Comments on: Should Pop Radio Force Every Song To Clock In At Under Two Minutes?

By: theendofirony

theendofirony — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 22:57:41 +0000

Very few “bands” get onto the top 10 of the radio charts these days. It is already all about the singer. The guitarist is (usually) just a hired gun for the track.

By: k-rex

k-rex — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 01:00:43 +0000

That’s a great idea. Sell the whole song and sell the two minute snip from the radio. They some genius will start making one minute snips. Eventually some dean-lister will play the entire song, and we’ll be able to do the ’70s all over again.

I do look forward to T.I. songs with all the T.I. cut out.

By: Thierry

Thierry — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 00:47:37 +0000

This sounds like Simon Cowell’s idea of radio – a verse and two choruses (with a change of key for the money note), like the Idol performances. Now, this is fine if you’re the singer/frontman, but what about the rest of the band’s solos/instrumentals? Also, couldn’t this mean wildly different versions of multi-part songs (like “Bohemian Rhapsody” or “Baba O’Riley”, to name just two) on different stations?

That being said, this sounds so ridiculous that it might just become the new trend.

By: CaptainWrong

CaptainWrong — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 00:40:50 +0000

They could always dial back the number of commercials they play and then they’d have plenty of room for more songs. That’s so crazy, it just might work.

By: Halfwit

Halfwit — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 23:02:56 +0000

@theendofirony: Yeah, this sounds like basically every college station's "Dancehall Hour." Talk over the song with your local announcements, then fade into the next one after 90 seconds or so.

By: Audif Jackson Winters IV

Audif Jackson Winters IV — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 22:28:19 +0000

Wasn’t this more or less the format of TRL when it came to the videos?

By: theendofirony

theendofirony — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 22:23:37 +0000

Have you ever heard radio stations do this? It’s fucking annoying! Usually DJ will play about two minutes of the song, scream a random word or phrase, and then it’s onto the next song.

Hot97 actually does it from time to time…

By: Chris Molanphy

Chris Molanphy — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 21:43:53 +0000

After the (momentary) success of Jack five years ago, someone — maybe even this guy — was selling this same idea as the next big radio-format idea. Only it was packaged as a kind of ’80s-’90s gold format in which songs were all shaved down to two minutes. You could sample it online and everything — i.e. the programmers’ seamless edits of well-known pop hits. It was creepy how they managed to turn a song like, say, Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams” into a kind of Phantom Edit simulacrum of the song (you’d get a verse, a chorus, a reduced bridge, maybe a repeat of the chorus, and done). I found it effective but evil. I don’t think any major-market station tried it. This was at least three years ago.

Anyway: the only thing that seems new here is the attempt to sell it with contemporary material. But all of your objections are valid. Imagine three or four Black Eyed Peas plays per hour instead of the 1.5-to-2 we’re already enduring now.

By: LostTurntable

LostTurntable — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 21:35:54 +0000

It’s not so crazy it just might work, it’s so crazy that it will fail hysterically. The only thing worse than hearing the same 40 songs all day would be hearing 2 minute samples of the same 40 songs all day.