but still… edited length for airplay is such bullshit. Edit: I’ll add that I much prefer the single edit for one of my all-time fave tracks, Firestarter by The Prodigy. It’s shorter and harder hitting than the album version.
- eyelidlessness 4y agoIt was definitely their labels. If you want some (not exhaustive but exemplary) insight into the shit labels do to musicians and their music, Steve Albini’s writing on the topic is a great place to start.
- ace2358 4y agoYes they do! In Australia on JJJ radio station I heard them play a radio edit of one of my favourite tracks this year from Odesza This is the track. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iLKoiq6Su-8 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iLKoiq6Su-8 I get it, it’s 6 min long and that’s a no no on the top pop radio station. But I couldn’t believe how the radio edit basically kills the song and all of its movement. I don’t listen to the radio intentionally (was in someone’s car) and have never heard a radio edit. Was super disappointing when I cut the first half of the track.
- karmakaze 4y agoI would say that it's a necessity for dance/club tracks as they're meant to be mixed/edited on the fly by the DJ and listening to a 7+ minute track in full on the radio/Spotify wouldn't be ideal. On occasion when I'm up for it, I'll 'listen' to tracks by mixing them for myself for an hour or three and see what interesting transitions/mashups might arise. I've thought about getting a Reloop Ready (which is barely wider than a a 14" Macbook) specifically for personal travel use.
- cratermoon 4y agoThis song is just six words long: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=do5vXn_Rap4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=do5vXn_Rap4
- eyelidlessness 4y agoThis is finally the year of punk on the airwaves
- pmichaud 4y agoWhat I’d actually like to see is more “dynamic” music. the format of a song used to be limited like a book is limited, but then we invented hypertext. Paintings are limited, but then we invented video games. Why can’t music have various interactive parameters, or at least be able to loop to arbitrary lengths? I bet there’s a lot of untapped potential here.
- trynewideas 4y agoVinyl records and tapes experimented with this, especially with the ability to have intricate groove paths that allowed songs to have alternate parts that the needle might "randomly" select or loop, or tapes designed to perpetually loop. Some of those practices are still in use today, on those formats: Jack White's label published his Lazaretto album with a number of vinyl tricks, including two different intro grooves for one of the songs,[1] and the recent milder resurgence in cassettes has gotten people experimenting with old tape-loop styles again.[2][3] 1: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/may/07/jack-white-ultra-lp-lazaretto https://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/may/07/jack-white-ult... 2: https://www.guerrilladigital.cc/2021/03/10/i-spent-the-last-two-weeks-researching-and-making-endless-cassette-loop-tapes-and-this-is-what-i-learned/ https://www.guerrilladigital.cc/2021/03/10/i-spent-the-last-... 3: https://store.crypticcarousel.com/products/6-minute-endless-loop-cassette-w-soft-case https://store.crypticcarousel.com/products/6-minute-endless-... See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unusual_types_of_gramophone_records#Sound_recorded_in_locked_grooves https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unusual_types_of_gramophone_re...
- eru 4y agoAnd, of course, there's always video game music which often shifts in reaction to player actions.
- jareklupinski 4y agonow I want to work on a music app that changes your playlist based on heart rate
- foenix 4y ago
- kazinator 4y agoSongs being 3:30 or less is not a new thing since 2000. "It was a beautiful song, but it ran too long. If you're gonna have a hit, you gotta make it fit, so they cut it down to 3:05." -- Billy Joel, "The Entertainer", 1974.
- tptacek 4y agoThere isn't a single track on Doolittle that hits 4:00, and most are under 3:00. Same with Pink Flag.
- TylerE 4y agoOnly one song on the first six Beatles albums is over 3 minutes, and that was 3:09.
- kazinator 4y agoMozart's Alla Turca can be performed in around 3:30, and has tons of repetition.
- rufus_foreman 4y agoIn the 1980's, Minutemen put out a cassette tape with 2 of their LPs, 2 EPs, a couple singles, and a few of their songs from compilations. I think it was a 90 minute cassette tape but they didn't use the whole thing, 62 songs from their first four years as a band that averaged around 1:20 each.
- TylerE 4y agoEven 3 was pushing it. In the 50s 2:30 or less was common.
- TabithaSmirnov 4y agoI remember dating a guy who bragged about how some of the songs on his favorite album was 5 minutes long. I thought that was such a strange detail to care about.
- Eleison23 4y ago
- lapcat 4y agoStairway to Heaven (1971) was 8 minutes long.
- infradig 4y agoSad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands (1966) was 11+ minutes long.
- asveikau 4y agoDylan had quite a few of those lengthy ones. Visions of Johanna was 7:30. Stuck inside of Mobile was 7:04. Idiot wind was 7:50. Hurricane was 8:35. I think some classic rock and oldies singles also had extra long versions.
- chrisandchris 4y agoRapper's Delight was 14 minutes.
- silisili 4y agoPeople just tolerate the first five and a half minutes to get to the last 2 and a half minutes. Or at least that's what I do :). I remember an ex girlfriend changing the station once right at about that transition. I felt like someone had just stolen my time, like they'd knocked over a card tower I'd been working on.
- dole 4y agoIsaac Hayes had a lot of 12-14 minute long epics. The rise and fall of the key change between the 70’s until the end of the 80’s could be blamed for songs being “longer” during that period as well.
- lightedman 4y agoNothing new. Lots of great songs are also very short. Them Bones by Alice in Chains from 1992 is one I can think of off top of my head. It isn't even 2:30 in length.
- subtra3t 4y agoAnother example: In Love by khai dreams. Just over a minute iirc
- rawoke083600 4y agoAlso, (sorry for the tangent) the "intro songs" of tv-series is always wayyy shorter than it used to be.
- bruce511 4y agoA) this is a good thing - watching long drawn-out titles is boring. As evidenced by Netflix et al's "skip intro" feature. B) was likely partly driven by the US need to put advertising in everything. Which meant time for the actual program was constrained by broadcast schedules. I feel streaming has liberated producers from rigid length constraints, and also liberated consumers from interruptions. Since we skip-titles anyway, keeping them very short actually means I watch them more often.
- josefx 4y ago> A) this is a good thing - watching long drawn-out titles is boring. Some shows have decent intros that, for the lack of a better word, help set the atmosphere/mood right at the start. You might find it boring, since it is repeated every time, but that is also the reason why shows can put a good amount of production quality and resources into it. > B) was likely partly driven by the US need to put advertising in everything. Which meant time for the actual program was constrained by broadcast schedules. Not only the US and it isn't limited to intros. Over the years I ran into a few broadcasts of movies and shows that ruined the plot by cutting too much of the show itself to make space for ads.
- LanceH 4y agoThey used to spend more money on the intro so they could shorten the actual show. Now I suspect they just run more ads. There is a great interview out there somewhere about the money they were willing to spend on the Hawaii 5-0 intro/song because it could be used in every show.
- Quarrelsome 4y agoHas anyone spun up the track the article discusses? The song could be even shorter, by the time you hit 0:25 you've pretty much experienced it. Can't say I'm much of a fan, given the track is effectively just a somewhat low effort heavily produced hook. Starting to wonder how much of the zeitgeist is just reputation and spread as opposed to substance. Its making me think of Pentecostalism (i.e. listeners want it to be good).
- layman51 4y agoLong story short, it seems like music is evolving based on the challenges posed by TikTok and Spotify, and other streaming/sharing services. Like other commenters have written, this article also mentions that shortening songs isn't a new thing. What's new though is the nature of the pressures. Here's the spooky part for me: "If you go to a club and you watch people dance, they only dance to the 15 seconds of a song that’s famous on TikTok,” he says. “For the rest of it, they just sit there.” My mind is blown because I had been listening to a writer on a podcast claim that music is becoming more cerebral and less about moving the body (as in dance).
- marmetio 4y agoPeople have always danced to short tunes with instructions. Like traditional line dances or cotton eyed Joe. What seems to be different now is the lack of instructions. Music isn't a monolithic thing. If the mainstream music you find on Spotify is coalescing, the independent music you find on Bandcamp is creatively diverging.
- causi 4y agoMusic is so obscenely post-scarcity I don't see how anybody has anything to complain about. There's so much you can listen to exactly the kind you want until the end of time.
- echelon 4y agoAnd with AI/ML, we're soon to be creating more music in any given month than all of human history to this point [1]. It's going to be very interesting to see what fates await the RIAA, labels, industry awards, streaming giants, top musicians, legacy musicians, and small artists. I think each will navigate the upcoming AI future in a slightly different way. New types of entities will emerge, and many old players will no longer exist in the same shape or form as they do today. If at all. [1] (I'm furiously working on this, and I know a lot of others are too.)
- osigurdson 4y agoSuggest optimizing for quality/marketability. There is no shortage of music but hits are rare.
- echelon 4y agoThose are but gradients!
- raydiatian 4y agoFuriously
- echelon 4y agoIt's past midnight and I'm in my office, as I am every night. Though you may have me since I'm sneaking off to HN to comment. I need to set noprocrast.
- osigurdson 4y agoI'm sure they are but something will change and longer songs will get more popular eventually. Trends eventually break.
- sergiomattei 4y agoClearly hasn’t listened to 7 Minute Freestyle by 21 Savage.
- jathanit 4y agoKing Gizzard and Lizard Wizard released a 30 minute album with just two songs this year. There are plenty of artists releasing longer songs nowadays if you look for it
- noufalibrahim 4y agoThis reminds me of a paper written in '77 by Donald Knuth about the algorithmic complexity/information content of songs and how it's been reducing using "devices" like the chorus etc. Basically, the idea is that due to compressibility, you can remember a song of length N by remembering just a fraction of N words. I suppose it's an in-joke of some kind but given that it's from Knuth, there's probably something to learn from it anyway. There's also something philosophical about it. I used to memorise poetry because I enjoyed reciting it out loud dramatically. They were long and complex unlike modern songs which can be easily memorised and hummed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Complexity_of_Songs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Complexity_of_Songs
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- raydiatian 4y agoThe LA music machine is the definition of WYSIWIG. Garbage in, garbage out.
- sankalp22 4y agoMusic influences the subconscious, has power to change the psyche. Future gen is getting weak in terms of long hour doing things which includes procreation to death,my wife is not happy if i make love for 15 minutes, atleast it should be 30 minutes, so I do 31 minutes including the talking thing for 16 minutes. My times, buckedhead avg stroke was about 10 minutes, on reels they compressed it to 30secs
- photochemsyn 4y agoMuch better discussion here: https://www.musicianwave.com/whats-the-average-length-of-a-song-year/ https://www.musicianwave.com/whats-the-average-length-of-a-s... > "The 45 rpm record came into the scene in 1949 and replaced the 78 rpm record. This fact alone isn’t very relevant to the average length of a song, as both formats could hold “around” 3 minutes of music. However, the continuing popularity of the 45 rpm record may help to explain why hits under 4 minutes are still the norm today."
- Agentlien 4y agoI find this fascinating, largely because it's so alien to me. I'm only tangentially aware of the TikTok culture. At work we have a channel where people share music they like and what they are currently listening to. It's a very wide variety and most does not seem to follow this trend. Personally, my favourite album of this year is "The End, So Far" by Slipknot. 12 tracks ranging from 3:23 to 6:16 with an average of 4:48. Last year's favourite was "Senjutsu" by Iron Maiden. Ten tracks ranging from 4:03 to 12:38 with an average of 8:11. Several of those tracks have an intro longer than the tracks this article discusses.