It’s hard not to notice the amount of awfully short songs recently, especially in pop music, it’s difficult to come by a song that’s over three minutes long. Since 1990, the average lengths of songs has been steadily decreasing, from four minutes to under three. Some may chalk it up to short attention spans, but the truth is that there’s a lot more behind it.
We know by now that with technological advancements come change, and music is obviously no exception to this. Artists used to be limited to what would fit on a vinyl record, establishing the common three-to-five-minute length. A 45-rpm single would only be able to hold five minutes of music; any more than that and the sound quality would take a hit.
In order to shorten songs so that they could make accommodations for advertisements, radio edits became more common. However, some artists were able to push limits, simply because they were famous enough and had the power to. For example, the infamous Hey Jude by the Beatles clocks in at just over seven minutes, but radio stations would never shorten the song because of the influence they had.
When CDs rolled around, they didn’t have the same technical restrictions that vinyls did, so the average song length peaked at four minutes and 21 seconds in the 90s. Now that streaming platforms have become mainstream and physical media is becoming less common, the way that artists make revenue has changed. For example, Spotify only gives royalties if a listener tunes in for at least 30 seconds, increasing the need to immediately capture your attention. Streaming platforms’ monetization model also rewards short songs because shorter songs encourage more replays.
Now enter TikTok. Rising to prominence during the pandemic, TikTok has vastly changed the landscape of music. The app encourages users to make short videos with 15-30 second song snippets. Because of the short nature of most TikToks and the fact that the app incites users to keep scrolling, attention span has decreased. One of the most popular songs of the summer in 2023 was NewJeans’s Super Shy. Clocking in at two minutes and 34 seconds, the song is the longest one on their EP Get Up. In fact, half of Spotify’s hit songs of 2023 are under three minutes. Recently, PinkPantheress shed some light on why her songs are so short in an interview with ABC News: “A song doesn’t need to be longer than two minutes 30 [seconds] in my opinion. We don’t need to repeat a verse. We don’t need to have a bridge. We don’t need it! We don’t need a long outro.”
Because of this, pop songwriting has fundamentally been changed. Now, the focus is on writing a catchy hook or an earworm that can be repeated easily to maximize revenue. Very few pop songs have a third chorus or a bridge, and music labels are using TikTok as a crutch to make a successful song. Since TikTok has become the easiest path to virality, it feels like most pop songs are structured with TikTok in mind, rather than putting out a body of work and letting the music speak for itself. When a song goes viral on TikTok, most people will only know the 15 second snippet, so why put any effort into the rest of the song?
While average song length was historically limited by technological capabilities of the time, we’re now in an era where it’s determined by social media algorithms and streaming services’ monetization models. While music can never truly be objective, it does feel like current pop music has lost the sparkle that older pop songs once had. Â