These days, mostly because of radio stations.
Originally a technical limitation, where a shellac record (LP / Vinyl) could hold roughly 3 minutes. If you wanted to be played on a radio station, your song had to fit on a single that the radio station could play in one continous playback.
These days it’s mostly for commercial reasons, smaller songs leaves more gaps to fit in commercials / advertisements. It’s also the reason why you often see a song in different version, one being a regular long track, and one being a short “radio version” or “radio edit” as they’re often called.
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