An Unpopular Trend? Fans Criticize How Short K-Pop Songs Have Become These Days

With the popularity of TikTok and YouTube shorts these days, you may have heard conversations and complaints about how people’s attention spans seem to be getting worse due to the rapid-fire nature of such social media trends. It’s become increasingly common to be bombarded with an overwhelming amount of news, information, entertainment, and other genres of media online in a short period of time, and it wouldn’t be surprising if it is impacting how we consume such media.

Based on a trend that has seemingly become more common in the K-Pop industry, the TikTok-ification of media seems to be impacting the music world too. Whereas in the past, it seems like songs under three minutes long were few and far between, these days it sometimes feels like the opposite has happened and songs have become increasingly shorter.

To name just a few very recent examples, NewJeans latest song, “Super Shy”, runs at just 2:34, while the new FIFTY FIFTY song “Barbie Dreams” has a 2:29 runtime. ENHYPEN‘s latest title track “Bite Me” seems over too soon at the 2:39 mark, and even TXT‘s new collaboration with the Jonas Brothers, “Do It Like That”, lasts only 2:25.

With shorter songs, it also becomes easier for K-Pop fans to stream their favorite artists’ new tracks to help get them onto music charts, which has become a heated topic in recent times as well.

But not everyone is a fan of the trend of songs becoming shorter. Some argue that a song under three minutes long often doesn’t have enough time to build up to a satisfying climax, or it ends up feeling rushed. The topic was recently discussed on a Reddit post, which at this time has over 1.2k upvotes and 200 comments.

Can we go back to the time where songs being less than 3 minutes long was a rarity and not the majority?
by u/niclaswwe in kpopthoughts

The majority of the top comments on the post seem to agree with the author, wishing that this trend wasn’t becoming increasingly common among K-Pop artists.

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by u/kitlandslot from discussion Can we go back to the time where songs being less than 3 minutes long was a rarity and not the majority?
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by u/Eismann from discussion Can we go back to the time where songs being less than 3 minutes long was a rarity and not the majority?
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by u/yodream from discussion Can we go back to the time where songs being less than 3 minutes long was a rarity and not the majority?
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by u/ronnietp from discussion Can we go back to the time where songs being less than 3 minutes long was a rarity and not the majority?
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by u/PieuvreCosy from discussion Can we go back to the time where songs being less than 3 minutes long was a rarity and not the majority?
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Fans worry that artists feel pressured to make songs shorter due to TikTok and streaming culture, which might make it harder for longer songs to get the attention and success they deserve.

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by u/Ideasforgoodusername from discussion Can we go back to the time where songs being less than 3 minutes long was a rarity and not the majority?
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by u/1306radish from discussion Can we go back to the time where songs being less than 3 minutes long was a rarity and not the majority?
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by u/aftershockstone from discussion Can we go back to the time where songs being less than 3 minutes long was a rarity and not the majority?
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by u/icyredclouds from discussion Can we go back to the time where songs being less than 3 minutes long was a rarity and not the majority?
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by u/Renimar from discussion Can we go back to the time where songs being less than 3 minutes long was a rarity and not the majority?
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Of course, there are still plenty of K-Pop artists who don’t seem to be following this trend (at least, not yet), so there’s some hope that it doesn’t become completely rare to discover new songs that are between three and four minutes long. But short songs definitely seem to be more common than they used to, so how do you feel about this trend?