That’s a very good point. Once albums were no longer limited to what could be squeezed onto a 33 rpm LP, much longer albums became possible. And I’ll take your word that they’ve become the norm, so fewer albums doesn’t necessarily mean less music.
I hadn’t really noticed this, because I’ve bought very little new music on CD in the past 20 years. Not that I haven’t been listening, but once we could purchase individual tracks over the Internet, that’s how I’ve been buying my music. Especially because before that point, when the record companies could still charge $16.95 per CD, it was too often the case that I’d buy a CD of a band that had gotten 3-4 songs on the radio, and I’d find that that was all of the CD that was worth listening to. (Think Third Eye Blind’s eponymous album, or the Wallflowers’ Bringing Down the Horse.) A few instances of that, and I became very reluctant to buy CDs of current music.
So the questions I’d ask would be:
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Does longer albums by the good bands of recent years mean more good music? Or does it mean an increase in the amount of music on their albums that’s basically filler?
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As people buy fewer CDs and buy more music straight off the Internet, is anyone listening to the music that doesn’t get airplay? (If a band includes a song on the album, but nobody downloads that track, does it make a sound? :))
But I’m not taking a side on these questions; I’m not in a position to do more than speculate about the answers. Hopefully you young folks (once you get off my lawn, dammit!) can weigh in in a more knowledgeable fashion than I’d be able to.