Bazzi is just a coincidence

It's 100% because of streaming figures, especially in hip-hop the new trend is to release albums with a ton of tracks which are all or mostly fairly short to maximise streaming numbers and therefore streaming equivalent album units. It's nothing to do with 'radio edits', it's the songs themselves that are getting shorter.

If as you suggest, the motivation is to manipulate the charts, the it's something the OCC would need to look info - perhaps allowing only songs longer than x amount to contribute to streaming?

There is a minimum time limit already in place albeit the limit is a mere 30 seconds. But there are restrictions anyway that help prevent chart manipulation in that it doesn't matter how many tracks are on an album, only a maximum of the 12 most streamed tracks will count towards the streaming sales of an album. Streams of any remaining album tracks are simply ignored for calculating album streaming sales.

Nothing worse in pop than a great three-minute song that's dragged out to 4:51.

It all links back to Spotify and streaming - shorter songs means a greater chance of replayability! Record labels would rather somebody played a 2 minute song twice than a 4 minute song once. I mean personally I'd rather tracks didn't dip below, say, 2:30 at worst, but it certainly explains the motives.

I don’t know, I’d argue that any song should be recorded to the maximum length appropriate without going overboard, but, that there should ALWAYS be an album version and a single version (the radio edit) that is an appropriate length to the commercial audiences. It just seems a pity that when a song which has great quality is cut short it’s sort of spoilt and you feel like you’ve been cheated out of an extra minute of music maybe.

I just think that shorter songs are more for forgettable than longer ones and age worse too.