are cd's too long?

[D. Gauss]

don't know what anyone else thinks, but...excluding greatest hits records, are cd's too long? think about it. exile on main st, was a double album on lp, yet it fits on one cd. lots of bands today put out 60 minute plus cds. abbey road was only 40 minutes. most records before cd's were 40 minutes max and usually they had a filler song or two. is there any band out there now that really warrants a solid 80 minutes of your time with one recording? i think there are very few, yet more and more cds are bloased with material. bring back the 30 minute lp!

[alphajerk]

this band i know put out a 35 minute LP or EP [couldnt figure out what to call it since it was so short by todays standards]

 

then again, i just put out an EP [5 songs] and its 35 minutes.

[fuzz]

from what i gather the reason "LP'S"

are so short is that after 12 minutes per side the sound quality goes to shit.....hench the "double lp"

 

now we have cd's which can hold more than a double lp and the record guys want to fill the whole damn thing yet only pay for one record...YOU DO THE MATH!

 

in short..........yes cd's tend to be to long........is it the artist or the lable that is to blame?

 

"fuzz"

[Yuri T.]

I guess it depends on the CD. I think that we're hearing a lot more 'filler' than we used to. Coming up with over a hour's worth of radio progammable 3 minute songs isn't that easy. But then some people can pull it off. I assume it's the labels frwning upon longer tunes or (gasp) instrumentals on a rock album.

[Guest]

Originally posted by d gauss:

don't know what anyone else thinks, but...excluding greatest hits records, are cd's too long? think about it. exile on main st, was a double album on lp, yet it fits on one cd. lots of bands today put out 60 minute plus cds. abbey road was only 40 minutes. most records before cd's were 40 minutes max and usually they had a filler song or two. is there any band out there now that really warrants a solid 80 minutes of your time with one recording? i think there are very few, yet more and more cds are bloased with material. bring back the 30 minute lp!

 

 

I tend to agree - - There are only a few bands CDs that I can listen to for more than an hour.

 

I find that groups that stick to a formulaic 'trademark' sound (Bryan Adams, Tom Petty, Journey and a few others come to mind) produce a 'sonic burnout' after a while -- the next song is close enough to the one before (which is close enough to the one before that) that it can no longer hold my attention. I'm not saying the music is bad, or boring or anything like that, but the sonic landscape needs more variety to hold my interest.

 

On the other hand, groups that tend to stretch their boundaries a bit more or at least vary their 'musical formula' from song to song (Yes, Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, Leo Kottke, Buddy Guy, Eric Clapton, Dave Brubeck are a few that come to mind) are easier to take for long periods.

 

Of course, the average listener might like the fact that they are familiar with every nuance of each song they hear - - My wife is nuts for Huey Lewis records because the tunes are so accessible, and she never gets tired of listening to it. But I've noticed that she also gets burned out when she listens to more than about 10 - 12 tracks of one artist.

 

One solution I've been using is to rip 10 to 15 CDs to my hard drive as MP3 files, then burn a CD full of the MP3 files. This gives me 10 - 12 hours of music, which I listen to non-stop while at work. I set WinAmp to play them back in random order, and can listen for nearly a whole week before getting sick of it. (The slight loss of fidelity isn't that big of an issue, since work is a noisy place and the subtle nuances are buried in ambient noise anyway).

 

- Philbo

www.mp3.com/tangent

[blas]

Fuzz, Don't know why the CD's are longer releases (not all of 'em). But FYI, LP's can and did/do carry high quality well into the 20 minute mark per side - I know I've engineered a couple hand fulls of 'em. The cutting head was always able to cut deeper with less tracking time, but that really was only scary if you started going over 25 minutes (or there's a cannon shot on one of the tracks). Ah, the days of the vinyl donut!

blas

[Graham English]

I definitely think CDs are too long. I can't get through most CDs in a single sitting. And to me, that's part of the experience.

My band is putting our CD together and we're trying to keep it around 45 minutes max!

[KenElevenShadows]

Are CDs too long, or is there just not enough good music being placed on them?

 

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[Calfee Jones]

Yes - I agree that CD's are too long. When I get a new CD, I can rarely get through it in one sitting at first. I try to limit our stuff to 10 - 11 songs per CD - keeping it to 40 minutes or less. As an artist I think you should be concerned about potentially wasting material on a long CD.

- Calfee

[josephandrews.edu]

it shouldnt be so much as the length of the cd, but how many tracks are on it. i think 11 tracks up to around 15 is reasonable. Unless there are a lot of skits on the cd. then it can run up around 20. Radiohead's new album has only 10 tracks, but it's 49:59 min. long. 5 min. long songs are pretty long. but if the songs are good, you won't care about length.

 

ima outta

[Tim Walters]

It's not just CDs--books and movies are routinely padded out to excessive length these days. Apparently the consumer is more concerned with quantity than quality.

 

Then again, my latest CD has 99 tracks in 66 minutes, so maybe I shouldn't be throwing stones.

[soapbox]

There was a movie I saw once. I can't remeber what it was, but it had a great line:

 

"They were so busy trying to figure out if they could that they never stopped to figure out if they should."

 

Just because you can fit 74 - 80 minutes of music on a CD doesn't mean you should. Most artists wear out their welcome for me after about 45 minutes.

[alphajerk]

some artists never outwear their welcome...

[Anderton]

I did a CD called "Forward Motion" for Narada Records back in 1989, and the contract specified that the CD had to be 45 minutes in length or greater. Well, the CD came in at 43 minutes, and try as I could, I just couldn't make the 45 minutes without - it just didn't sound right. So they relented, and I got to put out a 43 minute CD.

 

My most recent CD, "The Naval Escort Remixes," clocks in at exactly 1 hour. It seems about right - it's a continuous DJ type mix, there are some slower songs in the middle, and there's a fair amount of variety after you get past the first four cuts. This works for me, but I don't think it would work for 74 minutes.

 

When CDs first came out some reviewers dinged a CD if it was only 30-40 minutes...as if music is something you pay for by the minute!!

 

One other issue: with all those songs on there, mechanical royalties end up being more than they were with LPs.

[kudyba]

Originally posted by Anderton:

One other issue: with all those songs on there, mechanical royalties end up being more than they were with LPs.

 

There's also something called a "controlled composition clause" which basically says that a label will only pay mechanicals up to a certain number of songs usually 10-11 which is why many times an artist will put out an 11-song CD: 10 originals & 1 cover which wouldn't generate them any mechanicals royalties, anyway. This phenomenom became popular during the punk hey-day in the 70's when all of the 2-3 minute gems were being created. Bands thought that they'd make a killing on the extra tunes but labels smartened up pretty quickly.