If You’re A Musician In 2024, You Want To Hear This
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- čas přidán 12. 05. 2024
- In today's episode I break down some data that was sent to me by my friends at ChartCipher. This is mind-boggling.
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Another reason artists may be releasing shorter songs is for streaming royalties. A 2-minute song on repeat earns twice as much money as a 4-minute song on repeat. If you can write a great, short song that makes people want to listen again and again, you're going to earn more money than you would on a longer version.
This is bad news for prog rock though 😅
@@JaceyMitchell You can chop something like a 24 minute song into 12 2 minutes parts. But the truth is that no sane person should expect to make a lot of money by doing Prog Rock nowadays.
@@FunkensturmeMaybe the problem is people expecting a lot of money and not the genres 🤔
Sad but true.
AI is about to change all this very soon.
Few years ago, a famous guitarist is asked what the biggest different in music listener now and then. His answer is nowadays people are always busy. Not with their job or family responsibility but with their phone and social media. People no longer has time to sit, listen, and appreciate song. They always do something while song is played in the background. Sad but true.
I definitely felt this one. For whatever reason i had kind of stopped listening to music for maybe 7-8 years, but i picked it up again last year. It really was like rediscovering a part of myself that had been missing for a while. I found myself lying in bed at night just listening yet again to the same album that i’d been listening to all week, with every listen discovering something new about it, and mused that i felt like a teenager again.
It’s interesting that you bring this up. You are right to a degree, at least in my own life. When I had records or cd’s, I would “play dj “ and just spend time playing and listening to music. During the tape era, I would make mixed tapes. Nowadays, I shuffle my iTunes and do other stuff (drive, cook, paint). I only just listen right before sleep in bed but it’s CZcams songs - visual included. I think during my listening periods, I’ll not watch, just listen again. Thank you for bringing this up!
I remember back in the 80s and 90s I would sit with my friends at the stereo and we would listen to the latest cassette or CD we bought, and it was still very much a shared social experience. We connected with each other by just listening to the music together, doing nothing else. I'm not sure kids these days have the attention span for this (unless they were making a reaction video on CZcams or something 😂).
I think Eric Johnson said this in a Beato interview. Music today is background noise. Which is why beats dominate and you need way less attention span, or none at all. Hopefully the pendulum will swing the other way!😊
Everything -- increasingly -- is on one device, the phone. Everything is competing for time on the same screen. In the 1970's, what we called 'media' came in different forms -- radio, TV, paperbacks, games were physically based (until video games began to hit) -- different media, different devices. Now it's increasingly on just one device, and that affects how people consume their music -- which increasingly is off the same device they use for the other stuff.
I work in a music store, and we get lots of kids coming in learning to play an instrument. Guitar, piano and drums are the most common, but we also get students for woodwinds, brass, and strings well. It's really nice to see actual musicianship on the rise.
Hopefully!!!
Doubt it
No hope of that happening. There isn't going to be any money in music very very soon. People won't pay for it and live music is dying
It’s because they don’t teach it in schools they are coming in and there aren’t as many musicians anymore.
I wonder if it has anything to do with the changes to school music programs since many schools have made them an additional cost or not available at all
guitar is coming back ! Hell yeah!
I told my wife mid last year that I felt the pendulum was swinging back towards Rock music again. It just felt that way with some really good new Rock bands and the strength of catalogs from 'Classic' artists.
There's plenty of new young talented bands, exposure is the problem when we get all these dinosaur old af bands headlining most festivals still, and the new talent relegated to early hours where way less people get a chance to see them, and mainstream media as we all know isn't exactly Rock friendly, the heavier the less, so in that way we're screwed.
Saying the pendulum is swinging back towards Rock music is like saying the pendulum is swinging back towards Classical or Jazz or Swing. It's never going to happen. This is wishful thinking. Rock music has been on the decline for 40 years, sure it's had its ups and downs, but it's dead for good this time. I don't think it's ever coming back. It's going to stick around the same way that Classical and Jazz do, but it's never going to be big again.
The entire reason that Rock ever got big in the first place was that it had a low barrier of entry. Anybody could pick up a guitar and strum a few chords and become a rock star. But learning to play the guitar is still comparatively hard, nowadays we have way easier options. You can just mumble something into a microphone or compose something on a computer. There is no niche for Rock anymore. The music industry has always been a bit of a ponzi scheme: It seems like everbody who's really into Rap is dreaming of becoming a rapper, and everybody who used to be into Rock was dreaming of becoming a Rock star. Kids buy merchandise from their idols to become just like them. But Rap has become what Rock always wanted to be: A perfect way to sell expensive sneakers to kids. Rap is way better at this than Rock ever was because the barrier to entry is much lower, so it's much easier to suspend disbelief.
Lemmy from Motörhead talked about how he started playing guitar to impress the girls at his school. I'm sure it was like that for many musicians, if not most. Nowadays, if you brought a guitar to school, girls would probably laugh at you for being a dork. Times have changed. Rock music isn't coming back unless we have a nuclear war, society disintegrates and we have to start over from scratch. It was a period in time.
@@thereturnofthemac Just say you can't read a paragraph. He has a point.
I think having artists like Olivia Rodrigo going more rock is helpful in pushing rock forward to younger ears
people said FM alternative rock radio don't work in my area. after almost 2 years, no alt rock radio.the station went back as alt rock and rating went up 4X. cannot understand the phenomenon
As music creators and songwriters I think it’s important to buck the trends. Be trend setters not followers. But more importantly, be 100% you. It’s the authenticity of the artist that truly connects to the audience.
Based af, homie
Also, being a good song-writer. Having space in the song, harmony and melody. Not just drums and a synthesised voice - yuk!
Yeah, that's true to an extent. But realistically, musical genres have a 30-40 year lifespan. Rap is past its prime. Pop rises and falls with the times, filling in the gaps between waves. Country rises and falls over time, too.
@@richardmortimer8147 I agree, songwriting is important.
Most of the bands I've ever liked ever made billboard charts , and most of them didn't engage in Billboard analytics while they were writing songs.
If they ever come up with a category called "good music" maybe that would change.
Guitar music is on the rise. Ive been playing in cover bands many years and more young people are digging us old guys.
im one of those young guys
I call bs
@@annna6553 Sounds like the least-rewarding lie to create, lol.
@@jacobshirley3457 Cry harder. Guitar based music isn't thriving.
@@annna6553 ?
The point is JUST having fun doing something beautiful ❤❤❤❤
I'm not sure if I could ever say music could change for the "better" or "worse". What I can hope for is that the music ends up serving its generations well in improving people's lives generally.
I think you just gave "better" a good definition for the context of music. And "worse" is a lost opportunity because the music fails to do that. The music at a given time may or may not be meeting a generation's needs well. It may not if music trends are being driven by forces divorced from what people are looking for. It may if trends are very responsive to what each generations needs. The reality is probably somewhere in the middle.
Could be that music is subjective. Better for some, worse for some. Really depends on who is listening!
If it doesn't have soul for our souls to feel, then...
@@mikekenney2680 I think you’re on to something. My nephew and his friends, born 2005-ish, listen primarily to music from that time period or earlier. The Strokes, Weezer, Death Cab, The Smiths, nirvana, brand new, arcade fire, OutKast, gorillaz, mgmt, blink 182, etc… and it’s not even because we millennials and gen xers showed it to them, some of it yes, but they found a lot of it on their own. He discovered The Strokes from playing GTA 5 lol. Now it’s his favorite band. Perhaps modern music, which I know they hear heavy doses of, is not serving their needs.
The only way music could be "better" or "worse" is if the lyrical content is moral or not. The more moral a song is and the more it promotes what is truly good, the more music gets better. Same thing with music that is immoral. Music is a pathway to the brain. It can sub-consciously make us think certain ways. Other than that, there isn't anything objectively wrong with any music. We all start with a subjective bass-line that music has to meet for us too like it.
Music, and music trends have changed sooo much. Of course, I'm a 65 year old professional musician who is stuck in the 60s-80s. Things you never hear anymore, or are pretty hard to come by on the radio (again, I'm old school in how I access music): instrumentals, guitar solos, TV theme songs that become hits, sax solos, horn sections. I miss them all.
The theme to BJ and The Bear was the last great, American theme song.
Since the Super Bowl, I've been digging into that INXS song, Never Tear Us Apart. It's beautiful. Starts with strings (subtly messing with the number of beats per measure); drops in that electric guitar figure on beats 4,5,6 after a 9-beat rest; and there's also a huge sax solo.
You don't have to miss them, just buy cds or lps from that era of music, or download or stream music from that era. Nowadays who needs to be musically captive to contemporary music?
Strangely enough, I am also 65 love the music of the 60s-70s, blues and R&B....I play guitar as well... :p
Agreed! Also a pro here...
Thank you! I am a songwriter, and this truly helps, and I agree - the internet has greatly impacted songs- in spite of that, I strive to be a bit more conscious of the songs them selves, and go from there-
Yes. Love this information. Keep it going Rick!
I don’t know if you have heard this, (I haven’t read through the comments) this video received mention on national radio in Canada today. Well done!
That’s awesome!!👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽😆😆😆
Probably at CHOM FM
@@mikebrunoguitarist5062 actually Rich Terfry on CBC.
Now my future songwriting plan is complete: 6-minute songs, piano, profanity all over the place! Anything to not end up on pop charts! (I'll have to learn piano, though, I already know how to swear.)
Bo Burnham beat you to it.
I produce my bands music. And omg, I will swear them when they under perform. Do it again, do it again. Do no waste my time coming in unprepared
Hm, November Rain?
@@SarahAndreaRoycesChannel Nah, I can be way more creative than that: December F*cking Snow. (can't forget the profanity)
Anyone who learns piano can master a synth. Only a fool picks up a guitar and plays boring blues at this point.
Yes, sir! Please, more of this topic. Thank you!
Please do include more of this in some of your videos. Fascinating topic for analizing and just having a nice conversation about music trends and how they have change, or even repeat thorigh the years... Great Rick!!!
One factor that definitely affected album length (and possibly song length as well) in the 90s was that it was still the early cd era, and with cds capable of storing nearly twice the length of music at standard cd resolution as a standard LP could store, a lot of rock musicians, at least, started releasing substantially longer albums than they previously had done in the pre-cd era.
IDK previous to the 90's & CD's there were plenty of long songs over 4 & 7 minutes for mass selling published vinyl albums even though vinyl has always had a somewhat fixed sound duration length in its commercial life.
Nothing to do with it. Rush, Pink Floyd, Genesis and other prog rock artists were putting out 8+ minute songs decades before the 90s and on vinyl.
Well, there was In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, Thick As A Brick, many of the Grateful Dead songs (well, live...)
Apparently, the Bat Out of Hell album by Meatloaf was slightly sped up so it could fit on the limited space of vinyl records.
Yeah, I dont think Kurt was thinking of how much he can put on a CD when he was writing those songs
Hip-hop falling back down to earth is going to benefit hip-hop the most. It was so oversaturated. Sincerely I think this is good news for hip hop as one of the few Rick viewers who spins kendrick as much as i spin zepplin (not blizzard of oz, though, still my fav).
I was pretty checked out of hip hop for a while, then someone showed me Kendrick. Maybe you're right, needs to come back down to earth.
Hip hop hasn't had any real interesting innovations in a long time. Get a couple new breakthrough artists doing something interesting and new with it and it'll recover just fine (I kinda thought Ren might do that, but he hasn't).
I'd be interested in knowing when you got into hip hop. Did you grow up with it? What was the competition? I was interested in it early. I liked Public Enemy for example. And LL Kool J. Occasionally I'd hear something latter like Slim Shady that caught my ear. I felt that Nirvana and Eminem both had lines that caught the spirit of the age like Don't believe the hype. But the time I was catching up on other kinds of music. Blues, folk, world, jazz. I had a black friend who ran the jazz department in a CD store. He couldn't get his nephews to listen to the jazz classics let alone stuff we were exploring. Eventually I just lost interest in hip hop. Too many other genres, not enough time or money. So while I believe there's merit to your argument that thinning out the space might help the music, it's not always clear it works out that way.
@@mikem668 i grew up on pac and biggie, i was in atlanta as a child around 1998-2002 and tons of atlanta rap made it my way. outkast/run the jewels/luda were have become my favorites over time.
these days along with the ATLiens, i love kendrick, danny brown, still like wayne, MF doom, old kanye. i also like basically anything el-p has ever touched so basically anything with noise based production im into.
on the other hand i think experimental hip hop is peaking these last years
Fascinating -- thank you for this! I'm feeling more inspired to keep creating music.
This is super! More of this please. Understanding the data is the key to success in any endeavor.
There are always only two kinds of people in the world. In this case there are those who will create the music they are compelled to make to express themselves and there are those who will create the music they think will sell well by following a formula. What defines success in creating music? Expressing what you wanted to convey, or selling a lot of whatever it is you created?
I think its fair to say that corporate music jumped the shark years ago. Indie is the real scene people ought to be paying attention to. There is so much amazing music to be discovered there.
Yea, but I'm not able to spend that much time on the search so I listen to jazz.
Interesting to see the influence of Indie and Alternative Rock sounds in a lot of modern pop recordings over the past 2-3 years. Seems like the newest trend of 2024 is elements of country/folk in popular music.
Is indie a "scene" or is it dozens of scenes with the only thing in common being they're not mainstream?
The genre of indie ended up being pretty corporate and was what snobs liked for some reason.
Indie pop from 10 years ago was awful and indie really hasn’t shaken off that era. Nowadays, most of those songs just sound the same and there isn’t much to the music.
Pop punk and metalcore were the more interesting genres, and frankly still are, even if metalcore is being pushed by labels to be in a race to see who gets on XM first
Such a cliched comment. Been bandied around …… forever, from people that want to sound cool and smug.
Here is another one: When the indie singer/band hit it big, they are automatically considered sellouts by these same people that supported them before.
I think one thing to note on the 90s rock songs is that they often had a "radio edit" that was a bit shorter or the DJ cut the song off early compared to the full album version.
In the 80's too ,many songs were longer than the radio format, and sometime they were cut , just like that, eliminating an instrumental part, etc...
I was a radio DJ back then. Many stations did play radio edits which brought the longer songs down into a manageable 4:20-4:40 range (or so), but many stations, mine included, also played the longer versions as well.
....and today the radio stations make their own edits. 🤬
ha, the opposite of the 80s where you had the extended remix
@@jean-louispech4921The worse example of this is the song 🎶 “Fashion” by David Bowie. The song 🎵 was originally 4:53 on Scary 😧 Monsters 👹 and Super Creeps.
However, when they shot the video for MTV, they completely butchered it to 3:26. I understand doing that to a song 🎶 that’s over 6 or minutes long. But doing that that’s just under 5 minutes is ridiculous.
Back in the 3 network age, I sat thru commercials that ran 30 seconds, some were as long as a minute. Can you imagine? Now I'm livid when youtube forces a 15 second spot.
That is absolutely the reason why songs are shorter now compared to decades ago. I've been saying this for a while, internet, tic toc particularly is destroying people's focus. As a musician from way back I've had to make drastic changes because of this. This is totally fascinating.
Just discovered your channel today and subbed
Playing bass since 1965. Glad to hear live music slowly on the rise. Open mic night a blast at local clubs musician's carrying their guitars, drums and keyboards into to jam.
I'm very happy to be carrying my sax to jams! What do I get asked for most often? Careless whisper, and Baker street solos, LOL!
I'm a drummer, I prefer when the venue has a kit there already :)
Nice!
So I was just talking today to a producer friend who is very well respected and I said music is like fashion. You're going to see crazy colors but they don't last. Soon or a later we get back to the foundation. Nothing will ever replace blue jeans
Great comment, yes. A lot of people are getting tired of the trends we've had the last 10 years or so and are going back to more classic sounds
I think that’s why while we see changes and fads, the foundational root genres don’t go away. We’ll always have some iteration of Jazz, Metal, Country, Folk, etc.
If Latin is so far down on the list how come I hear that dunca dunca beat all the time
And trends are cyclical, it’s really noticeable in guitar based music over the decades.
@@Durkhead Depends where ya live don't it?
I grew up during the two decades of long songs. I have a lot of trouble shorting the length of my songs. But what you mentioned about the several transitions the Beatles had in one 2-3min song sounds like something fun and encouraging to try.
Dear Rick, thank you very much for a fruitful talk! I'll definitely show this video to my music production students. Some ideas towards the trends you've mentioned: (1) decrease of listeners' interest to hip-hop is self-explanatory: the technical sources for making hip-hop song's arrangement attractive have run over, still pop music is ever-searching for new narratives and tools; (2) song tempo and structure simplification is explained through degradation of music theory knowledge obtained by an average musician at a music school, add there social networks and "scrolling" effect; (3) Beatles in past and now are the emblematic band, and music producers would repeatedly apply to music influences to select the best out of mega-hits of the past. Music streaming for the big trendy artists is the way to implement their visions. Music streaming for an average (medium or small fan base) artists is only a display to introduce the listener with own music. Speaking generally about the evolution of the language of ubiquitous music, we will soon observe generative music as another trend, and then at some point the music language may be re-born by those who implements live ethnic and semi-electronic music instruments of new generation (but it's a hypothesis).
What surprised me, after having listened to it numerous times over the years, was finding out that Tomorrow Never Knows by the Beatles was only two minutes and 58 seconds long. It always felt much longer. The Beatles really packed a lot into each of their songs.
Yeah. That song takes you on a psychic journey. Pretty amazing they could do that in such a short time
Similarly, Hendrix surprised me; Manic Depression is just 3 and a half minutes; Little Wing is 2 and a half. Amazing
One chord though, lol
first techno beat ever played. Chemical Brothers use it in Setting Sun, which is an awesome song.
@@luke5100 There's not a single song on 'Revolver' that goes for three minutes. 'Eleanor Rigby' is only 2m 07secs.
When you used to 'buy' music 🎶 it had more worth to us we treasured the artwork on the sleeve and we kept the tape in our Walkman ready to go. It's just to easy to loose yourself searching than being content. I don't know what could remedy this but I wish we could actually love music like we used to again
100%. I used to buy a CD every few months or rent a few from the library and in between those purchases, I had completely absorbed the music on those discs. I knew the musicians that were called in to play 'additional' parts. I miss those days so much I've begun that process of organising my vinyl, cassette and CD library again, not for nostalgia alone but to make it a practice of being present with music listening and enjoyment, and not aimless content surfing.
Restrictions, to some extent, are necessary in regards to the most meaningful experiences (there may be an exception or two): being able to access countless "records" online is insipid in comparison with having the physical copy of an album you consider special and which you invested valuable money on... Photographic films used to be kept for peculiar events and implied a well defined number of limited pictures that could be taken; now, off course, someone with a smartphone can hold the capture "button" until getting tens or hundreds of pictures instantly, with absolute carelessness and "infinite" space in storage, etcetera.
This is true. what we pay or sacrifice for is important to us. Free things could be 10x better but won't be appreciated as much. Good point
Amen.
you can still listen to music that way
Such a great video Rick! In the 90s we knew how to wait, feel the anticipation, the build up…songs had intros and solos!!! Now the average listener is not educated and has no patience
The average listener has never been educated, not musically. The patience or attention span thing though.. 100%. Music has almost become a commodity that is consumed rather than truly appreciated.
Thank you. This is the kind of data that speaks loud
Very interesting to me. I recently retired form my day job that has paid the bills for 40 years and am putting together a mini studio in my house to record some of my own songs for posterity and probably not prosperity ( just turned 71 ! ). My songwriting leans heavily to rock, pop, and a little bit country. May not be the worst time to get this done.
Put the link to listen to them especially pop for me
Rock on 🤘🏻
this is awesome, good for you
Love this! Never stop! Music isn't age, music belongs to human beings. Have an awesome time making your music and let me know if you want someone to add a bit of noise to it.
Nice, please rock on
this is just terrific.
ROCK REVIVAL
I love rock but haven't ever been able to gain an acquired sense for country. I don't hate it but I very rarely hear country songs that I can't easily walk away from.
Go check super secret band
Lost ox
Jay si proof
Bodhi mojo
Pdx represent 🤙
The average lifespan of a musical genre is 30-40 years. Rap is past its expiration date. It's not complicated.
@@dubfitness595 Same here, It's all so predictable and has no "edge" giving the genre an overall innocent vibe, which is boring. Don't hate on me, just my 2 cents.
Always a pleasure to watch your videos. I love the way you love music!🎼
This kind of content is pure gold, geeking about all aspects of production, not only the musical side
Bring back the horns! Tower of Power, Chicago...🎺🎺🎺🎺🎺🎺🎷🎷🎷🎷🎷
I’m in a horn rock band that plays Chicago and blood, sweat and tears. So refreshing to read this. Thank you.
I play trumpet in a horn band too. A lot original stuff and Stevie wonder and funk. It’s fun because I went years without playing in a band. I feel people love the raw sound of the horns. You can’t really fake them.
@@Guitarzan8 Right on. Horns add that different dimension of sound. Much fuller.
@@polskaman20001 I am getting back into recording after a few years. While I have a couple of Korg keys its not the same as real horns. I may have to go to Fiver and hire. I hired a drummer from Italy for one of my songs a few years back and she did a great job.
Soul Vaccination!!
When music videos were dominant in the late 80s and early 90s, it was good to have longer songs, which meant more time to see your favorite band or artist in an interesting setting or story. That was also the CD era, where in college we would hang in someone’s room while a CD was going, so longer songs work for listeners in that context.
Yes, longer songs tended to come in at the same time that CDs became the main music format. An album wasn't restricted to being 40 minutes long so artists could stretch out a bit. And they did.
I can't believe in the age of video that music videos haven't made a major comeback. I actually prefer the videos cuz you get to watch the band's chemistry. Go watch U Got The Look by Prince and tell me the song however great competes with the video. Same for Thriller and many songs..the video gave us the physical space/mental background that made the songs work even better..more effective..more dramatic. One by Metallica..come on..videos could be SO good. Rooster is another.
Shorter songs are because a lot of the money comes from ad dollars. Once a song starts you already have the advertisers money. You want the consumer to press play as often as possible so the video gains more on advertising. Long songs means less plays.
Well. that was for 'serious' listening and viewing. But for dancing... early Pink Floyd before Dark Side was great, as evidenced in Nick Mason's touringband that just plays pre-DS Floyd material
@@dubfitness595 No. shorter songs far better for dancing with other people
Fascinating stuff Rick, and worthy of a series of lectures, I reckon. Personally I’m heartened by the many ‘reaction’ videos out there showcasing songs from 60s/70s and hoping kids will recognise the decline of beauty in (chart) songwriting today. I’m ever optimistic that change will come. Thank you x
GREAT video Rick like all you stuff. I think at the end of the day, we artists just have to try to be the best us we can be & write what we want to hear.
Solo rock musician here (been putting out music in bands for 10+ years) I JUST started releasing solo stuff and this up turn in rock trending has been so inspiring - DONT GIVE UP YALL 🎉
Band name?
Zigga @@Puremocionalprig prig yeah 😢
Same here. I make music, and the videos for them on my channel. I just never bought the rap thing.
boring
@@MikkelGrumBovin u must make ENJOYABLE music 🥴
Buddy, country is going up because it’s becoming hip hop and pop..
Yeah it's terrible.
Music constantly evolves, stay open-minded
Sad, but true.
Please answer this question honestly. I do kinda like the influence genres have on others, but is the sound of ALL music is expanding or dying?
Exactly this! Country has been trending more hip hop beats. Beyoncé just brought out a country album!
Incredibly fascinating subject! As a guitar player and songwriter who dabbles mostly in punk, garage, and grunge, I'm heartened by these trends!
Finally! Glad to see these trends! Thank you!!! By God, there is still hope for real music!
Mozart’s early symphonies were usually 20 minutes or so, gradually out to 30 by his death, then Mahler started to extend it longer and longer, over an hour. Then the second Vienna school went short again. Now we seem to have settled into the 20 to 30 minute range for concert pieces again. People’s attention span is about twelve minutes, typically, so even that is stretching it.
yay, awesome. Was wondering about classical music now a days and where it stands 👍
@Rick Beato , what is the chart saying....
takes 15 min for our brains to get into flow state, makes sense why no one can actually focus on anything and why most things end up mediocre.
How much profanity was in those Mozart symphonies?
Point taken, but symphonies were getting bigger and longer way before Mahler: LvB's Eroica and 9th, Berlioz, Bruckner, Brahms, et al. If the music is good and you've trained yourself to relax and focus, an hour-plus piece of music should not pose a challenge to your concentration. Unfortunately, as mentioned in the video, our society trains people to minimize their attention spans. If a four-minute rock song is too much for people these days, there's no way they're going to appreciate the vast bulk of classical music.
Depends whether the French horn player drops his instrument on his neighbor's foot :) (Which reminds me of the true story of Jean-Baptiste Lully dying of gangrene after accidentally stabbing himself in the foot with his conductor's baton.)@@davidbell3857
Streaming is the reason artists are putting out 20 sub-3 minute songs on an album. More, shorter songs equals more streams. 6-minute songs are a thing of the past (on the Top 40 chart anyway).
This is the obvious answer. Sure, people's attention spans might be shorter, but for the artists making the tracks, it's a simple formula. If your fans are only going to listen to forty minutes of your album, you're way better off releasing twenty 2-minute tracks than eight 5-minute tracks.
Short and sweet songs also promote repeat listens, which the algorithms seem to like.
Also, it seems to me like the new generation of producers have no patience to even put together a long drawn out section. If they come up with a solo instrumental, it's a separate song. I think it's less artists catering to trends but more of a trend of artist preferences.
Amazing vídeo! It inspired me on guitar playing! THANK YOU
Okay, I was genuinely excited to hear that rock is on the uprise along with the use of electric guitar. I was like, "Oh my goodness! Yes!!!" This was a very interesting topic you shared. I personally wouldn't complain if you did more of these in the future (at your discernment, of course).
I’ve never been the biggest country fan, but I’m really stoked that rock seems to be coming back. I’ve missed it.
I feel like Tik Tok is actually helping expose rock songs from the 60s-2010s to Gen Z and even Gen Alpha.
What rock comeback? What bands? Exclude the songs dug up by some current series online.
@@rockingbirdey I've been hearing older music on short form videos lately so this is kind of true
Other than the cowboy hats they're all wearing, that stuff is not country. Country died when the word "new" got put in front of it and it's long gone. Bad 80's rock music with cowboy hats is what we have now.
I mean it never really left for me. There’s so many great bands at the moment
So many great hit songs in the 80’s had killer saxophone. Now you never hear it. What happened? Can you do a piece on greatest sax solos of the 80’s?
Just bot a sax. Did know c scales and part of amazing grace
sax blows.glad they arent doing it like they used to.
Any Glenn Frey song.
I'll release an album next Friday that has a cool sax solo on a track!! Keep an eye on it
There was a resurgence a few years back. Around the time of Thrift Shop and Fitz and the Tantrums. But I think it was a case of too much all at once cause the trend died within a year’s span
I think it's fascinating to think about how the technology of the vinyl record was a large part of the reason songs were shorter in the 60s, and then as record printing strategies improved, and things like tape, CDs, and digital became prevalent it allowed artists to produce longer works within an album. Yet, now the same thing has happened in reverse. The technology of social media has created a new constraint with everything needing to fit within 15-60 seconds, and thus songs have once again become shorter.
Well pointed.
i don't know, Yes & ELP had some very long songs on vinyl. :)
@@alanhiebert3548 , Beatles' Please, Please Me vinyl has fourteen tracks; Yes' Close To The Edge vinyl has just three tracks.
Makes me wonder if 60 years from now kids will be rediscovering shorts the way ppl are with vinyl today
wtf what about pink floyd and all the other prog rock bands in the 70's lol yall are crazy in these commets
Rick, I caught this news from you this morning and want to thank you. You asked if we want more of this kind of information and I have to say "yes". I'm a songwriter and realized many years ago the Beatles were successful with well written 'shorter' songs. So yes, I appreciated your video.
and Hey Jude is one of their longest and perhaps most boring song. The excelled under 3 minutes
I do appreciate the last group chorus of Hey Jude, I skip to it, if I’m able. One day driving in the car to work, I cranked the ending/last chorus, and for the first time after many many times hearing Hey Jude, I noticed how perfect THE GROOVE/TEMPO IS !?!!?! I thought, wow what a great groove they decided upon.
I totally agree about their shorter concise songs are the best
What about Jazz?
@@Jazzmentl I'm curious about what you're thinking regarding Jazz. Are you a writer? Composer?
This is my thing. I always think about trends and why they changes. It’s just so interesting. Subscribed.
I think 80-90s songs also had significant intros and outros. Easily 1:00 -1:30 of the songs are consumed by those.
1780:s, 1880:s or ....
@@Onionbaron It's pretty obvious this dude is from the future and is speaking of the 2380s-2390s, the greatest two decades in popular music following the catastrophic collapse of human society resulting from the Great AI Redistribution event.
Get your sh*t together, man, this is basic 2670s 4th grade subject. Now let me just disconnect my TimeX Timeliner Quantum Chatter Model 6, Elon doesn't like it when peoBlrghughugharmfkhdkhdkhdbekbEkBeK
Billie Jean, Blue Monday.
Nowadays songs have 30 second intro which is the only interesting part. After that the song really starts and it's horrible. This is only to get the listener to listen until it counts as play in Spotify, which generates money.
Yep. AND solos. AND bridges. There’s zero both of those in pop. A little in country
I’m no expert on country, but to me a lot of modern country is simply rock music in which the singer has a southern regional accent and there’s a certain narrative approach to lyric writing. I don’t hear a lot of prominent pedal steel guitar, country fiddle, 3/4 time country waltz tunes etc. Again, I don’t know the genre well, so I’m happy to be corrected…
Nah, you're right. Actually, a lot of modern country that isn't hick hop sounds like 80s hard rock
*Indeed, I miss pre-2000's country, when one could still dance two-step to it .. altho that's likely the reason for modern country's growth, as it's basically crossover .. that is, essentially country-rock instrumentals, but with the twangy vocals still intact 🫤
*Indeed, I miss pre-2000's country, when one could still dance two-step to it .. altho that's likely the reason for modern country's growth, as it's basically crossover .. that is, essentially country-rock instrumentals, but with the twangy vocals still intact 🫤
A lotta influence from Fleetwood Mac and Lynyrd Skynyrd in some country music.
Greg Allman said, it’s the singer and not the song that makes it a country or rock song.
Great presentation on the different aspects, elements, and trends in music. Loved this
Finally! I've grown up listening to hip hop, when people crafted songs and stories that brought us into unique new perspectives, but this new version of hip hop is destructive and self sabotaging.
It's called Beato effect.
😂
the beato waves deserve more research
How much of the country/pop/guitar ascendance is attributed to the "Fast Car Effect"?
I would not at all be surprised if this is somewhat true. Rick has achieved an amazing reach in the music world.
lol
I think the main thing holding back song lengths 60s-80s was vinyl. The vinyl albums of the day were like 23-25 per side, so 50 minutes total, and the 45 singles were around 3-5 minutes per side. Trying to cram more in there started hitting the laws of physics. CDs come out in late 80s and really take off in 90s and now you have a 74 minutes for an album giving the artists more room to play with. There's probably some impact through all of this from radio as they're going to want short songs so they can play commercials more often.
So it's long been the technology dictating the average and now we've gone from being limited by length for the tech to being limited by the audience attention span.
Yeah I was thinking the same thing. Art reflects the society it was made in.
You're absolutely correct on the vinyl limitation there. With CD you had more headroom, more space for lower frequencies and thus more detailed / better quality and longer audio. And then the loudness wars began...
Also don't forget about the radio. They wanted 2-3 minute songs so they could play those songs on loop over and over. That's why they were pissed when The Doors were wanting to put a 7 minute song like "Light My Fire" on the radio so they started doing the radio edit singles.
@@bartvaes4126 I think you also had a lot more flexibility with song lengths as it was 74 total... you didn't have to worry as much about which songs went on the A side and the B side. There's a lot of really good albums that came out in the 90s that just flowed so well because you didn't have the flip.
Yep. Medium and radio. Once those changed the industry immediately took advantage. What's better than your star artist being on the radio for 2:30 every hour? Being on for 4:00 every hour. heh
Rick that's an amazing peice of information, thank you. Such analysis is really worth the time and resource, especially considering the curent crisis in music, that might give some hints and reveal issues and patterns.
Definitely keep up these kinds of videos. Love the nerdy stuff and love the info as a songwriter!
The point about the length of songs by the Beatles and their quality was spot on.
The Red Album!
That's the one my Dad had on our family vacatfrom Detroit to Disney World in 1986!
I was nine.
When we returned I got my sisters toy drums out and started to play along to those songs.
I write this from my drum seat, in the exact spot where it happened.
We used to uave bunk beds, hers was the bottom. The spot where I sat is about where my snare is today...
Thank you for the memory jog, Rick.
Owning your childhood home is a trip, but I had planned it since I was five!
My 8th grade graduation gifts were a guitar and the 'Red album' 1987. changed my life!!!
Things go in cycles and seem to be coming back around in music which is a good thing. Love this topic awesome, keep em coming Rick! Love this channel!
I certainly appreciate your astute observations. I learn a lot from you and your professional experience.
Yes! I love the crunching of the numbers for music trends. More of this please.
Bohemian Rhapsody is a very long song and it charted more than once in different eras. I think the secret to that though is that it's like 3 songs condensed into one package. You have a ballad at the start, the operatic section in the middle and the rock section towards the end with return to the ballad at the end. Each section has something for everyone and it never dwells on one section longer than it needs to.
True!
Bohemian rhapsody is a long song for people who only listen to sub 3:00 minute songs. It’s exactly 6:00 minutes long. Anyone who listens to music from the 70’s-90’s is probably used to music of that length. Truly long songs is stuff that’s like 8 minutes and beyond.
A standard pop song verse is 8 bars, pre chorus 4, chorus 8. That doesn't dwell long at all. And all of those sections have different melodies and rhythms which can also be considered " 3 songs in 1 "
Everyone writing a song like Bohemian rhapsody is not the way to go.
please for the love of god no more Bohemian Rhapsody, that song needs to go back to where it was in the 80s
Great analysis. What a fabulous song. If that song was released today, most likely, Queen would be asked to break the song into singles by the record label.
I love this stuff. Fascinating. Would love to see more videos like this!
So interesting Data!!! Thanx for the Video Rick
Wow I didn't know all those Beatles hits were under 3mins. Pioneers even now. "In my life" one of my all time faves!
All You Need Is Love was their first single to approach 4 minutes (3:57) then came Lady Madonna at 2:17 and Hey Jude at a whopping 7:11.
Hey Jude was considered a risky bet for a single since it was sooooo long at 7min.
@@Kaddywompous Exactly. Even though MacArthur Park by Richard Harris (7:21) was released 4 months before Hey Jude.
You could only fit about 22 minutes a side on a vinyl LP back then without really messing up the audio quality, that's like 7-8 tracks a side or ~15 typical pop singles per album.
@@louiebee6745 Radio DJs loved those songs because they could safely take a toilet break. DJs loved 'American Pie' when it came out as well.
as someone from outside the US, i have never in my entire 36 years in this world, heard a country song on the radio or streaming playlists.
Lucky 😄I have never been able to appreciate mainstream country music. The videos Grady Smith has done about why it's awful and how they all have the same lyrics explains it for me. Also, I'm not from the US either. I do hear it blaring from a pickup truck or while I'm grocery shopping now and then, which is why I always have a pair of headphones 😄
That said, I friggin' love Johnny Cash.
Same but I notice my millennial friends all have a penchant for Country.
I'm a 45 yo Gen X and we used to laugh at it. I still mostly do, especially the basslines. It's just not actual music.
There's a great video of Steve Bailey telling young bassists how to make a fortune with only 2 notes: "play Country".
He's serious.
I'm born in the USA and grew up listening to Country/Western. Back in the day there was Western music which was more cowboy, outlaw music. I'm not a fan of "Brocountry" but there are some really good bands from Texas and even Canada.
It's amazing how narrow minded people are when it comes to music. @@GeraldSmallbear
Most likely you don’t know how wide and diverse the country genre really is and how many artists on the radio are country artists. Doesn’t matter if oldies or contemporary music.
Great stuff Rick!! Please do more on this as you see fit.
GREAT GREAT POST, I think shorter songs seem more apealing now because people in general are loosing their abilty to focus for any length of time. because of social media, short videos , (or the ability to speed them up). As a piano player, I know piano sales have been declining for quite a while. Not sure but I think guitar sales over took piano keyboard sales quite a while ago. Theyve definitely taken a back seat in the music stores fewer Home piano, organ stores. Piano and organ, still have a place making guitar bass drums and vocals sound great, in rock country, pop, especially gospel, and piano is holding its own in jazz for sure. (so many great young players) Thank you for all you do Rick!!
Plenty of great new music outside the billboard charts
Tons! some of the best music ever has been released in the last 20 yrs imo, you’re not gna hear any of it via radio, Grammy/tv performances or what’s popular in the Nashville music scene though.
I agree with that for sure. I don’t think he listens to us when we say that though.
Absolutely...some of the coolest music cannot be heard by trendy radio
Left Of The Dial
Most of the best music is likely outside of Billboard. Lol.
I love it when you dig down into the weeds of the ‘why is music like this’. Particularly when you compare past songs with today’s songs and give specific differences.
This!
I usually agree. Still, argumentation is sometimes a bit cheap. Have seen other musicians have more elaborate answers for this, as „video games bad“.
Thank you sir❤
Curious to see how this all plays out. I went from focusing on my singer-songwriter material to forming a punk rock/alt band a couple months ago. Punk is needed now more than ever! We got a few originals ready for the studio, and all the metrics point to maybe rock making somewhat of a comeback, other than the tempo and profanity trending, lol. Thx for this, Mr. Beato -- intriguing video!
Music as an art form has swayed back and forth for years...I'm still singing in a local band the songs of the 60's and early seventies to a room full of people who really enjoy hearing those great songs of our generation...I want to keep this music alive as long as I can...I have been a lead singer for 55 years and have performed many genres of music, but the 60's and 70's are special to me, now and until I die.
60's and 70's music is special to me as well; best musicians and real instruments as well as thought provoking lyrics.
One of the reasons that the Beatles songs and those of that era and before were under 3 minutes was that the physical capacity of one side of a “single” record was about 3 minutes. That, and the fact that radio was geared to playing singles with that time constraint kept songs at that length. Even as LPs expanded capacity, the industry was resistant to songs of greater length. As you said, Rick, today listeners have a short attention span. So, it’s no surprise that songs are shorter again.
They put Hey Jude on a 45. Short songs are what program directors wanted. Some artists put fake times on the labels of longer songs.
The hardware grew in capability then the human shrunk in capability 😂
Modern country is just rock music with a slight twang
Love this kind of video breaking down statistics and trends in the music industry!
Absolutely love trend analysis. I'd love to see some more of this in regard to production/composition elements like loudness/dynamic range, arrangement, vocal range, random stuff like that. That'd be freakin cool.
Thank you, Jared! What you saw in the video is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what the ChartCipher platform covers. We also look at timbre, vocal range, chord repetition, rhymes, lyrical moods, and a whole lot more to provide a comprehensive view of how the music landscape is evolving.
RE: song lengths... I was an on-air DJ for nearly 40 years and a piece of trivia I picked up long ago that stuck with me is that way back in the day when music first started being recorded to vinyl... shellac or whatever the medium was... the machines used for cutting the disc was powered by a pulley and counterweight system. The average length of time that the machine could operate on one winding of the pulley was around 3 minutes which determined how long the song could be. That standard just kind of stuck for a long time.
Similar to the length of a given album. Capacity of a vinyl or tape or disc was a physical limitation.
a few verses and choruses plus a bridge at a typical tempo also works out to about that much, especially if you're doing a short first verse
@@matturner6890 Tell that to Pink Floyd, Iron Butterfly, Tangrine dream, Yes, The WHO, King crimson and a few thousand others! You are speaking of a single "Radio Play" standard and boring, overused song structure record companies tried to make all of their artists conform to.
A record lathe wasn’t some clockwork windup toy. It was a precision electric recording device.
The real limitation was that a loud pop song could only fit 3-4 minutes on an old 10in 78 rpm or a 7in 45rpm single simply due to the size between the grooves.
You could always try mastering a record to fit more length on there but if you overdo it the tracks cut into each other and the record skips.
Once there were album length LPs songs could be a whole 18 minute song on one side.
@@jeffh8803early cutters absolutely used a weight/pulley system to move the cutter. But yeah, we really became accustomed to the 3:30 thing for songs. The size of the platter at a given speed certainly was a factor too.
Excellent analysis.
Would like to see waveform analysis of this. It seems that songs today are much louder and do not have as much range.
Thank you!
Thank you Rick this is a really insightful video on music.
Now it's time for keychanges to come back.
And non-diatonic chords...
PLEASE 🙏🏽
Nailed it
Best comment here
Let's be more specific: non-chromatic modulations
I can correct something here. There were videogames, but we were listening to CDs or Radio. I remember playing my Sega Genesis and listening to Pearl Jam´s No Code all the way. The stereo was on the desk, so I would pause the game, change the player to a Radiohead or Soundgarden CD, hit play and go back to the videogame. Sometimes it was cassette tapes with 90 minutes of songs I copied in a friends house. It was like being on this vortex. Nothing got in the way of music. I remember using Enya to sleep. 😅 Cheers from Brazil. Love the channel.
True. Video games were around
Videogames werent inifinite then lol. I remember when i beat all my nintendo games over a dozen times and got tired of them, that was it! No updates. Now theres infinite free-to-play games to access seemlessly. Its totally different.
Tldr; i wouldnt even be a musician today if it werent for that fact. I remember the day i tought myself piano was because i was sick of all my movies and games and there was simply nothing else to do!
Boredom can have magical effects. And society today is boredom deprived
hell yeah, do more of this!!
Love this. More please!
Great video. Regarding song lengths, Phil Spector printed 3:05 on label of "You Lost that Lovin' Feeling" to appease time standards of the time, but the song actually was 3:45 long. This drove unwitting DJ's bonkers trying to schedule ads and breaks on the air.
I think you’re just scratching the surface on why and how these trends are shaping out and love to know the criteria - is it downloads, plays, sales, streams, etc we are talking here and what’s trackable/not trackable I.e SoundCloud and other off-grid music sources? I’m surprised with demographics that Latin music is not higher in there somewhere and certainly on streets of Atlanta there’s not a lot of rock I hear, mores the pity…! But this is fascinating and much to unpack.
Over 3 years ago I started making music. Truth be told, I’ve always noticed I enjoyed shorter songs sometimes do much better because sometimes there’s no reason to extend a message or a feeling when it’s done.
Love this info and topic Rick.
As a guitarist who loves rock music, this is refreshing. I was also surprised how seemingly unpopular dance music is because EDM festivals are loaded with rabid fans. I guess raves are still somewhat underground
They are mostly now for psychonauts on a 3 day synthetic vacation.
Dance tracks are for raves. Not for radio.
Some exceptions though. The song Strangers by Kenya Grace is Drum n Bass.
Could be impacted by dance tracks still tending to be longer, so equal minutes of play for dance and pop would result in quite different stream counts. Or perhaps they're listening to long mixes elsewhere, which probably aren't counted in the charts at all.
@@cheshrkat there's always a longer club mix that doesn't chart.
In the late 80s and 90s the charts were dominated by elelectronic music (from commercial eurodance to crossover clubtracks). From 2001 many underground dance labels went bankrupt because of filesharing and bad management. Most of those labels were run by naive music enthousiasts, not by bussinesmen. From 2000's US format radio was more and more introduced in Europe and music went generic, less diversity, and more US focussed on US music (rap, r&b,...)
There were video games in the 90s ;) ! But yeah, people listened to longer songs back then because listening to the music oftentimes WAS the activity instead of being a PART of the activity.
We were playing video games way before the 90's, in fact. But there was no Internet in the early 90's, no smart phones, no social media... People generally had longer attention spans and didn't have a whole technoculture built to undermine it and feed us constant advertising.
@@SO-ym3zs I know, but he was talking explicitly about the 90s ;)
I know, I just meant that not only were we playing them then, but well before then, too. They were an established thing by then.@@saberreiter8569
@7:41 I think another factor which influenced longer songs in the 90's was studios finally taking advantage of digital production and format advancements like the longer playtime of compact discs and hard-disk based recording solutions, which allowed artists to feel like they had to use the whole 74 minutes available to them, and labels feeling like they were maximizing the value presentation of the recordings to consumers. Same thing has happened a number of times - such as when the industry shifted from EPs to LPs, LPs to 8-track, 8-track to cassette...
Fantastic info. Especially the song length trends.
As a producer, I have made songs for around 3 minutes to make streaming platforms happy and think of strategy but have now chosen to let it be up to each track instead of an algorithm... let the creativity and songs speak for themselves and breathe
AI (video) killed the (Radio Star) Media ⭐
The cure for all that ails you is live music. Here in Victoria we have Rifflandia. World class acts. If you ever If you ever decide to visit Vancouver Island, it'll be worth the trip. Keep on rocking Rick!
Good topic, your vids are always cool, and i like to see those guitarsin backgrounds ❤