Spotify Research Project
Are shorter or longer songs more popular among Spotify users?
Spotify is a music streaming platform designed to connect users around the world. In recent years, a trend has emerged in which songs are becoming shorter. This project will examine whether Spotify users respond positively to this trend by analyzing the top songs from 2010-2025 and identifying any patterns in the lengths of popular tracks.
Data Gathering
To analyze trends in music over the past 15 years, I gathered the top-streamed songs from each year and compiled them into a single dataset. While collecting the data, I ensured it included both the year each song was released and its duration. After combining the data in RStudio, I cleaned it to prepare for analysis.
To create the plot, I generated two new columns: one for the year and one for song duration. Because the original dataset listed duration in milliseconds, I converted it to minutes to make it easier to interpret. After completing these steps, I was ready to create the plot, and the results are shown below.
The echo: false option disables the printing of code (only output is displayed).
Data and Presentation
The graph shows a clear downward trend in average song duration over time. Song lengths increased slightly in the early 2010s, reaching a peak around 2013 at just under four minutes on average. However, after this peak, the average duration begins to decline year by year. This decrease becomes more pronounced after the late 2010s, with a noticeable drop around 2019. While there are small fluctuations in the early 2020s, the overall trend continues downward. By 2025, the average song duration falls to three minutes and below for the first time, highlighting a significant shift toward shorter songs in recent years.
Why is This Happening? (still editing this section)
Artists nowadays create shorter songs due to Spotify having a 30-second minimum listening fee. Creating shorter songs increases the likelihood of getting more streams, and in turn, getting more royalties. However, it is not like Spotify users are complaining. Due to decreasing attention-spans, users prefer listening to shorter songs anyways. According to
The question is, did songs get shorter first or was it listening habits that caused artists to change? This might be a chicken and the eggs situation.