Not really my generation but was wondering what happened to the time where people could make 10 min songs and get away with it. These days they what, average around 3 to 6min? I do admit i like faster stuff these days but just curious what changed?

I bet about 80% of you wont make it through this song:

 

Depends on what kind of music you're into. Many of the bands I listen to have songs over 10 minutes, closer to 20 minutes even in some cases.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMCvi6A2KR0

 

It's called ''new media demands'', it sucks but it's the present (and unfortunately the future) of music and it won't stop until we'll start to appreciate more the 'music' and less the 'songs', for nowadays it's easier to press play and skip through songs instead of listening carefully to all the details

 

One of my favourites is actually 12 minutes long:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDLQlzTf9Mw

"Ride the snake..." good one! There are also some more contemporary songs that I love and break this "rule", mostly from the "Underworld". These guys never care about time. They seem to make songs according to the feeling. That's one thing I like about them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IodCyGioR4

The thing is, time should be completely irrelevant, both in life as in songs/art. The artistic impression shouldn't be constrained with time. I never think about the length of my songs, and about time, too. Only when I have to catch a plane, or a train, or a bus. That's the only circumstance when time is important, I think.

Fuck time! Cheers !

p.s. but Sonar Sounds is right. These days, a 3:30 song can go a long way, as far as commercial success... people are pumped rapidly with so much info and they accommodated to it, so if they don't like the song within first 15 sec... It's sad actually.

 

It depends on when and where the music you listen to is coming from or where you're finding it. The Woodstock-era musicians would do long songs because they were jammers, and that suited the vibe (and the drugs) of the time. The prog-rockers who came later were musicallly self-indulgent, but the audience signed-up for, and came to expect, just that. The Ramones came along and shaved things down to an average of two minutes. And so on.

People are doing all sorts of stuff, now; apart from those who are trying to make, or at least emulate, in-one-ear/out-the-other hits and such, there is a lot more variety of forms and approaches among musicians these days, thanks to the new technology. It might take some digging in the online dung-heap, but it's there. Myself, I did a 30-minute song three years ago, and no one shot me dead, so I suppose that I "got away with it."

 

My favourites are suites with 15-20min average length

 

People living in this generation generally have a shorter attention span because of the internet. We can and often do skip through songs playing only 5 seconds of each.

Modern artists know their song will be liked or passed upon based on the first 10 seconds that a listener hits play, so they try to compress a 10 minute songs worth of arrangement into 3 minutes, essentially giving three times as much value for the listeners time.

Think about it, if someone listened to any random 10 seconds of a track of Dark Side of the Moon, would they like it? no because not much goes on for that 10 seconds, which is a shame.

Adapt and Evolve.

 

It absolutely not a shame... This was a concept of the album / song / story...
There is an eternity in any 10 seconds of the Dark side of the moon album.

 

Because now there are 10 billion songs. Too much to listen to, let alone a mediocre 10 min song.

 

Peoples at tensions spans get shorter and shorter as technology progresses stuff that I thought was cool and would play for hours with...kids today look at it play 5-10 minutes and want something else....no more imaginations or dreams just a iPad and ADD

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oIvlrFVkcU

 

Try to listen to:

Singer: David Sylvian (with Robert Fripp)
CD: The First Day
Song: Darshan (+17 mins)

 

Dream Theatre, great example duskwings. David Sylvian also.

What I notice here is that these are already quite established performers, though. No new ones. A fact to brainstorm on.

 

Well, how about this: I don't feel like a 3-4 minutes song can do it justice. It all depends on the song, of course, but why constraining the length of a song to any length at all? If I feel it should be 5 minutes then be it. If I feel it should be 3 minutes, then be it. Not many of the latter, though. Same with films. I often feel some films could use more time to develop and they feel hastily edited even. Why constraining films to 1:30 hours? Because it's good for advertisements on TV so you can put half an hour of advertisements to fill 2 full hours? There seems to be a disparity between what's commercially good and what's simply free art. I'm all for free art. Commercial art is going the way of a dodo anyway. Slowly but surely.

What I think is that times will change, eventually. This is just a temporary limbo for art. Pop? Pop is going to become marginalised if it's not already. For me it is. Pop music has never been more crappy than it is now. I think people will start listening to what they like on Youtube or Soundcloud, websites like that. They won't pay so much attention to TV and radio any more. You already have "Youtube stars" and "Soundcloud stars" that have nothing to do with the old way of doing things. Old style record companies are going bust.

 

They're still around.

The Glass Prison

 

Woodstock is over so isn't the Lcd, Acid days where people would trip out to Hey Man Ten min songs......

 

The average progressive house track is still about 8 minutes long, and back in the days tracks with 10+ minutes where an exception like today. Tracks this long meant you would only be able to fit one track on the one side of a 45 rpm vinyl record.

Tracks like the one you posted aren't meant to be listened along whilst sitting in your armchair smoking ye olde pipe ;)
So I wouldn't attribute listening habits to your observation.

 

they're still out there, just harder to find

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbWhpfXisZw

 

+10min tracks are still quite common in psybient/psydub/other downtempo genres. Here's one from the new Desert Dwellers album released last month :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ay_SLBSVqDI

 

It was like that for every generation.
Mainstream and not.
When Camel, Pink Floyd, King Crimson...made LONG tracks and CONCEPT albums (most ppl don't even know what it is ), mainstream ppl were already listening to pop music (Beatles and such) with 5 minutes average listening time.

It is more "capitalist consumerism" than "generation" ;)
Ppl like fast food, others like gastronomic restaurants...and others, like me, love both, depending on the situation
(Less and less fast food, because time is short but life is shorter )

PS : i'm 40 years old, and i listen to 70's rock prog, reggae, industrial, metal, goth, jazz rock...i can't list them all