Random useless poll: how many albums have DT made?

 

but to add further - everything is referenced back to the first commercially available recorded discs - the 78

 

These 10" disc made of a shellac compound held 3 minutes of music on each side and spun around at 78 revolutions per minute. A collection of these were housed in a folder like a photograph album - hence the name "album" for a collection of recordings. The size of an Album depended upon how many 78 records were sold in the set.

 

Tecnical developments and the invention of vinyl created the microgroove that allowed for more music to be stored on the same size disc, also to achieve the same level of fidelity the rotational speed could be reduced. Therefore what could be recorded onto a 10" disc could now be recorded onto a 7" one going at 45 rpm. This also meant that an album could now be recorded onto a single disc - and the 12" LP was created ... the Long Play coming from the fact that it was a larger disc and played at an even slower speed. These 12 disc were limited to about 23 minutes of music per side - hence setting the length of an album at 45 minutes. (later developments, such as limiting the volume of the audio signal stretched this to about 30 minutes a side, but at a loss in quality)

 

However, some bright spark realised that a 7" disc could also contain more than the traditional 3 minutes of music, so the EP was born.

 

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Either way it does not qualify as a Studio Album even by our standards (hence my *sigh*). As Ian says DT can call it whatever they like.

 

Traditionally an EP was a 7" vinyl played at 33rpm or a 7" vinyl at 45rpm with compressed dynamic range to achieve the "Extended" part of the Extended Play name. in the mid 70s when 12" vinyl 45s were popular the BRMB decided that the tracks had to be different songs to qualify as a single for chart purposes (ie not just remixes of the one song), the same went for EPs so singles with more than two tracks became either EPs or extended Singles or maxi Singles.

 

There is no modern equivalent and the term is somewhat outmoded, but it underwent a minor revival in the 90s with indie bands as they were cheaper to record than a whole album, but offered more than just a single - the term mini-album or MCD appears around that time too with EPs like Mayhem's Wolf's Lair Abyss being classed by the record company as an MCD when it was originally released.