What’s the perfect length for a song? Is there even such a thing?
Stat Significant is a fun website that does statistical analysis of a variety of things. Their newsletter this week asked the question “What’s the perfect song length?” Good one.
The length of a song used to be restricted by physical media. In the beginning of recorded audio, an Edison cylinder could hold about two minutes’ worth of music, which forced everyone wanting to release music to conform to that time limit. When Emile Berliner’s flat rotating disc–later refined into the 10-inch 78 RPM record–allowed for around four minutes of music storage, popular songs got longer. And because the 78 was around for about 50 years, we became used to popular songs that were under four minutes long.
More room was freed up for creativity with the 12-inch 33 1/3 RPM record (about 20 minutes per side), the cassette (longer), and the CD (up to 80 minutes). With the internet, there is no time limit, but habit has songs stuck at a length of around four minutes.
But when it comes to human behavior and consumption, what’s the idea length of a popular song in the digital age and the era of the skip button? Stat Significant took a look.
However, songs are getting shorter.
And the younger you are, the more likely you are to prefer shorter songs.
