CD's good or bad

[styxfanNH]

I've been spending the better part of the past week turning my cd's into mp3s. Noticably, many of my older cd's only have 7-9 songs on them. While this is probably more related to the amount of time an LP could hold, I wonder to myself, how much pressure it must be for a band to put a cd out today with 11-14 songs to fill a cd. Effectively, every cd is a double length LP.

Do you think this hurts the music coming out now by any band?

Does it provide for a weaker CD?

Does it force longer times between releases?

Would bands be better off releasing 8 song CD's at a more steady rate than waiting 2 or 3 years between releases?

Certainly for some bands, the continual release of music every year or so might extend the careers a bit.

[redSG]

I think CD capacity provides a bigger chance of a weaker album, simply because there's more opportunity for filler. I'm pretty old-school regarding album length...I'd rather have 8-10 good to great songs by themselves than have that many songs, with some extra crud thrown in to make it to 80 minutes.

I'm quite keen on the latest The Darkness CD for that reason. Recorded with a vinyl feel in mind, there's only 10 tracks, all good, and they even listed them like they were on "sides."

[conversationpc]

I get kinda frustrated that bands take so long nowadays in between releases, sometimes between four and five years (or 8 in the case of Boston ). I do think it has somewhat to do with bands putting more songs on each release. I do think it would help to hold back some of those tunes and either drop them altogether if they aren't any good or let them sit for awhile and pick them up again later when they have more fresh ideas. Heck, in the 70s, bands released at least one album per year, if not two on some occasions.