More than half a century ago the debut of vinyl LPs was a revelation for music fans. By the early ’70s, albums were being stuffed with up to a dozen hit tracks and sometimes ran close to 40 minutes.
Flash forward to today, when CDs max out north of 70 minutes…
The days of releasing an album with 17 or 18 cuts are over….
MTV.com, via The Shifted Librarian
Um, excuse me? The only CD I’ve bought in recent memory that comes close to 70 minutes or 18 tracks is Darlene‘s, and I considered it unique enough to blog about. The 12-track CD is most common in my collection by far, and few are longer than 48 to 50 minutes; I often compile the contents of three discs to two CD-RWs to take with me in the car.
Which isn’t to say I prefer quantity to quality or musical preference: just the opposite, in fact. Given the choice between a 70-minute 20-track Christina Aguilera disc and a 12-track release from Spirit of the West, I’ll pick the latter every time.
