Research shows Spotify is changing the way songs are titled
Do you think song titles have changed much over the past few years? Maybe you've thought they've used more unique words? Or even gotten shorter?
If you've noticed any of these changes—you're absolutely correct.
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Michael Tauberg, a self-described “engineer interested in words and how they shape society,” took a deep look at Spotify and how the streaming service has changed the music industry in a new Medium post.
“Now that Spotify is a multibillion dollar juggernaut on track to IPO, I thought it would be interesting to see what effects the company (and streaming in general) has had on the broader music business,” Tauberg writes.
He looked at data from the “pre” and “post” Spotify eras, which he explains to be between 2000–2008 and 2009–2017. And with this deep-dive, he discovered a lot about the effect Spotify has had on music.
Take, for example, the number of Billboard Hot-100 songs. With Spotify and other streaming players becoming widely available, there was a pretty massive jump in the number of total songs in the Hot 100. In the “pre-Spotify” era, Tauberg found that only 3092 songs landed in the Hot-100.
However, in the same amount of time in the “post-Spotify” era, there were 3933 songs on the chart—a 27 percent increase. With that change, though, songs only charting for one week on the Billboard Hot 100 chart have become more common.
The “pre” and “post” Spotify eras have come with some more unique song titles, too.
Tauberg points out that the “names of albums and songs are uncorrelated to their musical success,” and he measured this by looking into the number of unique words in a song title. He points out that from 2000–2008, there were a total of 2113 unique words in song titles, and from 2009–2017, there were a total of 2512 unique words—meaning there were 19 percent more unique words used in song titles in the “post-Spotify” era.
Plus, more song titles have only one or two words in them. But Tauberg also found that there are more songs with very long titles—like, seven or more words.
See exactly how song title length has shifted via his charts below:
[Photo by: Michael Tauberg/Medium]
[Photo by: Michael Tauberg/Medium]
So, what can we expect, according to Tauberg? “More songs, more dominant star artists, less country music, and last but not least, more delightfully specific song titles.” Incredible.
