If you are a pop artist or if you are listening to pop music then you have certainly spent time listening to songs playing on the radio. As a musician it may seem confining in an artistic sense to have a suggested song length predetermined. But as it relates to the radio there is a standard. So how long should a song be?
A song should be within near proximity of three minutes, give or take 30 seconds. This is referring to songs intended for radio airplay. While there are occasional exceptions for well-established artists, it is highly recommended for entry-level submissions to adhere to this suggested requirement as it will be more likely to yield the preferred result.
If you have no intention of chasing radio airplay you are certainly free to chase any sunset you’d like. But up until now we have been talking about the business of radio. Releasing songs is not limited to radio and there are other places and other methods to release music. Lets spend a few minutes to touch on some of the motivations and benefits to writing a song at any particular length. Lets also go through some of the places those various songs could be released and who they would be targeted to and why.
Lets start by remembering the most important thing, which is…
Doing What Feels Right
So after all of the talk about preparations for the radio, let’s strip things back. The most important thing to do is what feels right to you and what feels right for the song.
The great takeaway from this article shouldn’t be that it is mandatory to confine your song into a three-minute window. There is no mandate in doing so other than to confirm with those standards intended for radio integration.
If you are playing in a jam band or on occasion your musical exploration has you scribing longer pieces. You are certainly under no obligation to confine to anything.
Just keep in mind that it is illogical to build a giant neon yellow house, and then be indignant when you find that there is a limited market for giant neon yellow houses.
I’m not saying that your song is an eyesore but just as you may think that the three-minute long pop song is contrived. So might a self inflated grandiose opus be contrived.
So live and let live. Do what you want because it is what you want to do. And live in the reality of that choice.
What is ultimately most important is that you write for you and enjoy what you are doing. If you are in a position to turn your songs into income then there may be certain pre-requisites that you will have to meet. But that should not exclude you from doing what feels right.
You can consider the process of writing earners as an exercise of skill. Creating something others will enjoy within a preset of parameters is not without its own artistic challenges Additionally for most people having a song on the radio is not within the realms of realism. So it may not be of any importance to even consider what a standardized song length should be.
Target Audience
I suppose the biggest question you need to answer is who is your audience? And how do you best reach them. For a lot of us mainstream radio isn’t really a practical pathway. For others it is.
That said, there is an audience for pretty much anything. So where is yours?
Maybe your music is greedily devoured by the college demographic so then perhaps targeting college radio would best help you to connect with them.
College Radio may not have the strict barrier to entry that mainstream radio does. It may also be more adoptive to music that is presented in long-play format. That said rather than trying to conform to something you’re not, by pairing the audience to what it is you do, you save your self a lot of time and headache.
Your song has to tell its story.
Every song you write must convey a complete idea, and sometimes conveying an idea takes more time to present than others. It is important to convey the idea as economically as possible while not compromising the songs musicality or lyrical messaging. Walking that line is what becomes art. Navigating all of the demands and interests of the modern song-writer is what makes one an Artist.
Modern Day Shortened Attention Plans and Internet Streamers
Studies show that in the modern age attention spans may be shrinking. We are inundated with a constant barrage of digital stimulus and learning to navigate through that has taught us to be as efficient with it as possible.
So what begins to become even momentarily boring or arduous will be clicked passed. I suppose it is our one ability to control something in our modern day lives. So we exercise it.
Now think of this and how it relates to modern streamers and the modern band or artist. Each band or artist is desperately vying for the ever-fleeting attention of their listener. That forces something, doesn’t it?
How exactly would this affect the way that an artist would create and package their music? Are people even listening to newly conceived long-play albums from modern artists these days? Or should each song just be individually released? There is a lot to consider.
So if we decide that yes, each song is too valuable not to be released, then won’t they each be subjected to the same scrutiny of the shortened attention span?
Now lets redefine that current shortened attention span as the target market and thusly the standard. Songs that would captivate and engage the listener for the duration of the stream would become songs of the highest possible standard.
Brief songs that met the desired excitement or triggered some emotional sensation and held them for a blocked length of time would become a commodity and they have.
If a song doesn’t have the capacity to engage a listener and keep the listeners attention to the song then what will inevitably happen to the song?
We are going through a bit of a transition, and measuring it as good or bad is irrelevant. It is more important to know the parameters of the existing playing field and making educated choices and efforts in whatever direction you wish in an honest and informed way.
Today it seems that both Apple and Spotify require that in order for a song play to qualify for a payout that song must play for at least 30 seconds in order to trigger compensation.
Additionally for the song to find inclusion with playlists it needs to be regularly streamed through to conclusion. This behooves the artist to strive towards making songs that warrant the listeners attention for the duration of the song.
My research to prepare this seemed to indicate that these factors are causing for a macro shortening of all songs in a standardized sense. I suppose that it would be systematically easier for your song to be listened to till the end if the song as well as being well produced and captivating is shortened. It certainly seems a practical solution for a modern problem.
In addition to how the modern listener and the Online Streamers are affecting the parameters of song length. It would also seem to force the writer to use extra energy to write more appealing songs.
Each song they write needs to be competitive. There are no more B-sides. There is no longer any such thing as album filler. Every Song must be as well produced as possible. Every Song must be as captivating as possible and each one must be appealing to the widest possible audience possible.
Why Short Songs Were Initially Adopted.
That’s easy it had to do with the deliver platform. A thousand years ago when the dinosaurs still roamed the earth music could only be distributed on shellac records that depending on the size of the record only had the storage capacity for either 3 minutes or 4.
This is how the great conformity came to exist and the phrase break the record wasn’t adopted until the moment the asteroid hit.
In Conclusion
We are certainly conclusive that the dinosaur bit was just for amusement but the rest of this was brought to you in an earnest effort to be helpful. I certainly hope that I have been, but more importantly I hope that you have one more piece of the puzzle that helps you to leverage yourself closer towards the goals that you are working towards.
Now go and get to it
Goodluck