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 of longer play times in the 1960s and 1970s, allowing bands to create longer singles and albums. Despite this, the average hit still clocks in under the 4 minute mark.
Nowadays however, it’s becoming more and more common to see songs under the 3 minute mark. From 2013 to 2018, the average song length fell from 3:50 minutes to 3:30 minutes, and it’s only been getting shorter now in 2021. What happened?
Why are songs getting shorter?
There are a few plausible reasons. For one, the average human attention span is much shorter, and songs need to get to the point now more than ever in order to retain the listener. This means no more 45 second intros or long-winded guitar solos in the middle.
Another highly plausible, more technical reason is that an 8 minute song pays out the same royalties as a 2 minute song on streaming platforms such as Spotify and Apple music, all things being equal. The minimum time required for you to receive a payout is 30 seconds, and there are no additional payments after that, no matter how long the recording is. As you may have guessed, this incentivizes songwriters to write many short songs rather than a few longer songs.
Case study #1 : Mainstream music
A perfect example of this phenomenon is Justin Bieber. If we look at his very first album from 2010, My World 2.0, we can see that it has 10 songs on it, the shortest being 3:17 minutes long and the longest being 4:24 minutes long. Fast forward to his most recent 2021 album, Justice, and there are 16 songs, the shortest being only 2:29 minutes long (not including the interlude), and the longest being 3:32 minutes long. In fact, out of the 16 songs, 10 of them clock in at under 3 minutes long.
Case study #2 : Less common genres
This trend hasn’t just appeared in mainstream music; we’re even seeing it in less common genres, such as ambient music. Let’s take a look at ambient music artist The Solfeggio Peace Orchestra. Their first track ever released, “Meditation on 528 Hz Healing Cycles” is 45:17 minutes long. This is impressive, but despite the song being almost the exact same length as Justin Bieber’s 16-song album, the artist will only be paid out for one stream, whether the listener played it for 30 seconds or the full 45 minutes. This is crazy, and one would think that Spotify should have some infrastructure in place to pay out royalties incrementally throughout long pieces of music when listeners reach certain “listening checkpoints”, but unfortunately that isn’t how it works. It’s much easier for Spotify to simply pay out royalties at the 30 second mark, regardless of song length.
The Solfeggio Peace Orchestra got wiser to this, because in subsequent albums they adopted the shorter song, longer album approach. Now, their albums contain 25-30 songs on average, with a song length of about 1:30-2:30 minutes each. These albums are about the same length as “Meditation on 527 Hz Healing Cycles”, but now the artist is getting paid for 30 streams instead of one.
Should we start writing shorter songs?
If writing shorter songs in greater quantities makes sense for you as an artist and doesn’t compromise your artist vision, then go for it. However, don’t feel pressured to do this because it potentially offers a few extra bucks from your streams. Bruno Mars’ 2016 album 24k Magic is already 5 years old and has only 9 tracks, yet it’s still on heavy rotation because it’s great music. The takeaway here is to still prioritize quality over quantity, because an album of 9 great songs will beat an album of 17 boring songs. If the short song, long album approach aligns with your artist vision and brand though, then this may be a “hack” to squeeze a few more pennies out of Spotify’s algorithm.