Shrinking CD length

[oliver sudden]

There’s an EMI 36 CD Samson François ‘complete recordings’ box which was followed not that many years later by an Erato ‘complete recordings’ box comprising 54 CDs and a DVD.

There’s only a tiny bit of new material, though. Practically all the increased disc count is because of the ‘original jacket’ trick smittims mentioned.

[oliver sudden]

I grew up with those Deutsche Grammophon Walkman Classics cassettes that routinely featured close to 90 minutes of music. If a couple of symphonies weren't enough to fill one, they'd add an overture.

So did I! I wonder how many of us there are?

[LMcD]

So did I! I wonder how many of us there are?

I used to have one which included Mozart's Divertimenti K136-138 and Serenata Notturna.

[Pulcinella]

So did I! I wonder how many of us there are?

Here's another.
And not just DG: I remember having a single cassette that had all of La Bohème on it.

[AuntDaisy]

So did I! I wonder how many of us there are?

And another.

Not DG, but just shy of 100 mins, I also had "Das goldene Johann Strauss Album" "Komm in die Gondel" which claimed to be "2LP Super Long". Still listen to the digitised tapes.
I have plenty of 2 hour D120 audio tapes with radio plays on them.

[richardfinegold]

It seems new albums are shrinking in length - the recent Aigul recital on Decca 52 mins the same for Vilde Frang’s Elgar - are we returning to vinyl record lengths ? Or with downloads and streaming the record companies no longer care about short measure ?

Downloads are dead, except possibly from certain streaming companies.
Streaming is the market here so companies probably don’t worry about filling out a potential CD capacity. CDs will probably vanish in a few years, regardless of measure.

[richardfinegold]

I remember when CDs came out. My LPs had been destroyed in a flood. I was dirt poor and it was a stretch to buy a CD player but LPs were disappearing fast from shops. My first 2 CDs (included with the purchase of the CDP as an inducement) were each around 55 minutes long and of course no side breaks. I saved for weeks for my third CD, Pollini Chopin Preludes, and was mighty aggrieved that it was under 40 minutes. DG could have easily included some other Chopin from Pollini recordings

[smittims]

This may be off-topic, but what I found frustrating in my CD collecting days was the number of new series that appeared and then stopped after only one or two releases. DG's 'Klassikon' for instance (nice sleeve-art) ,, or EMI HIstorical, which had imitation-brown-paper covers with a big imitation crimson HMV label in the middle. Some interesting old recordings surfaced briefly, then vanished. In Lp days they stayed around for years, e.g. Oiseau-Lyre's OLS series, their equivalent of Eclipse, with their lovely flower prints on an otherwise uniform cover; very collectable. .

[oliver sudden]

I used to have one which included Mozart's Divertimenti K136-138 and Serenata Notturna.

Wasn’t Eine Kleine on that too? With a Mozartkugel on the front?

The series more or less coincided with the beginning of my buying recorded music for myself. LPs were still around and we had a turntable but that was all too fiddly for me and I couldn’t listen on the tram… I bought a ridiculous number of the things and probably first got to know an alarming proportion of the repertoire through the recordings on those cassettes. I think I might have to retrieve any surviving tapes from my parents’ house on the other side of the planet at some point.

[LMcD]

[QUOTE=oliver sudden;n1319247]

Wasn’t Eine Kleine on that too? With a Mozartkugel on the front?

[Retune]

Wasn’t Eine Kleine on that too? With a Mozartkugel on the front?

The series more or less coincided with the beginning of my buying recorded music for myself. LPs were still around and we had a turntable but that was all too fiddly for me and I couldn’t listen on the tram… I bought a ridiculous number of the things and probably first got to know an alarming proportion of the repertoire through the recordings on those cassettes. I think I might have to retrieve any surviving tapes from my parents’ house on the other side of the planet at some point.

The graphic design of these was very nicely done:



The prominent Walkman logo and 'Chromium Dioxide' (very 80s!) are there to catch the eye of the discerning tape purchaser, and the duration in minutes shows you are getting quantity as well quality, but to find out which stars of the DG stereo back catalogue from the 60s and 70s are featured you'll have to look at the back or the inlay card. Inside, the tapes have Serious Yellow Labels like the mainstream DG releases of the time. These were attractive, eye-catching objects. Some resurfaced as 2CD 'Compact Classics', with similar artwork but it was never quite the same.

A story on them in Music Week from 1984:

https://worldradiohistory.com/UK/Music-Week/1984/Music-Week-1984-04-28.pdf

Some dealers were supposedly 'angered' by the aggressive pricing, as they were still flogging the original releases at full price. I think they'd gone up by a couple of quid by the time I started buying them. My first complete Beethoven symphony cycle was on these tapes (VPO/Böhm), as well as various 'named' piano sonatas (Kempff), and my introduction to both the Violin Concerto (Schneiderhan/BPO/Jochum) and the 5th Piano Concerto (Eschenbach/Boston/Ozawa) on a single cassette, with the Fidelio overture (Dresden State/Böhm) thrown in for good measure (an impressive 92 min).

[Retune]

Streaming is the market here so companies probably don’t worry about filling out a potential CD capacity. CDs will probably vanish in a few years, regardless of measure.

Of course, that's what we all thought about LPs before 'vinyl' came along. Maybe we should start calling CDs 'polycarb' or claiming a recording sounds better 'on silver'. CD revenue went up a bit recently, triggering a bunch of stories about a supposed 'CD revival'. If they do die, I can't see that being a good thing for classical recordings. Streaming may be the behemoth of music listening these days, but artists get a pitiful cut of the revenue. A BBC story a couple of years ago noted that an indie artist who writes, sings and plays multiple instruments on her records failed to break even with 750,000 streams on Spotify, numbers that some specialist classical album artists can only dream of. If you're not Yuja Wang or Simon Rattle, when does it simply become not worth bothering? Physical sales may be a small proportion of record label revenue, but they can account for a significant proportion of what ends up in the pockets of artists. Are we heading for a world of endlessly recycled back catalogue streaming, with only Lang Lang and Jonas Kaufmann able to put out new stuff?

[smittims]

Well, looking further than that, as someone who unashamedly admits I don't really know what money is, let alone having any knowledge of economics, I can see a future where people revert to playing music among themselves for its own pleasure, as they used to do before it became commercialised.

[Master Jacques]

Well, looking further than that, as someone who unashamedly admits I don't really know what money is, let alone having any knowledge of economics, I can see a future where people revert to playing music among themselves for its own pleasure, as they used to do before it became commercialised.

The problem there is that too few children are taught how to read music these days. Did you know that, at the last count, there were three leading Professors of Music (including the Tovey Chair at Edinburgh) who can't read music either? That is the scandalous reality. We're narrowing our cultural hoizons with lusty enthusiasm.

[mikealdren]

Please name and shame the institutions.