TikTok is shrinking songs
The Future. In the 1960s, songs were short because of the pace of AM radio, but today, they’re short because of the rate of TikTok attention spans. The prevailing trend is “the shorter the song, the more it has a chance of going viral.” Why? Because TikTok is all about the hit clip, moment, or fragment… which may lead artists to create songs built around as many of those moments as possible to have the best chance of becoming a viral sensation… especially when TikTok launches its own dedicated music-streaming service.
Seconds singleArtists are shortening their songs for a shot at TikTok fame.
Per Billboard, the average length of the top 50 songs on the Hot 100 chart in 2021 was a pretty short 3:07.
And they’re only getting shorter, with artists routinely dropping a third chorus and pre-chorus from the structure of songs, according to an analysis from Hit Songs Deconstructed.
That has led to songs being under three minutes… and they’re charting. Songs of that length represented 38% of the top 10 hits (up from 4% in 2016).
And with platforms like Spotify counting a mere 30 seconds of listening as a full play that triggers a royalty check (and probably shorter on TikTok), artists are incentivized to make their songs short and snappy.
Viral snippetThe data makes sense, but do artists feel a creative or cultural imperative to make songs shorter? Or is it all just economics?
Mitch Allan, a songwriter and producer for artists like Demi Lovato and Kelly Clarkson, thinks that artists believe shorter songs have a charm that makes them more repeatable.
Talya Elitzer, a co-founder of indie label Godmode, notes that, in the Internet age, skip rates are a real concern. The shorter the song, the less it gets skipped.
Elie Rizk, a writer, producer, and instrumentalist for acts like Remi Wolf and Mazie, said that viral songs are really based on a little moment that gets put in videos and shared.
And producer/DJ Kuya Magik, who knows a thing or two about TikTok thanks to his 11 million followers, says that the virality of the song clip is hilariously prevalent. “If you go to a club and you watch people dance, they only dance to the 15 seconds of a song that’s famous on TikTok. For the rest of it, they just sit there.”
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