Should CDs have less tracks? |
In the Blogcritics article: Is Less More?, Eric Olsen explores whether CDs should go back to the older days of albums having 10 or less songs.
Personally, I like the idea of a bonus DVD with website tie-in like what Metallica did with St. Anger. I’m not sure that I’m in agreement that generally a CD with 10+ tracks (including one or more hidden tracks) where only a couple of them are good is a waste of space. I mean there is 650MB+ space there, so why not use it?
Especially now with all the legal online music venues. I mean, fans can exercise some musical patience for the full CD to show up on Rhapsody or Napster and then pick and choose what songs they like and buy them a la carte. The new Rush in Rio CD took three weeks to get from store release to Rhapsody. I’m in the crowd that doesn’t mind waiting and shopping this way. There are a few artists that I’ll buy their new CDs on store release date regardless of the number of tracks or the quality of them.
It seems like a lot of times the older CDs with fewer than 10 songs are being released with bonus material to pump up the number of tracks. I will admit this marketing scheme has worked in getting me to buy (re-buy) some of these CDs with the bonus material.
With that said, if it’s a band I really like, then I want as many tracks as they are willing to put out. Like when Guns ‘N Roses was hot and did the Use Your Illusion thing (and IMO Use Your Illusion #1 was not as good as #2, but if they put both of them together that would have been an outstanding 2-CD set).
Did this post make you go hmm?
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If we forget a moment about really obvious filler songs, i do have to say that as a listener and a reviewer i occasionally get fatigued by an overly-long album. This is hard for me to admit, since i am also a bonus-material collecting maniac. However, sometimes 16 tracks, or sometimes just twelve, is too much for me to wrap my mind around. IMHO, an album is something that is meant to be consumed as a whole, and if your tracking gets in the way of that then you should have left off a song or two.
Comment by peter — November 21, 2003 @ 12:03 am PST