Well, isn’t that a standard practice in radio? The songs are a tad shorter and, as a result, a bit pitched up. Part of it is about ads, but mostly it’s about increasing the chance of you liking what you hear (more songs means maybe you’ll like one, at least) and not changing the station. If we can fit 11 songs in the space of 10, that’s a wider net.
No need to speed up music, just fade it out early. Pop music has evolved to be structured in a way that not much will be lost, survival and success of the most radio-friendly. Few songs break that rule and those that do are either deliberately short or way too elaborate for radio anyways.
I wonder if radio in the 50s used this or if it's the result of change in market (probably due to TV too) that made them consolidate into simpler format and more ads. In which case it would be a metaphor for the faux-death of TV.
Why wouldn’t TV follow suit?