Pop songs will get shorter on average by the end of this decade due to faltering attention spans and “ skip culture ” on streaming services, experts say.
Music lovers’ attention has fallen from 12 seconds to eight since 2000, according to research from Samsung.
As a result, it’s more important than ever for musicians to attract listeners early, keep the overall length of a song short, and “ front load choruses. ”
On music streaming services such as Spotify, artists don’t get royalties for a song playing if the listener doesn’t get past the first 30 seconds.
By 2030, therefore, it will be more important than ever for songs to quickly advance to the next song on an album before listeners get bored, experts say.
Pop songs are getting shorter and longer songs less popular, research shows, choruses are also getting earlier in an effort to keep listeners from skipping
Our attention span has dropped from 12 seconds to eight since 2000 and our song skipping culture has sprung up on streaming services like Spotify
“Our attention span has dropped from 12 seconds to eight since 2000, and in response, our song skipping culture has emerged,” Samsung said in a blog post.
‘At the end of the decade, it is predicted that the average song will last a maximum of two minutes, easing the old three-minute pop song cliché.’
Thanks to the slick and accessible user interfaces of streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music, it has never been easier for music fans to skip to the next track.
But this causes a headache for artists to hold a user’s attention long enough, making the wider music industry super competitive.
By 2030, this will manifest as short, catchy songs with early choruses, meaning subtle ballads and brooding instrumentals could be left behind in the streaming race, Samsung suggests.
Today, 80 percent of the 10 most-streamed songs on Spotify – including the most-streamed (Ed Sheeran’s Shape of You) – are shorter than four minutes.
According to research last year by British record label Ostereo, the length of the average number one song has decreased by almost a fifth over the past two decades.
Ostereo analyzed the UK charts and Spotify’s most-streamed songs since its launch in 2006 and found a consistent shortening of song lengths between 1998 and 2018.
Of the 10 most-streamed songs on Spotify, 80 percent – including the most-streamed (Shape of You by Ed Sheeran, photo) – are less than four minutes
The UK number one average in 1998 was four minutes 16 seconds, it reported, while the 2019 average was three minutes and 3 seconds – one minute and 13 seconds shorter.
In 1998, 12 of the 32 number one singles were longer than four minutes 30 seconds and four were longer than five minutes, including Madonna’s Frozen (six minutes 12 seconds) and Oasis’ All Around The World (nine minutes 38 seconds).
But in 2018, no original UK number one lasted more than four minutes.
The streaming platform algorithms proposed by Ostereo influence song length and encourage artists to record shorter songs.
Since more people skip before a song ends, streaming algorithms can see this as a signal of dissatisfaction.
They are therefore less likely to recommend a longer song that has been skipped to other users, which means it is less likely to become popular.
That means something as trivial as having an outro that drags on for too long could underperform a song, according to the record label.
“We see two trends emerging here at the same time: the average hit is getting shorter, while longer songs are less likely to become hits,” said Howard Murphy, founder of Ostereo.
Record label expert believes shorter listener attention spans and streaming platform algorithms drive the trend towards shorter songs
Now that artists don’t rely solely on being played by the radio to hit their charts, they are less constrained by the traditional requirement to keep their song close to three three minutes.
“So in theory they can make their songs as long or as short as they want.”
Short pop songs are nothing new, however – Buddy Holly and the Beatles were early suppliers of a successful pop single that lasted no more than two minutes as an art form.
But while streaming, songs can get shorter for arguably the wrong reasons: financial instead of artistically.
Samsung’s study was conducted in collaboration with London-based company The Future Laboratory as part of a broader study of our listening behavior in 2030.
According to their findings, nearly a quarter of millennials are listening to an extra five hours a day this year, in part due to lockdown.
Compared to 2019, nearly a quarter listen to more than five hours more music a day and more than a third (34 percent) admit their favorite playlists are keeping them excited during a tough 2020, indicating how many people rely on music more than ever earlier, ”said Samsung.
The other predictions include a new era of ‘hyper-experiential’ and immersive music videos via virtual reality (VR) that ‘transport the audience to different worlds’.
By 2030, music fans will be able to ‘touch’ their favorite songs, let their dogs sing along and create charts right from their smartphone