thoughts?

i used to say this a bit more ironically, but now i definitely mean it

vests by d2lta is a good example of a song in this range i really like

  • Gosplan14_the_Third [none/use name]
    ·
    edit-2
    9 months ago

    Not really. 1-2 minute songs were also common before the 1960s, like you said because of physical records. For example, the longest song on Elvis' first album from 1956 is 2:43 long, while his 1969 "From Elvis in Memphis" has 2:35 for the shortest song.

    33 revolutions-per-minute LongPlay vinyls can house roughly 22 minutes of music on each side, and the concept of an album was rare until the late 50s/early 60s. Many 1930s releases etc. had one song per vinyl, and ran at very high speeds like 78 rpm.

    Depending on the artists' intentions, you could have like eight two-minute songs, like for example on the 1982 punk record Milo Goes to College by the Descendants, or have a 22 minute long song on one side as was not uncommon in progressive rock or prog electronic or in the 1970s more in general. For example, Autobahn by Kraftwerk.

    With the advent of CDs, that have managed to replace the Vinyl as the main data carrying device for music starting in the late 1980s, the time restriction was lifted in favor of a data restriction. Longer albums became a possibility. I own a 1988 CD copy of 1981's Speak & Spell by Depeche Mode and with the bonus tracks for that release, the running time is of 61 instead of 42 minutes.

    Nevertheless the 3 to 5 minute song length remained standard until the late 2010s probably. Part of it is certainly due to commercial radio, needing songs that won't take up advertisement space and won't make the listeners switch the channel because they don't like the song and it's been running for 6 minutes already. This is also a reason why radio playlists are so stale for the most parts, as stations compete with each other over ad revenue. Risk can make a company go bankrupt.

    As for why songs and albums for wide audiences are getting shorter - Probably TikTok, as well as a general trend among zoomer music listeners and commercial music producers following the money trail. There's a few other aspects, but I am not sure of them, so I won't make those claims.