Has music streaming killed the instrumental intro?

This is purely anecdotal, but there are a bunch of songs I can remember hearing on the radio growing up (15-20 years ago, although the songs were much older than I was) that had extended instrumental intros that were almost always cut out; offhand, "Jump" by Van Halen and "Fly Like an Eagle" by Steve Miller come to mind, although I'm sure there are others I can't quite recall (technically the intro to "Jump" was listed as a different track on the album, but it wasn't ever played on its own, as it was only about 30 seconds long). There are also plenty of songs where the radio would play the shorter "single" version of the song, which would usually have instrumental parts cut out, rather than the album version. Although the radio format definitely encouraged shorter songs, there were plenty of workarounds already in use for longer songs.

I think in the "45" era, it was common to have under 3 min songs. Elvis, chuck berry, etc.

The graver thing for me is the awful lifting of the volume floor, so everything is loud. Apparently this became a thing in the mid to late eighties and persists. It's said MJs Thriller which has a couple remasterings shows the effect in action as the later remasterings up the effect.

The conclusion of the article seems a bit of a stretch. I'd guess long intros existed at least partly for radio DJs to talk over.

But maybe it's still right: the structure of music is dictated by who spins the media.

[I didn't read the article, but] I think the move to buying songs one-at-a-time has hurt the whole 'album' concept, including long intros, long interludes, and the idea of a body of work that builds on a theme.