Enough with the extended tracks!
Published June 21st, 2004 in MusicWhy does the music industry think extended tracks are so cool?! You know what an extended track is, right? It’s the hidden track that is on the last track of a CD which happens to be after the actually song, typically a couple of minutes of silence in between.
Why am I complaining about this? Well wile listening to my new Black Keys album, The Big Come Up, this morning on the way to work, I noticed after 3 or 4 minutes that my speakers were no longer playing music. So I reached for the seek knob and let it advance until I began to hear sound again. Well I was surprised to find that a whole 20 minutes had passed between the last song and the 1-2 minute “artsy movement”. Now a minute or tow is okay, but 20 minutes! You have to be kidding me!
I find this to be extremely frustrating and actually detrimental to the artists. Yes, I had the curiosity of a cat and advanced forward to hear this for first time, but you can bet your house on it that I will never do that again.
So why put it there in the first place? Why not just make it a new track on the CD? If you have music that is good enough to be printed on the CD, then put it on it’s own track! If for some bizarre reason you STILL FEEL the need to position it as an extended track, do me and everyone else a favor, don’t put 20 minutes of utterly painfully silence in between!