You’ll often hear people complaining about the pace of modern life and the fact that things just keep getting faster. Turns out that’s true of classical music as well – or at least Bach in a recent survey:-
“The labels found that modern recordings of the work have shaved off one-third of the length of recordings from 50 years ago, quickening by about a minute per decade.”
That certainly backs up the evidence that pop music is getting both shorter and faster as the attention span of the audience continues to shrink.
You might not get a huge amount of leeway when it comes to changing the delivery of the classic pieces of classical music. But it seems as if the same constraints don’t apply with popular music. So if you’re writing disposable pop and want to make your new songs stand out, perhaps what you should actually be doing is thinking about slowing them down.