The discussion started with “Tommy”. According to deezer.com, the playtime is exactly 74 minutes, so they probably could have released it on a single CD from the start. But that just wasn’t the modus operandi of the record industry of the day. They wanted to milk the CD sales boom as thoroughly as possible.
My first post on Tommy cites Wikipedia, which gives a time of 74:44, but I’m not going to claim that Wikipedia is the authority on such matters. I just went there because I knew they’d have a number. Maybe whoever put it there is just plain wrong.
The point is, anything over 74:00 for the earliest CDs merely gives you an objective, mathematical reason for needing two disks. It doesn’t speak to why industry people do what they do in general, and I’m certainly not going to defend any of THOSE people’s motives as being anything other than greedy. I remember when they were suing people for thousands of dollars for downloading a damn song.
Fair enough, I missed to check the Wiki article and see that the actual runtime was 74:44. Yeah, the 74 minute mark was the physical limit for early CDs.
ETA: (fun fact): I heard that the limit of 74 minutes was established by the 1982 CEO of Sony (who developed the CD format in company with Philips) who was a Beethoven fan and wanted the Ninth Symphony to fit on a CD.
Not surprising a candidate for Greatest Album ever won this poll. I think it is only their second best album, but Dark Side of the Moon did live longer on the charts than any other album by a large margin.
One of these days I’m gonna cut you into little pieces.
Careful with that axe.
And, as an aside, you’ll never walk alone.
Certainly not when you have hope in your heart.
I grew up with Dark Side and absolutely love it, but chose Meddle as I really love the song Fearless.