Why are songs getting shorter and shorter?

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Thanks to early recording technology, the average pop song today is 3 to 4 minutes long. In the younger days of vinyl records, musicians could only fit 3 minutes of music on a 45 RPM record, also known as the “single”. This was the standard format that radio stations accepted for music submissions, and so if artists wanted their music on the radio, it had to be 3 minutes long. Thankfully, vinyl records became capable […]

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Should you use fadeouts or hard endings in your songs?

As songwriters, most of our energy is focused on writing a great chorus, verse, and bridge, but the beginnings and especially endings of our songs seem to come as an afterthought in the writing process. One of the biggest questions people ask when figuring out the ending to their songs is “should I use a fadeout, or should I use a hard stop?” It seems like a simple question, but there are many factors to take

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How to Keep Your Listener’s Attention, Despite Spotify’s 50% Song Skip Rate

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A fascinating blog called Music Machinery did an in-depth analysis of skip rates on Spotify in 2014, and although this study is 7 years old, the data has only become more relevant in 2021 as attention spans continue to shrink. Here are a few statistics from the article:→ Songs have a 24% chance of being skipped in the first 5 seconds→ Songs have a 29% chance of being skipped in the first 10 seconds→ Songs

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