In music, a radio edit, a radio mix, or a "clean version," is a modification, typically truncated or censored, intended to make a song more suitable for airplay and radio. It may be censored for profanity, vulgarities, words or a subject matter; or adjusted for length, instrumentation, or form. Radio edits may also be used for commercials, videos, tv shows, movies, events, video games, and single release radio versions, which may be denoted as the 7″ version (as opposed to the 12″ version, which is an extended version of a song). However, not all "radio edit" tracks are played on the radio.
Time constraints Radio edits often shorten a long song to make it more commercially viable for radio stations. The normal length for songs played on the radio is between three and five minutes. The amount of cut content differs, ranging from a few seconds to nearly half of the song. It is common for radio edits to have shortened intros and/or outros. In the intro, any kind of musical buildup is removed, or if there is no such buildup, an extensive intro is often halved. In the outro, a song may simply fade out earlier, common on tracks with long instrumental endings, or, if it does not fade out, a part before the ending will be cut or faded. If necessary, many radio edits will also edit out verses, choruses, bridges, or interludes in between. An example is the radio edit of David Bowie's "'Heroes'", which fades in shortly before the beginning of the third verse and fades out shortly before the vocal vamping at the end of the song. Some songs are remixed heavily for radio edits and feature different arrangements than the original longer versions, occasionally even being completely different to the studio recordings. A popular example of this is "Revolution" by the Beatles, a completely different recording from the version ("Revolution 1") which appears on their White Album. Some lengthy songs do not have a radio edit, despite being as long as 5–8 minutes in length. Examples of this include: "Vicarious" by Tool at 7:06, "Hey Jude" by the Beatles at 7:11, and "Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin at 8:03. The idea of extended songs receiving airplay on commercial radio was extremely rare until the birth of progressive radio in the mid-1960s; most rock music formats descend from progressive radio, and as such, rock songs tend to be played at their original length, longer than songs of other genres. On rare occasions, a radio edit may even be longer than the original album version. This may occur when the song is edited for form, such as in the cases of "Creep" by Radiohead, "2 On" by Tinashe, and "Miserable" by Lit. "Creep"'s radio edit has a four-second drumstick count off before the regular first second, "2 On" repeats part of the chorus one more time than it does on the original album version, and "Miserable"'s radio edit adds the chorus between the first and second verses. Some radio edits lengthen some parts of the song while shortening others. For example, the radio edit of "Thinking Out Loud" by Ed Sheeran has a six-second introduction before the first verse but later in the song cuts from the end of the second verse to the beginning of the last chorus, omitting the second chorus and the guitar solo. The syndicated radio format "QuickHitz", notably adopted and then quickly abandoned by the Calgary radio station CKMP-FM in August–September 2014, utilized even shorter edits of songs, from 1 minute 30 seconds to 2 minutes in length.
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