The emergence of streaming services has not only transformed the music business, but also changed music itself. This is stated in the book “Key Changes: Ten Times Technology Transformed the Music Industry by Howie Singer, former chief strategic technologist at Warner Music Group, and Bill Rosenblatt, president of the consulting firm GiantSteps, writes The Wall Street Journal.

For example, the length of songs has changed. The fact is that music streaming services pay artists based on the number of listens per month. To do this, the user must listen to a song longer than the 30-second mark. Therefore, if a song has a long intro, there is a high probability that it will be skipped. To avoid this, artists move the chorus closer to the beginning of the song.

But the creators modify not only the introductory parts of tracks. It depends on whether the user listens to the end of the song, and whether the streaming service will recommend similar tracks in the future. For example, for a musician, being included in the popular Today’s Top Hits playlist means real money.

A study conducted by scientists from the University of Minnesota and the European Joint Research Center showed that songs from this list receive an average of 20 million plays, which amounts to up to $163 thousand in royalties.

While songs are getting shorter, artists’ albums are getting longer. At the same time, strategies for releasing new music are changing. Some authors release new albums more frequently and strive for multi-genre collaborations. The latter attracts a larger audience and means that a track can be featured on more playlists and increases the chances that it will appear in search results.

By the way, recently Stability AI announced the Stable Audio AI model that can synthesize music or sounds from written prompts.