Are songs shorter in order to game the streaming revenue? Noticed a lot of songs are under 3 minutes, some under 2 minutes. Anecdotally I recall songs between between 3-4+ minutes a decade ago

Jamie • /devrel @ /reservoir • /bicycling • /chicago • /djs • home @ /chicagolife

yes! 30 seconds is the minimum length for Spotify payouts and with pushes to crank out more for the algo, it’s changed creation & distribution tactics… all for the metrics

In the streaming era, more is more. Artists need 1300-1500 streams to earn the equivalent of an album sale. We are also in the TikTok era of music discovery, where the most meme-able 15 seconds of a song can matter more than the full track. This could be leading to shorter songs as well

I think it's more about our attention span. not only listeners but artists have less concentration too. this causes the new songs' shortening and the streamings amount is growing automatically