Songs are getting shorter

Short n’ Sweet isn’t just the name of Sabrina Carpenter’s most-recent album…it’s a music industry lifestyle. Songs, like our attention spans and bank accounts, are getting shorter, according to a recent Economist analysis of ~1,200 number-one hits.

• The average length of songs that top the Billboard Hot 100 has decreased ~18%, from 4 minutes and 22 seconds in 1990 to 3 minutes and 34 seconds in 2024.

Don’t bore us, bring on the chorus

This shrinking trend is due in large part to the advent of music streaming, and the economics that surround it.

When you play a song on Spotify, for example, artists are only paid if you listen for 30 seconds—incentivizing those behind the mics to get snappy, with brief intros and early choruses.

• During the 1980s, the average chart-topper had 21 seconds of introductory material.
• By the 2010s, this had shrunk to just 12 seconds (a ~43% drop). Song length decreased ~10% over that same time period.

Tech impacting music is nothing new. Shellac and vinyl records could hold only 3-5 minutes of sound on each side, keeping song lengths short for much of the 20th century. The introduction of cassettes in the 1960s and CDs in the 1980s allowed for lengthier tracks—such as Don McLean’s three-year-long “American Pie”—with this trend continuing until Spotify and other streaming platforms entered stage right.