With the advent of CD we can now have 80 min albums, but does anyone find that albums of 60 - 80 mins are just tooooooo much sometimes.?

Was the good old album of approx 40 mins just right?

What are your views?

It really depends. I like to listen to older albums because they have less time on them, which means that songs aren't as in depth as today. But I like to listen to newer albums because they give the artist more time to do what they want to do without worrying how much time they can put on (still somewhat true today). Back then if you wanted to go beyond 45 or 50 minutes, you had to release a double album, which in the long run would cost the consumer more. Nowadays, you can have essentially one double album on one CD, which takes less money from the pocket of the consumer (except for select albums, i.e. TFTO, The Wall, Quadrophenia, The Lamb, etc.). 

I'm somewhat conflicted.

Most groups these days don't even put 70-80 minutes on their albums, too (Non-Prog that is).

I kind of liked LPs

not the sound quality, but the idea of seperate 'sides' of music, it was cool.  Also, the 40 minute album forced musicians to strain out the best material for their albums, and not throw everyhting on and see what sticks.

I think Genesis had the right length with about 50 minutes.

NetsNJFan wrote: I kind of liked LPs not the sound quality, but the idea of seperate 'sides' of music, it was cool.  Also, the 40 minute album forced musicians to strain out the best material for their albums, and not throw everyhting on and see what sticks. I think Genesis had the right length with about 50 minutes.

agree, nothing compares to the old good blacks. i like to handle it, i like to put it very carefully on the player, i like to turn the side. it does need more your attention, of course, but reading books do as well. and the timing was perfect with LPs.

Yup!!! The normal vinyl lenght was excellent lenght (between 30 min to almost 50 for Genesis albums and 60 min for Klaus Schulze's Timewind) just too bad that we had to get up and change sides!

Actually 80 mins is simply too long even when I do a compilation of stuff I love from an artist! The only time I really enjoy 80 min of stuff (even great prog bands ) is when driving long stretches! This mostly to avoid changing CD as not to handle them while driving!

I do not think that it is a good idea for an artist to cram a disc up to the brim. During vinyl days , a group came up with 40-45 mins of music every so often (probably as their  contracts specified, once a year) but bands like TFK , Transatlantic and PT's Steve Wilson put out such a huge amount of work that the stuff is very much diluted.

As the great wiseman once said: Culture and ideas are like jam, the lesser you have of it , the more you want to spread it to make it last!

Great thread Snow Dawg!

Like most here I too believe that albums were far better when they lasted around 40 mins.

Using my favourite band Rush as an example,you can see that their best albums 2112------Signals came during the era when 35-45 minutes was seen as about right for an album length.
These albums contain very few "fillers",and there is more stylistic variety.
Once we hit the CD led mid eighties the track count heads past 10 and suddenly the albums dont seem as good any more (although album length is not necessarily the only reason.)The pressure to record 60-70 minutes of quality new material is obviously a strain on many bands,but unfortunately there would probably be a backlash if bands went back to 40 mins.

lostrom wrote: A duoble on one cd is rather nice and you don't have to fill the hole cd with music. So, it depends from album to album...I prefer cd!

Wether you prefer CD is not the question. What length do you prefer. Sometimes even with my favourite bands, after 60 mins it gets a bit much. I do love the value of a crammed Cd though!

For me it has to do with what format I happen to be listening to. 40-45 minutes is great for vinyl because that is the limit, but I have gotten to the point that if a CD is less than at least 60 minutes, I feel cheated.

If a CD can have up to 80 minutes of music, bring it on. If I can't listen to the whole thing in one go, then I will listen to the rest, or en toto, later. I bought the digipack reissue of The Dead's Aoxomoxa the other day, and was happy to see a running time of, I think, 78 minutes or so. And what bonus material!

But, be that as it may, I really do feel ripped off these days if the running time of a CD is 60 miutes or less. Oh, and I am talking about new(er) CDs or expanded reissues, not older releases as originally released.

If an album is more than 50 minutes then it usually loses a lot of its punch, I find. Anything over that and I feel you're almost destined to enter into the realms of filler. Just ocassionally you'll get an 80 minute or so album that feels genuinely worthwhile (a few double albums from the 70s, at least) but even then I can't listen to it all in one go. It's wearisome, and I'll want a change of style. Bands shouldn't feel pressurised into filling up a CD - just make the music you want to make and storage capacity be damned!

No one should ever charge more than six pounds for a CD though. And four of those should go directly to the artist's pockets.

I think that shorter, 40-minute vinyls were good in the sense that they forced bands to pick their best material for an album, thus jettisoning any filler (in theory).  The flip-side of that argument is that one man's filler can be another man's great tune, so potentially some good material was kept off albums due to time constraints.

In terms of how long an album should be, it really depends on the music.  I can listen to an 80 minute album just as easily as a 40 minute one, provided the material on it is good enough to warrant lasting that long.  Examples of great 70+ min albums being "Space Revolver" by TFK, and "One" by Neal Morse.  If, however, an artist runs out of ideas around the 35 min mark, they shouldn't feel obligated to write a load of filler, just to make up the CD running time.

Give me quantity. Thats what the skip button is for if ya don't care for a song.

gdub411 wrote: Give me quantity. Thats what the skip button is for if ya don't care for a song.

So my friend,are we to believe that with you only length matters?

Reed Lover wrote: gdub411 wrote: Give me quantity. Thats what the skip button is for if ya don't care for a song. So my friend,are we to believe that with you only length matters?

I like to get a full mouthful...err I mean earful, yes.

gdub411 wrote: Reed Lover wrote: gdub411 wrote: Give me quantity. Thats what the skip button is for if ya don't care for a song. So my friend,are we to believe that with you only length matters? I like to get a full mouthful...err I mean earful, yes.

I'm not swallowing that!

The 40 minute album had it right. It just seems to me, that "prog" albums these days, that are 60+ mintues, just seem to have too much filler material. Whether that be in mediocre songs or passages of particular songs that could be omitted, it doesn't matter. It just seems to me that with the 40 minute album, you get the best of the best of what the band had to offer- because they only had 40 minutes.

Anything less than an hour seems to end too soon - I guess I'm just too used to long CDs/bootlegs.