How Digital Abundance is Revolutionizing The Psychology of Music
In 2022, British Indie band The Pocket Gods released an album with one thousand songs on it, and all of the songs have one thing in common: each track is just over 30 seconds long. The album, entitled, 1000X30 – Nobody Makes Money Anymore has a clear message for the music industry, done to raise awareness about Spotify’s policy of only paying royalties for a song if it is streamed for 30 seconds or longer.
As Pocket Gods frontman Mark Christopher Lee described to UpRoxx, “Why write longer songs when we get paid little enough for just 30 seconds? We wrote and recorded 1,000 songs, each a shade over 30 seconds long for the album. The longest is 36 seconds.”
1000X30 – Nobody Makes Money Anymore is a protest album, aimed at raising awareness about the streaming policies that govern the lives of modern-day musicians. Its existence, however, portends a much broader issue for musicians: streaming platforms - and their economics, shape the creative process itself. Spotify, with its vast, digital abundance, doesn’t just shape how music is accessed, but what songs are written in the first place.
And in turn, it determines the music that is not created. How does the psychology and economics of musical streaming influence the creative process? Let’s dive in
From Musical Digitization to Concert Sales and Back
We’ve seen how digitization in the early 2000s fundamentally, and forever changed our concept of music. It shifted music from being a physical, scarce good to one that is nebulous, and abundant, and in the process, divorced one’s listening habits from their musical identity.
These conceptual changes, however, were just the beginning. At the same time, it also fundamentally shifted the economics of the music industry. Few musicians would describe their relationships with record labels in the pre-Napster days as positive, but here at least, the sale of physical albums was a viable source of revenue. As digital platforms inserted themselves as the mediators between record labels and consumers, much less revenue remained for the artist, especially those at the margins of musical stardom.
To make up for this massive difference in revenue, artists have hit the road, making live concert tours their primary source of income. Digital music, with its incredible scale and reach, became an engine of the artist’s marketing, building awareness and demand for upcoming tours. The concert experience became the real finite good, and with a twist of irony, artists now build demand for them with the abundant nature of digital music. And abundance, it turns out, provides a whole new set of incentives, influencing not just compensation, but the creative process itself.
How Musical Streaming Creates Digital Abundance
The advent of musical streaming in the 2010s took this a step further - it didn’t merely impact what people listen to, but the kind of music that is created in the first place. Once streaming became a dominant force in connecting musicians with their audiences, it set up an entirely new set of incentives.
Back when music was physical and finite, you bought an entire album and you commit to it fully. Fast forward a few decades and there’s zero commitment. In a world of streaming, the listener is basking in a sea of substitutability. A track starts to feel dull? Hit the skip button. In an era of digital abundance, why be dissatisfied, even for a few seconds?
Even for the independent artists, trying to keep the sways of audience capture at bay, this new format pulled the artist in a clear direction: they now needed to hook the listener more than ever before, and to do so as quickly as possible. Streaming hasn’t merely changed how music is consumed; it has changed the creative process of music itself.
This isn’t mere hearsay or speculation. Research suggests that streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music are reshaping how music is created, driving a dramatic evolution in songwriting. With 75% of industry revenues now coming from streaming, artists face immense pressure to grab listeners’ attention in seconds, or risk being skipped. Canadian singer-songwriter Willa admits this reality has transformed her process: “I try to make sure there’s no wasted space,” she says. “Everything that’s in there is like 10 out of 10.”
How Digital Abundance Impacts Musical Creativity
This shift is confirmed by Canadian musicologist Hubert Léveillé Gauvin, who studied 303 top-10 singles between 1986 and 2015. He discovered that instrumental intros, once lasting 20–25 seconds, now average just five. “We’re talking about an 80% decrease in 30 years,” Léveillé Gauvin notes, attributing the trend to streaming’s competitive landscape, where standing out quickly is absolutely crucial. Dan Kopf of Quartz further supports this, revealing that songs from 2015–2018 are not only shorter overall but that even established pop artists like Drake are trimming track lengths—his 2018 album Scorpion features songs 11% shorter than those on his 2016 album views.
Luis Fonsi’s 2017 mega-hit Despacito shattered records across platforms, becoming the first song to surpass 1 billion streams on Spotify and the most-viewed video in YouTube history. Its success lies, in part, in how it hooks listeners: the intro, clocking in at just under 30 seconds, serves as a rapid-fire showcase of the song’s catchiest elements. This approach, often likened to a musical “executive summary,” prioritizes instant engagement. Canadian artist Shawn Mendes takes this strategy even further in Señorita, which dives into the refrain in just 15 seconds. Today’s hits waste no time, giving audiences everything upfront with little left to the imagination.
The findings are clear: streaming is fundamentally shaping what music gets made. Success now hinges on being “front-loaded,” with faster intros and earlier choruses designed to capture fleeting attention. In this new era, where listeners can skip with a tap, the creative process must adapt to digital abundance and the economics of immediacy.
Final Thoughts on The Psychology of Fast Music
Back in 1976, the Eagles opened “Hotel California” with 50 seconds of slow, acoustic fingerpicking, easing listeners into the song’s mood. Similarly, Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven, one of rock’s most iconic tracks, begins with a full minute of delicate guitar work. U2’s Where the Streets Have No Name builds anticipation with 40 seconds of ambient noise, and Pink Floyd’s Shine On You Crazy Diamond features a sprawling nine-minute intro. These expansive, indulgent beginnings once set the stage for some of music’s most memorable works.
Today, such lengthy intros feel almost unthinkable in a world dominated by streaming.
Whether this is your kind of music or not, we can all appreciate how the musical landscape is changing. The demands of digital platforms, where attention spans are fleeting, have created a new musical landscape—one where long, intricate openings are replaced by immediate, attention-grabbing hooks. These changes aren’t just reshaping the songs we hear but also dictating the ones that never get written. With success increasingly tied to conforming to the norms of streaming, artists are steering away from indulgent experimentation and leaning into formulas designed to captivate within seconds.
What’s left behind in this shift is harder to quantify but significant: the loss of space to linger, build, and surprise. The economics of streaming doesn’t just alter how we consume music; it fundamentally reshapes how it’s imagined and created, limiting the potential for songs that defy expectations and take their time. The result is a cultural landscape increasingly dominated by immediacy and driven by the psychology of fast music.
Photo by Pablo Heimplatz on Unsplash
Part II explores how the specific incentive structures of Spotify’s royalty system alter musical composition, and the face of music culture. Be the first to be notified, by signing up here (for free)
About the author
Matt Johnson, PhD is a researcher, writer, and consumer neuroscientist focusing on the application of psychology to branding. He is the author of the best-selling consumer psychology book Blindsight, and Branding That Means Business (Economist Books, Fall 2022). Contact Matt for speaking engagements, opportunities to collaborate, or just to say hello
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