{"id":121,"date":"2008-05-23T20:05:52","date_gmt":"2008-05-24T03:05:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/armanbohn.com\/blog\/?p=121"},"modified":"2008-05-26T12:29:48","modified_gmt":"2008-05-26T19:29:48","slug":"why-are-pop-songs-always-3-12-minutes-long","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/armanbohn.com\/blog\/2008\/05\/23\/why-are-pop-songs-always-3-12-minutes-long\/","title":{"rendered":"why are pop songs always 3 1\/2 minutes long?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.armanbohn.com\/blog\/pictures\/2008_05_23_a.jpg\" alt=\"... primative mp3  ...\" \/><\/p>\n<p>When recorded media was first introduced, it was a novelty.  The Edison Cylider, being the first practical distribution method for recorded sound, never took off.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.armanbohn.com\/blog\/pictures\/2008_05_23_b.jpg\" alt=\"... the victrola [a popular 10 inch record player] ...\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The 78 rpm record <em>did<\/em> take off, and thanks to its limitations, pop songs have been limited to about 3:30 in length.  You couldn&#8217;t fit more than that onto a 78.  Record executives, engineers, and producers all knew this.  To sell popular music, a song had to fit on one side of a 78.  <\/p>\n<p>Musical forms and structures evolved quickly to fill the 3:30 time limit.  The verse-chorus-verse formula that still exists today came about so that songs could come to a satisfying conclusion within the time limit of the record.<\/p>\n<p>These limitations were ingrained upon songwriters and arrangers for 40 years.<\/p>\n<p>As technology eliminated the 3:30 barrier for popular music with the LP record and more recently the CD, I often wonder why the time limit remains.  I guess old habits are hard to break.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.armanbohn.com\/blog\/pictures\/2008_05_23_c.jpg\" alt=\"... the original cassette [enormous] ....\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I leave you with a ghost from the past &#8212; the original cassette tape format that survived for eight years.  I have never seen one of these or even met a person that has heard of this, so don&#8217;t expect people to care about your damn ipod 40 years from now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When recorded media was first introduced, it was a novelty. The Edison Cylider, being the first practical distribution method for recorded sound, never took off. The 78 rpm record did take off, and thanks to its limitations, pop songs have &hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/armanbohn.com\/blog\/2008\/05\/23\/why-are-pop-songs-always-3-12-minutes-long\/\"> <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">why are pop songs always 3 1\/2 minutes long?<\/span> Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[117],"tags":[215,217,218,219,216],"class_list":["post-121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rant","tag-330-song","tag-78-records","tag-edison-cylinder","tag-ipod","tag-pop-songs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/armanbohn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/armanbohn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/armanbohn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/armanbohn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/armanbohn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/armanbohn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/armanbohn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/armanbohn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/armanbohn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}