As Streaming Booms, Songs Are Getting Faster

Megalith

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Creatives already have enough to worry about thanks to corporate interests, but now they have to deal with the effects of technology and how it is killing attention spans. Some suggest that the massive catalogs and immediacy of streaming services is resulting in music that is deliberately condensed to hit the best notes as quickly possible. Vocals, for instance, seem to come in a lot earlier. As someone who only listens to movie scores, which are instrumentals basically immune to commercial bastardization, I can’t say whether this phenomenon is actually true.

In 1986, it took roughly 23 seconds before the voice began on the average hit song. In 2015, vocals came in after about five seconds, a drop of 78%, [Hubert Leveille Gauvin] found. [He] linked the trend to the rapid rise of Spotify and other streaming sites that give listeners instant access to millions of songs. A 2014 study of Spotify listening habits found that 21% of songs get skipped over in the first five seconds. As an example of the shift, Leveille Gauvin pointed to Starship’s 1987 hit “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now,” which takes 22 seconds for the vocals to begin and more than a minute for the chorus. On the 2015 hit “Sugar” by Maroon 5, Adam Levine gets to the point within seven seconds with the lines, “I’m hurting baby / I’m broken down.”
 
What I can't stand about modern music is that I just keep hearing the autotuner in it. I can't listen to anything that's made today without hearing the damn thing, it's always there; making the vocals sound just too damn perfect. Pitch perfect, smooth, no irregularities or imperfections in the voice. It's like it doesn't even sound human anymore. Why do we even have singers then? We can just have the computer sing which is basically what's happening.
 
Good, I just don't have that much free time for 14minute songs anymore haha, and when most of longer songs is just filler, might as well cut that out.
 
On a similar note - Blur's Song 2, the aptly-name 2-minute-long song that still receives heavy rotation on rock/alternative stations, sounds (to me, anyway) like it has been slowed down. I have never timed it or anything but I swear that after hearing this song who knows how many times in the last 20 years that my local station has actually slowed it down.
 
Is this really directly linked to streaming? I think there are many reasons. I will admit that I have on many occasions, when listening to older songs, wondered why there are often long periods of obnoxiously slow guitar solo or similar at the beginning.

I think that a lot of it is due to the fact that when you listen to vinyl, you tend to listen to an entire record (or at least an entire side) at once. Even with a cassette it's a pain to rewind or fast-forward to an individual song in the middle. It's more about the album than the song in these cases. These days it's more about the individual song. That isn't a result of streaming though, it's a change that has been happening for the last 30 years and was already mostly complete by the time CD's became common.
 
Then why listen at all? This seems counter intuitive.

Because I don't think in binary. Just because I prefer something shorter, doesn't mean i should stop enjoying any of it.

I like my chicken fried, so if i can't have it fried, i should not each chicken at all? lol

Don't post just to post, think before talking please.
 
Is it due to streaming or the type of music?

Some music doesn't really need an 'intro'.

Wife listens to top 40 BS and I can't stand it. I've heard several songs 4 times in a single hour.

Is this really directly linked to streaming? I think there are many reasons. I will admit that I have on many occasions, when listening to older songs, wondered why there are often long periods of obnoxiously slow guitar solo or similar at the beginning.

I think that a lot of it is due to the fact that when you listen to vinyl, you tend to listen to an entire record (or at least an entire side) at once. It's more about the album than the song. These days it's more about the individual song. That isn't a result of streaming though, it's a change that has been happening for the last 30 years and was already mostly complete by the time CD's became common.

Saw this mid-post. :) I like the idea that they are making 'songs' rather than albums. It's more about the single than it is the entire album.

Also, it was something that was brought up when my favorite genre was around (grunge). The single vs. the album. I'll just have to blame hair bands for that, too. :) (I like those old 80's hair bands).
 
Because I don't think in binary. Just because I prefer something shorter, doesn't mean i should stop enjoying any of it.

I like my chicken fried, so if i can't have it fried, i should not each chicken at all? lol

Don't post just to post, think before talking please.

I did think before posting - I would rather hear a song as an artist intended, not something chopped down to appease the ever falling attention span of folks like yourself. But glad you are happy with your 2 minute jingles.
 
I did think before posting - I would rather hear a song as an artist intended, not something chopped down to appease the ever falling attention span of folks like yourself. But glad you are happy with your 2 minute jingles.

And it is perfectly okay that we prefer different things. This is how art is intended.
 
Saw this mid-post. :) I like the idea that they are making 'songs' rather than albums. It's more about the single than it is the entire album.
.
Singles always cater to the lowest common denominator. Meaning they're always the most mainstream / poppy (is that even a thing? and I don't mean poppy seeds)
So I prefer that they made albums always. That's where the real art is found. Where the artist knows you already want to listen to the music so they don't have to win you over in the first 30 seconds.
 
And it is perfectly okay that we prefer different things. This is how art is intended.

I think more or less what I'm getting at is that the shortening of songs has nothing to do with art and more to do with getting wider airplay to make money. This is pushed by the industry obviously, which I think is a shitty way to influence music.
 
What I can't stand about modern music is that I just keep hearing the autotuner in it. I can't listen to anything that's made today without hearing the damn thing, it's always there; making the vocals sound just too damn perfect. Pitch perfect, smooth, no irregularities or imperfections in the voice. It's like it doesn't even sound human anymore. Why do we even have singers then? We can just have the computer sing which is basically what's happening.


Not many of them have any talent, which makes you wonder why they are "stars" in the first place.
 
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I think more or less what I'm getting at is that the shortening of songs has nothing to do with art and more to do with getting wider airplay to make money. This is pushed by the industry obviously, which I think is a shitty way to influence music.

agreed. If the companies making the music decide to make condensed songs, hard to really argue what they may or may not have done in a different world. But if requirements start being set by services, then yes that is shitty.

Though it really has always been pushed, album fillers always existed as you can't sell an album with 4 amazing songs for standard price but you can sell one with 4 amazing songs and 8 fillers.

Really at the core, the industry has always been terrible for music.
 
Singles always cater to the lowest common denominator. Meaning they're always the most mainstream / poppy (is that even a thing? and I don't mean poppy seeds)
So I prefer that they made albums always. That's where the real art is found.

In this sense, what's the difference between a single and an individual song in an album? There are plenty of albums where I only like maybe one or two songs. In most cases those songs were never singles, they are just good songs that are able to stand alone. If they were made to be more a part of the overall album rather than songs that can stand on their own, then instead of being a shit album with 1 or 2 good songs, it would simply be a shit album. I don't see how that would be an improvement.
 
In this sense, what's the difference between a single and an individual song in an album? There are plenty of albums where I only like maybe one or two songs. In most cases those songs were never singles, they are just good songs that are able to stand alone. If they were made to be more a part of the overall album rather than songs that can stand on their own, then instead of being a shit album with 1 or 2 good songs, it would simply be a shit album. I don't see how that would be an improvement.
Singles are made for widespread consumption. They're made to win new people over. Album songs are made for the people that are already fans of a particular outfit. They can take more liberties there, because they have the trust of the listener. But sure they don't need to make 15 songs they can make just one or two album songs and release them over streaming services, but those still won't be singles in this regard.

But I have to say if a band relases an album with only 1-2 good songs on it, then that's a shitty band. The ones I listen to (granted there aren't many) I always tend to enjoy almost all tracks on every one of their albums I purchase. In some cases there are one or two fillers that I don't like but that's it.
 
Not many of them have any talent, which makes you wonder why they are "stars" in the first place.
I'm in my thirties now and I remember growing up listening to a lot of what my parents listened to. Sure, their voices weren't perfect sounding but it gave them a sort of authenticity that's seriously lacking in today's music.

Then there's the fact that everything has to be a "pop" song. Happy. Cheery. Up-beat. Something you can dance to. Well I don't care about any of that, I want some easy listening stuff that I can sit back in my chair and listen to in peace. And then there's the fact that everything is "electronic" in the sense that there's no real instruments, it's all keyboards and shit; no real instruments.

I don't know how I found it on YouTube but I found a video by UB40 that happened to be playing alongside a full orchestra, yes... a full orchestra complete with violins, trumpets, flutes, trombones, and everything else you would find in a typical orchestra. It was perfect man. Complexities in sound I've not heard in years.
 
That's a stupid article and not a very good study in my opinion.

My guess? Back in the 70's, 80's, people were into jam bands who did psychedelics.

These days are not like those days. Equating start of the vocals on a given track as being the 'start of the song' and concluding that this short 'intro' duration means a faster song is outright stupid.
 
Spotify and other streaming sites must have also been influencing the top songs of 1964 since their average length before singing was 7.5 seconds..

1 I Want to Hold Your Hand - The Beatles (7 sec)
2 She Loves You - The Beatles (1 sec)
3 Hello, Dolly! - Louis Armstrong (12 sec)
4 Oh, Pretty Woman - Roy Orbison (14 sec)
5 I Get Around - The Beach Boys (1 sec)
6 Everybody Loves Somebody - Dean Martin (7 sec)
7 My Guy - Mary Wells (10 sec)
8 We'll Sing in the Sunshine - Gale Garnett (8 sec)
9 Last Kiss - J. Frank Wilson and the Cavaliers (11 sec)
10 Where Did Our Love Go - The Supremes (5 sec)

Of course all these songs were just over 2 minutes in length so not a lot of time for long intros, and an extremely small sample size but probably fairly accurate of the rest of the 1964 hit parade. Perhaps the advent of the 1970s FM album rock and the added length of available recording time on CDs in the 80s (from around 40 minutes on an LP to 74 on a CD) contributed to the lengthening of when the singing started as songs naturally got longer. Maybe now the extreme number of choices we have in finding places to listen to music is driving back down the length for when the singing starts.

Not surprised that number is shrinking since the length of musical introductions to TV shows has also been shrinking. Sure, Game of Thrones has the time to crank out a 2+ minute intro because there are no commercials but everybody outside of HBO/Netflix/Amazon has to deal with fitting in commercials within a 30 minute space.. and content is the thing that gets cut out!! So back in the 1960s with Star Trek or Mission: IMPOSSIBLE having 50 minutes for each show, it could use 1 minutes of that for the intro. Half hours shows like Brady Bunch, Happy Days and Cheers still had 24+ minutes for each show so again a 1 minute intro could be used. Even in the early 90s, FRIENDS had to time for a 45 second intro. Now, many shows hardly have any intro music making the Big Bang Theory's 20 second intro seem long in comparision. Can read more about TV show length over time on a post I made a couple of years ago (grab the popcorn while reading it). Kind of makes me wish we had 2+ minute TV show intros again like The Hudson Brothers Razzle Dazzel Show.. what other show would have together both the voice of Optimus Prime AND The Unknown Comic!!



As Gary Vaynerchuck says, "Marketers ruin everything"!!
 
... As someone who only listens to movie scores, which are instrumentals basically immune to commercial bastardization, I can’t say whether this phenomenon is actually true.

Modern movie scores are being bastardized by the studios like never before unfortunately. The stuff in the below video about recycling songs in films is super depressing.

 
I'm in my thirties now and I remember growing up listening to a lot of what my parents listened to. Sure, their voices weren't perfect sounding but it gave them a sort of authenticity that's seriously lacking in today's music.

Then there's the fact that everything has to be a "pop" song. Happy. Cheery. Up-beat. Something you can dance to. Well I don't care about any of that, I want some easy listening stuff that I can sit back in my chair and listen to in peace. And then there's the fact that everything is "electronic" in the sense that there's no real instruments, it's all keyboards and shit; no real instruments.

I don't know how I found it on YouTube but I found a video by UB40 that happened to be playing alongside a full orchestra, yes... a full orchestra complete with violins, trumpets, flutes, trombones, and everything else you would find in a typical orchestra. It was perfect man. Complexities in sound I've not heard in years.

Try Triple J's top 100. Usually a good mix, and he puts in a few live recordings with instrumentation.
 
Is this really directly linked to streaming? I think there are many reasons. I will admit that I have on many occasions, when listening to older songs, wondered why there are often long periods of obnoxiously slow guitar solo or similar at the beginning.

I think that a lot of it is due to the fact that when you listen to vinyl, you tend to listen to an entire record (or at least an entire side) at once. Even with a cassette it's a pain to rewind or fast-forward to an individual song in the middle. It's more about the album than the song in these cases. These days it's more about the individual song. That isn't a result of streaming though, it's a change that has been happening for the last 30 years and was already mostly complete by the time CD's became common.


Nail on head.

There is a lot of music out there to listen to and I think many people are looking for what they know, not for what they don't recognize, I know I do on Sirius. So just because I'm flipping off songs doesn't mean I need something that will grab my attention quickly. I'm looking for what I know. Besides, usually when I roll up on a song it's already been playing for awhile anyway. And I'm old so the newest stuff I listen to is the B52s and some anarchist themed group, Rage against the Machine, whoever they are.
 
Most of my music consumption in the 80s was via radio when DJs like to talk over the start of songs as an intro. I wonder if producers/song writers factored this in ( or were the DJs just reacting to these longer intros). With the change from radio driven sales and listening it would make sense to get rid of this "wasted" piece.
 
Modern movie scores are being bastardized by the studios like never before unfortunately. The stuff in the below video about recycling songs in films is super depressing.


Awesome video, reminds me of the one on EC about memorable video game music.

 
I'll admit I didn't read the article, but to say that songs are shorter or have shorter intros is likely only true for single oriented music and that's often been like that. There are plenty of songs in the past with short intros. The reality is that singles have generally been short and they'd often cut the intro. My guess is this has at least as much to do with radio as streaming.

Personally I like longer songs...and guess what folks? If you like that, there's plenty of it available.
 
In 1986, it took roughly 23 seconds before the voice began on the average hit song. In 2015, vocals came in after about five seconds, a drop of 78%,

Pop music has always been lowest common denominator, and 1986 was just as bad as 2015 in that regard. Just look up the top hits of 1986. It's mostly very cheesy and vapid, just like pop music today. The longer intros in 80s pop music was so often just simplistic drum beats (sometimes not even real) with lame casio keyboard synth sounds over the top. The only way it was better is the lack of autotune that has completely ruined all vocals in modern pop music.

I know it's a matter of taste but IMO there is a lot more good music being made now than in 1986, because the underground/niche genres have a lot more artists, and it's easier than ever to actually discover that stuff.
 
70's & 80's punk and speed metal were almost always short and fast. And sweet.:banghead:

Everything old is new again.
 
When there's nobody actually playing an instrument there's no real reason for an intro.
People said that about electric guitar and synthesizers (going all the way back to the late 60s). All these types of statements say is that you're old (and FYI, I'm probably older than you). I know Jazz musicians who love synths, loops and sampling.
 
I'm sure everyones grandparents had some fun things to say about the music you're parents were listening to

just as everyone's parents had/has something to say about the music you listened to

as everyone, including me, has to say something of the younger generations taste in music

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wonder what that has to do with streaming or short attention spans



I'm glad I don't have to listen to the same garbage song a dozen times in an hour on the abomination that is called radio
like I had to 15 years ago
or 20 and so on
and then there's traffic news, news, prank calls, winning stuff if you call and all other kind of garbage I had to endure (and is still on air, ugh terrible)

streaming and internet radio let me choose what I want to hear
there's a niche for literally everyone and everything


hell instead of being that one old guy complaining why no one is talking any more on a bus, why not be like the other old ones who play fruit ninja on the bus

also

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I happened to be listening to The Doors - Break on through when I opened this thread and singing starts at 9 seconds. I don't need a drawn out intro on my songs to enjoy them, not in the least. Nothing will beat Eruption in that regard though IMO.
 
Anything to get the Radio DJ to stop talking over a song faster is fine with me.
 
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