BENGALURU : Back in the olden days (the early 2000s I mean), chart-topping artistes would spend an entire year (or more) working on a new album. From the songwriting stage, to the production stage, recording stage, and then of course lavish music videos, followed by album tours, press, appearances – the whole nine yards. After spending a year making an album, an artiste could often spend the next two years riding that high, saying, “I just released an album” before having to hit the studio again. Artistes like Mariah Carey reached legend status for releasing an album every single year of the 1990s.
Now, the day you release a song, people ask when your next release is going to be. What other projects do you have in the pipeline? Are you doing ANYTHING new?
The immediacy of social media has been game-changing for musicians, because the moment a song is out,
it’s out.
We’ve heard it. We loved it. We’ll probably listen again. What’s next? The other thing that has changed is the attention of the online audience. Back in the day, it used to be a special pleasure to buy a new CD, carefully pull out the liner notes and listen to the album in its entirety while reading everything from the lyrics to the artiste credits and thank yous. And then, when you were done, you’d listen again.
The artiste was telling you a story, a long elaborate message through the series of tracks that you would try to decode. Each song was a piece, and they all fit together to develop a storyline, perhaps showing you the arc of the artiste’s life since the last album.
Now, when a new song drops by an artiste you love, you’ll probably listen (twice), add it as a favourite track to your Spotify list, and move on with life. Sure, you’ll still have people who will sit through a three-hour concert and enjoy it, but online, the trick is to engage your listener in the first three seconds, or they will move on. In fact, Facebook and Instagram count anything longer than three seconds as “one view.”
With short-form content like TikTok videos and Instagram Reels, it reaches a whole new level – creators are making much more focused, to-the-point (and often in-your-face content). Instagram stories are fifteen seconds long. Reels used to be 15 seconds (now they can go up to 30 seconds). This combination of immediacy and shortened attention spans has led to music being a quick update, more than a story.
You want a new song every week? No problem – here you go – 15 seconds just for you.
(The authors run SaPa – the Subramaniam Academy of Performing Arts)