EMZYG ELY / AKARI – Radio Edit (2023)
The full non-radio-edit-version of “ELY / AKARI” by Zurich-based stoner-rock band EMZYG is, true to its genre, over twelve vibing minutes long. Its radio edit (only four minutes) shaves off two thirds of the piece. What’s up with this violent, widespread practice?
When radio stations started to play music as the first ever audible mass-medium, it was the 1920s, and the standard way to play recorded music was on 78 RPM shellac records. When in 1949 the significantly smaller and cheaper 45 RPM vinyl single was introduced, everyone rejoiced—including radio stations, who now had to spend way less money.
The 7" vinyl single, similar to its shellac predecessor, could play about three to four minutes of music on each side. Neat—especially because that was the length radio stations had already allotted for songs in their schedule , so, haha, good thing that vinyl records still enforce that same song length, right? Right??
As we all know, there of course weren’t only vinyl singles but also LPs, and those did allow songs to be longer, but no matter: Radio stations stuck with the cheaper singles, meaning that in order for a song to get played, it needed to be three to four minutes long, and it needed to be available on a 7".
Artists complied—and continued to do so even when CDs and digital streaming made the rule obsolete. Of course, this shift did mean that more music with longer playtime was released, and of course the length of a song is determined by far more than just technological possibilities—but overall, the music industry has stuck to this standard: In the 2020s, the average billboard song has a length of three minutes, 15 seconds.
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