Curiously, during cassette tape dominance in the early 90s album length was 12.5 tracks. This increased to 15.8 in 2003, as CDs dominated. It has declined again to 14.2 tracks.
They state,
"With subscription pricing and the ability to easily skip among artists (as opposed to per-album or per-song charges, which were the norm), streaming pushes users to listen to explore new artists. This has the potential to reduce the concentration of the very top artists and albums, while also helping music lovers find what economists refer to as the “long tail” of the industry."
// totally unrelated complaint: searching Google for the above chart was super frustrating, giving almost exclusively "what sounds best" results when I was trying to find sales figures. Searching for the HBR article I linked above (which I had read previously but forgotten details of) was equally fruitless on Google "average album length" and variations kept returning "what's the best length for an album" results. Had to switch to DDG to find the HBR article, and with the same search term it was the third result. WTF google?! I keep noticing less helpful results.
Curiously, during cassette tape dominance in the early 90s album length was 12.5 tracks. This increased to 15.8 in 2003, as CDs dominated. It has declined again to 14.2 tracks.
They state,
"With subscription pricing and the ability to easily skip among artists (as opposed to per-album or per-song charges, which were the norm), streaming pushes users to listen to explore new artists. This has the potential to reduce the concentration of the very top artists and albums, while also helping music lovers find what economists refer to as the “long tail” of the industry."
// totally unrelated complaint: searching Google for the above chart was super frustrating, giving almost exclusively "what sounds best" results when I was trying to find sales figures. Searching for the HBR article I linked above (which I had read previously but forgotten details of) was equally fruitless on Google "average album length" and variations kept returning "what's the best length for an album" results. Had to switch to DDG to find the HBR article, and with the same search term it was the third result. WTF google?! I keep noticing less helpful results.