Why are most songs about 3:30mins long and not longer or shorter? Why is the standard length varying between genres (and during the time)?
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Radio stations don’t want songs to be too long or too short. So for a song to be considered radio friendly artists will stick to this time limit. Billy Joel famously lampooned this with his song The Entertainer where he says even though song is catchy he won’t stay relevant anymore because the radio stations won’t play it.
What you’re seeing is the average length of a song based upon current songs… so why isn’t it different? Because that’s how the math worked out when they were all added up and divided by the total.
Song length is actually getting shorter partly because streaming services will pay the same amount regardless of length.
https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2019/01/18/streaming-music-shorter-songs-study/
During the days when vinyl records were the way everyone stored and recorded music, there were standard 10 inch “single” records that held about 3 minutes worth of music. Depending on the quality of the sound you wanted, it could store up to 5 minutes. As radio blossomed in popularity, they needed these record singles. Longer disks existed but only held some 4-5 minutes and were more expensive to make.
Radio played the most popular music, so pop music artists were incentivized to create music that would fit within that length of time. The loose pop song format was created around that length.
While technology has changed drastically and isn’t limited to that length anymore, pop music generally still falls within that time limit because pop music still generally follows a similar format.
Music – especially pop music – works very well in 8-bar phrases. [4/4 time](https://www.google.com/search?safe=off&sxsrf=ALeKk01P7aCKp1dIlJgvNkHQ-EFtYSu8ow%3A1610811679614&source=hp&ei=HwkDYPPEIua1ggeKuJbYCQ&q=site%3Areddit.com%2Fr%2Fexplainlikeimfive+time+signature&oq=site%3Areddit.com%2Fr%2Fexplainlikeimfive+time+signature&gs_lcp=CgZwc3ktYWIQAzoECCMQJzoFCC4QkQI6BQgAEJECOgUIABCxAzoICC4QsQMQgwE6CAgAELEDEIMBOgcIABDJAxBDOggILhDHARCvAToLCC4QsQMQxwEQowI6BQguELEDOgoIABCxAxCDARBDOggILhDHARCjAjoECAAQQzoHCAAQsQMQQzoICAAQsQMQiwM6BQgAEIsDOhQILhCxAxDHARCjAhCLAxCoAxCnAzoCCAA6BAgAEApQuAFY3zpg6ztoAHAAeACAAZgBiAHCGZIBBDQ1LjWYAQCgAQGqAQdnd3Mtd2l6uAEC&sclient=psy-ab&ved=0ahUKEwiz0NeP5aDuAhXmmuAKHQqcBZsQ4dUDCAg&uact=5) is the simplest, easiest to understand time signature, so pop music is mostly in 4/4 time. It also needs to be fast enough to be catchy without being hectic, hopefully right around the perfect speed to dance to, so somewhere between 100-130 beats per minute (probably 100 or 120).
Presuming 8-bar phrases, *most* pop music is going to follow this format or something very similar to it: intro, verse, verse, chorus, chorus, verse, chorus, chorus, bridge, chorus, chorus, outro. That’s 12 phrases at 8 bars, so 98 bars x 4 beats = 384 beats, divided by ~120 beats per minute = 3.2~3.8 minutes. Even more abstracted, the format goes like: intro, phrase, altered phrase (which has some discord, which creates tension), chorus (home key, which relieves the tension), repeat, outro. You’re creating a musical story that follows the [story arc](https://blog-cdn.reedsy.com/uploads/2017/07/climax-1.jpg) where your verses (whether in the lyrics or the musicality or both) create the rising action and climax through tension and the chorus is the falling action and resolution. The bridge is the highest amount of tension and climax, then big climax into resolution with the final chorus and outro or fade or whatever.
If you *really* want to get into music theory, which I am not good at, there are particular chords that are super common that pop music uses in each of these parts. And, of course, music is about repetition so it’s not just one verse/chorus, you repeat it a couple times. The variations allow you to repeat the same music phrase so your brain recognizes it and likes it wants it but, WAIT, it’s *slightly* different which is super interesting to your brain, and then hey look it’s back to that same phrase I already know, whoo, brain is satisfied.
That song length is also just about the right size to be interesting enough to keep people listening, but not long enough for them to lose interest before the next song comes on. Again, very digestible.
Other genres of music don’t follow quite as strict formatting as pop music so they may or may not have longer or shorter music. Pop music is designed to be easily digestible for the widest range of people. Most of those kinds of music don’t end up on the radio, though. By the way, I’m not trying to shit on pop music for being formulaic. *All* music is formulaic to some degree. Some pop artists work with the limitations of the genre to be creative and make great music. Some pop artists use the format as a crutch to crank out lowest-common-denominator mediocre music.
TL;DR: Records have a physical size limit and since the size of the record dictates how much music can be on it, there was a cap on how long a song could be and still be useful to radios. Musicians made songs to fit those records (which were ~3:30) and ever since then pop music has followed the same musical formatting, which means it lasts for roughly the same length of time.
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