I could listen to the chorus of Jack Harlow’s song ‘First Class’, which hit over four million radio impressions and nearly 55 million streams in its first week alone, forever. But, in fact, I listened for only 2 minutes and 53 seconds. And I have to keep hitting the replay button.

Several popular music tracks released in recent months finish in under three minutes.

Short-form content on streaming platforms such as TikTok and YouTube has been on the rise in the past few years and is presently dominating the social media jungle. Although such content may seem light-hearted and harmless at first glance, it is profoundly influencing the work that artists create.

UCLA researchers analyzing Spotify data found that the average song duration steadily increased between 1930 (3 minutes, 15 seconds) and 1990 (4 minutes, 19 seconds).

Since its peak in 1990, the average streamable song duration sharply decreased, and in 2020 it shot down to 3 minutes, 17 seconds — almost the same length as in 1930.

Social Media and Short-form Content

“With the rise of TikTok and other social media platforms like this, people’s attention spans are just shorter nowadays,” says Michele Lu, a Popular Music major at USC specializing in songwriting who dabbles in alternative, indie and pop genres. When TikTok first launched in 2016, videos were limited to a mere 15 seconds. Lu adds, “On TikTok, you get bored after a 15-second video.”

Joshua Furtado-Mendes, a classical voice finalist at the Royal Academy of Music in London, England, agrees and thinks that the trend in the shortening of pop songs is a reflection of society.

Pop songs are shrinking because of deteriorating attention spans, spurred on mostly by advancements in technology. Even an industry as robust as music is being swayed by the powers of technology and social media platforms.

This trend probably also affects lesser-known artists differently than it does big artists, potentially posing an obligation or a creative challenge.

Billboard magazine’s latest year-end ‘Hot 100’ list of the best-performing songs, published last December in 2022, shows that half of the top 20 songs in the US end in under three minutes, including five of which are in the top 10 ranked tracks.

The shortest, ‘Stay’ by The Kid LAROI and Justin Bieber, comes in at the 2-minute, 21-second mark and is the third best-performing track of last year, amassing over 2.2 billion streams.

Meanwhile, the Billboard year-end ‘Global 200’ (non-US) list of 2022 shows a similar trend with eight of the top 20 songs ending in under three minutes — again, half or four of which comprise the top 10.

“I think the shortening of these very popular top 100 Billboard-type songs comes as a byproduct of songwriters following a very specific formula in order to make these songs in the studios,” says Lu. She adds that the formula especially for pop songs generally follows the form of verse, pre-chorus and chorus with a potential bridge.

It was around the early 2010s that bridges (a musical passage connecting two sections) began to be eliminated as well, leaving just verses and choruses. The traditional structure was completely eviscerated by this point.

The total duration of top hits has tended to shrink gradually over the past decade. Interestingly enough, none of the top 20 Billboard Hot 100 hits a decade ago fell under the three-minute mark, as the infographic shows. Some even exceed four minutes, like the topper ‘Somebody That I Used to Know’ by Gotye featuring Kimbra.

Meanwhile, Billboard’s 2017 list exhibited three songs (in the top 20) under three minutes, including ‘HUMBLE.’ by Kendrick Lamar. This ranking also hints at a larger polarity in song duration.

One of the latest artists rising out of the music scene into mainstream pop culture is the drill rapper Ice Spice. She was kickstarted by her music going viral on TikTok. Almost all of the tracks on her debut extended play (EP) released earlier this year linger around the two-minute mark, with the shortest ‘Munch (Feelin’ U)’ — the kick-starter which went viral on TikTok — clocking in at just 1 minute, 44 seconds.

‘Munch (Feelin’ U)’ is Ice Spice’s biggest solo hit. It kicks off with a rapid tempo of 166 beats per minute — two or three times your heart rate — and a skittish beat that keeps listeners on the edge. Right away Ice Spice raps the catchy lines of the chorus to reel listeners into a frenzy. Those quotable, TikTok-hit-worthy lyrics caused the perfect storm online and left earworms (a memorable tune stuck in the brain) for months.

Before the dawn of social media were twentieth-century broadcast networks, in particular radio stations.

Early radio performances were live affairs where a live orchestra broadcast from a soundstage. This was the extent of technological capabilities at the time. Recorded music of a high quality was not possible until post-World War II.

Amplitude modulation (AM) radio interspersed music with other mediums, such as broadcasts and plays. It was quite restrictive with limited bandwidth, so songs could not be too long. Accordingly, records mimicked the length of pop songs which were tailored to fit such radio shows.

Surprisingly, even in these digital times, we are returning to the roots of rock in the 1950s, when rock musicians catapulted straight into songs.

In the early 1960s, pop songs were generally less than two and a half minutes long. Not even the Beatles, “the progenitors of today’s pop music” according to Brian Malouf, a professor at the USC Thornton School of Music, “bucked that trend” forever. The band’s debut single ‘Love Me Do’, released in 1962 in the UK, clocks in at only 2 minutes, 22 seconds.

The origins of longer-form popular music had its birth in the late 1960s and early 1970s as a complement to frequency modulation (FM), a new radio format where signals travel further and produce higher-quality sound.

British musicians — such as the Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Who — “spearhead[ed] this more freeform version of popular music”, says Malouf. For instance, The Rolling Stones’ 1968 hit ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ powers through multiple choruses for an epic 6 minutes, 18 seconds.

In the 1980s, 1990s and part of the 2000s, FM and AM radio stations encouraged music makers to add 15- to 20-second instrumental introductions to tracks to give DJs background music to speak over. These introductions became a staple of commercial music.

Catchy Attention Grabbers

Consumer attention spans are dwindling with the influx of content in today’s Age of Information, and all sorts of content are competing for it.

Since the rise of streaming platforms in the early 2010s, consumers have been listening to music mostly through browsable streaming platforms. While sifting through different tracks, the first few seconds are crucial for listeners to decide whether they like it or will skip it.

Accordingly, artists yearn to create and showcase earworm-worthy segments that would grab people’s attention. “That sort of began this shrinkage of song length”, says Malouf. Modern music can either grab the listener sooner or, equally, turn them off quicker.

Enticing listeners into music used to be the job of record player album covers in the olden days. Today, musicians feel the pressure to create catchy, quotable lines that are worthy of becoming a sticky earworm that might, in turn, inevitably go viral online.

Lu says, “Major songwriters that write for top artists have been more conscientious of writing really condensed, but memorable and singable songs.” She says that it is an entirely intentional plan, and believes that there is merit in that.

Conversely, as a music producer and mixer, Malouf wonders if songs are becoming too short. He questions an unnamed recording artist, “Why are you in such a hurry to get out of that song?”

Furtado-Mendes, who specializes in operatic genres, imagines that the shortening trend does indeed affect composers in the modern era and composers of contemporary music. From conversations with composers on his program, he notes that “they feel the urge to grab someone's attention”, even in short bursts of time. “But so long as you've got that person's attention, that's the most important factor,” says Furtado-Mendes.

However, in terms of classical music as opposed to pop, Furtado-Mendes says that due to the antiquated nature of the compositions he performs having been written by deceased composers, “It's affecting the classical music world, but not on a massive scale”. He adds, “I think it’s going to be affecting the way that composers write music going forward.”

A Creative Challenge

One major issue with the shortening trend is its challenge for musicians to convey their messages quickly, knowing listeners won’t linger for long.

Lu acknowledges that although shorter music doesn’t necessarily set her back, time limits undoubtedly add more stress on what to include inside the song. “That just takes a lot more planning”, says Lu.

Echoing similar sentiments, Furtado-Mendes questions, “What can I effectively communicate without going too far or not giving enough?”

Producing a shorter song does, however, pose opportunities for creativity. “In a way, it happened to help me because for the songs that I wrote when I was younger, they had a lot of repetition, a lot of fluff in them,” adds Lu. “Now it’s just a more condensed, concise version of a stronger song that honestly just could have been shorter. It was helpful to me in that way.”

There is a strategic, almost mechanical writing process that several songwriters follow in Hollywood to engineer pop hits. Lu comments that although it is a skill musicians learn, “There’s magic in not knowing exactly what form to follow and not having this plan that you always go through with.”

Either way, the jury is still out according to Lu.