Starting in the mid—2010s, the success of streaming services like Spotify, Tencent and Apple Music led the music industry into a period of steady income growth. But the rise of streaming hasn't just transformed the business of music; it has changed the music as well.

In 1972, the Temptations hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 charts, winning three Grammys, with a seven—minute version of the song "Papa Was a Rollin' Stone". Before the Temptations sing a word, an instrumental introduction plays for more than four minutes. If the group were in the studio today, the title chorus (副歌) would most likely have been featured much earlier in the song. That's because music streaming services pay artists based on the number of plays each month, and to count as a play, a user must listen to the song past the 30—second mark. If a song you've never heard before takes a long time to get to the hook (旋律最好的部分), there is a good chance that you may simply hit the button to go to the next song. To keep the "skip rate (跳过率)" as low as possible, musical artists are increasingly moving a song's hook to that initial 30—second sweet spot.

Every track that is listened to for more than 30 seconds counts as a play, but whether a listener makes it all the way through a song helps to determine whether a streaming service like Spotify will recommend similar songs in the future. For a musician, getting a song on Spotify's popular Today's Top Hits playlist means real money. A study by researchers at the University of Minnesota and the European Joint Research Centre found that songs on the list gained an average of 20 million streams, worth up to $163, 000 in royalties (版税).

As a result, according to an analysis by blogger Michael Tauberg, the average length of hit songs has dropped by more than 30 seconds since 2000, when it was over four minutes. Nearly two—thirds of the songs that achieved the number one spot in the first half of 2021 were under three minutes long.