How long should song samples be?

Jun 24, 2008

Simon Harris I’ve gone on record as saying that in almost all circumstances, I’m generally opposed to the 30-second sample. 30-seconds is not enough time to learn to like a song. It might be enough to recognise one, but that’s about it.

As a rule of thumb, if you want people to like your music, you have to let them hear it. And that means give them the whole track. I still maintain that this is far and away the best way to build an audience for your music.

But I was lucky enough to bump into a musician friend of mine who hops between London and Birmingham (making the most of the strengths of both places for musicians) and he played me a sample track that takes a slightly different approach.

It’s a smart one and not one I’d considered.

Simon Harris has an album coming out called 81 Oakfield. It’s a really nice sounding album. How do I know? I’ve heard the whole thing in 3 minutes flat.

What Simon gave me was a compilation of snippets from the album that are seamlessly mixed into one single song-length track that gives a flavour of the record without giving away any individual tracks.

It’s an interesting way of solving a problem (if you’re one of those people that considers having people download your music for free a ‘problem’). It gives a sense of the album, uses relatively little bandwidth, and does the offline equivalent of skipping through the disc to see if there are any nasty surprises, or if the album lives up to expectation as a whole package.

I’m not 100% convinced that it’s “the answer” (or even that there is one), but all the same – I’m impressed. Nice one, Simon.

Visit Simon’s MySpace page.

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10 Comments. Write a comment or link to this post

Daniel

I come from a different angle on this than a lot of people, largely because I don’t write “songs” in any traditional sense. However, I give away all of my music. I pack it in a zip file, encoded at 128kbps and let people download the whole album. I put flash players so people can hear the whole album on the webpage, and make it all streamable on Last.fm, etc. My perspective is this:

1) People want to hear it first. The people who buy music will probably still buy it (evidence seems to support me on this)
2) People that want to download it are going to anyway.
3) Because I do ambient oriented music, I deal with people who care about quality. If they want a nice package with higher quality music, they will pay for it.

Either way, I think giving it away is the best route for anyone, but it is particularly effective for more fringe styles that aren’t song oriented.

In any event, I think the whole song should be streamable, at least. I would never buy anything I haven’t heard.

Jun 25th, 2008
Sam Klingberg

Billy Corgan did something very similar to that with his solo album, TheFutureEmbrace, that he released several years ago. Except he released as stylized video that was about ten minutes long, but it was a remix of every song on the album. I couldn’t find it online, otherwise I’d post a link.

I think beyond promotion of an artist, it’s also an interesting way to promote an album as a entire piece of art (a dying concept, it seems) rather than just one catchy hook.

BTW I highly enjoy your blog, and I have gained a lot since I began reading. Keep up the good work!

Jun 25th, 2008
harrisongalaxy

I think people have been offering this type of ’solution’ for a couple of years, but seems to me to have floundered on two issues.

1 – Poor Imitation – As evidenced with reaction to the Kylie X ‘mixtape’ from last year, is that it is derided equally as both a cop-out and exposing the paucity of overall quality. In other words, the negative connations with being seen as a p2p/rapidshare-killer and the inference that if you can gain an insight in such a short snippet, then there must be little depth.

2 – Unwilling Compromise – (as I must admit to finding myself) It is really difficult as an artist in the studio to try and cram 45mins+ worth of vibe into 180secs. Time is money, and engineers will eat into budgets once given this task to perfectly match every cross-fade and beat. Bpms don’t match, keys are different, ostinatos becoming irritating rather than integral.

As I fervently believe in solutions ahead of problems, my current roadmap features giving away what in the olden days were called EPs, along with creating alternate (typcially more acoustic therefore quicker and cheaper!) mixes. Further ideas welcome!

Jun 25th, 2008
fakedjs

I like the approach, it’s the exact time I spend per song when I stream.

Jun 25th, 2008
Vincent

I like the concept, which reminds me of a voiceover demo, so the iidea of a trailer isn;t quite new but certainly a break form the norm. Something about the trailer you have above annoys me but i am not sure if it is the way it cuts or the fact i just don’t like the genre

Beyond that the only thing I don’t like is that you are asking artists to learn yet another trick/hurdle to achieve a goal, and does it really have benefits? does it make an album more sellable?

Is there raw data and A/B testing results available?

Jun 25th, 2008
Ali

I really like the snippet thing and did it also with my latest album. For me as a music consumer I really appreciate if I can draw in the general feeling and if possible even the “soul” of the whole album in a few minutes. In addition to an album sampler I think it’s also vital to offer all songs at least in a streamable format, so that if you enjoy the appetizer you can immediately dive in for the whole treat.

And a comment to HARRISONGALAXY. I totally agree with the difficulty in creating a working sampler track with the changing melodies and BPMs and cross-fading it smoothly. I was able to squeeze my album to a 6:40 sampler track without loosing the general idea that runs behind the album. Making a 3 minute sampler is indeed a real challenge.

If you wish, you can listen to my album sampler at Myspace. Any comments are highly appreciated.

http://www.myspace.com/vastdays

Jun 25th, 2008
ALISTAIR

I remember buying the song “I’ll Be There For You” (Theme from Friends) on CD single when I was much younger and it had only just been released and one of the B-sides was in fact just such a “snippet medley”, so the idea has been around for a while and I am very surprised more people do not make use of it now in the digital age.

I had always intended to use that idea when I got enough material for an album together.

Great blog by the way. Has been a tremendous source of inspiration to a confused unsigned musician!

Jun 28th, 2008
Sarah Sings

Hello Andrew,

Your site has been a rather magnificent discovery for me this week!

I am a UK Music Fan with a broad range of tastes and a hobbyist songwriter in my spare time.

I have been reading your ebook and several of your articles/discussions with interest and have picked up some really useful tips so thank you for that…

Now for the bad news…

I seem to have noticed a prevalent theme in your posts…

You seem to think that providing music for free is the way forward in the music industry and that when artists don’t want their music provided for free (without their permission) and when they or their representatives/industry bodies take legal recouse to stop this happening ie prosecuting file sharers….that this is a great sin…

You seem to get extremely irriated at “corporate” bodies taking legal steps to protect their music and i just can’t understand why!

It seems as though you are trying to turn the issue into an “us and them” Corporate vs Fanboy Filesharer war when your site is geared towards supporting the very people who want to share their music and earn a financial reward for it – Indepdendent Artists/Record Labels

The BPI and Record Companies are just trying to protect their music.

Who provides them with the music they are trying to protect? The Artists. People like me and the many people reading your site.

Do you endorse filesharing of copyrighted music? It appears you do (Please correct me if I’m wrong).

If you don’t endorse it (officially) You at least seem to agree with the principle of giving away music for free as this is a theme that runs through this forum and your ebook.. You keep talking about “promotion” and “getting your music listened to” at any cost…

In this case the cost of the music….

I just can’t understand why you insist on this theme of “free” music for all.

I am starting to wonder if you have a hidden “sponsor” or agenda for this site – Is someone bankrolling you Andrew? Do you have an interest you need to declare?

As an independent artist if you give away your music for free – How do you earn a living?

Do you make money from sell out tours? Er no because your not Prince!

Make money from the local gig scene? Er no you have to provide at last 50 people or you have to PAY the venue between Â£100-Â£200 because as one of my buddies got told “we could have put someone else in your place”..

Ok so Independent Artists DON’T make from from their music and they DON’T make money from gigging so i’m going to ask a very, very simple question of you Andrew:

How do you suggest an independent artist who is not signed to a major label makes their money?

I have read your site from top to bottom and side to side yet you don’t seem to have an answer….

Yours,

Sarah…

Jul 3rd, 2008
James Cator

Hi

We have been doing this for a while, and gave away hundreds of five minute mixes of our last compilation album, I Can Count 2, last year.
I have also experimented with doing things like editing songs down to ringtone length, but then restricting the ringtone to only being released on the vinyl release of the record, just to do something different.
One of my labels is a project that is more of a “statement” (uuuughhh) rather than a money making venture, so we are free to mess about a bit.
I also run a clubnight based around the label, and getting people involved in that way can be interesting. We are thinking of creating the label itself to be “public domain”, and giving away all our logos, artwork and even our custom designed font, as long as people get us involved in whatever they choose to do.
Sorry for the rambling post.

Cheers

James

Jul 17th, 2008
Justin Boland

@Sarah Sings:

You can’t make money off shitty music. If you have good music, people will want to buy it when they hear it.

You can make money at gigs with MERCHANDISE. Do a ticket buy for 200 p, play a show in front several hundred people, and sell your great CD to half the people there — and you just made money.

The ticket buy is an investment. If your music is great and you’re getting in front of a new audience, then you’ll make the money back and turn a profit, too. If you don’t have CDs pressed up, and you don’t put on a good show, then definitely, you just wasted your money.

What Dubber is trying to communicate is that NOTHING WILL FIX MEDIOCRE MUSIC, no amount of marketing, promotion, SEO, 2.0, social networking, nothing.

The flip side: EVERYONE WANTS TO SUPPORT GOOD MUSIC. I run a record label where we give our albums out for free to people who come back and buy physical copies — because they love the music.

It really is that simple.

Sep 17th, 2008