Objective fact: Album length has nothing to do with the quality of an album.

People need to stop making the surface level "long album = bad" criticism. It doesn't make you look sophisticated or whatever you're trying to do lol.

Yep

Album quality isn’t the same if you’re gonna overload like a scorpion

Most of it was good tho only a handful of tracks I don’t care for

Yes it does lol.

The more songs, the more you struggle with consistency and quality. Especially when the songs are there not because of creative vision, but to pad streaming numbers.

Can you make a quality 25 track album? Of course.

Is it more likely to have filler, redundancies or songs that miss the mark ? Again, of course.

Thriller is 42 minutes.
Like a Virgin is 43 minutes.
Born in the U.S.A is about 47 minutes.
Purple Rain is roughly 44 minutes.

1989, Anti, 25 and Life of Pablo are all around an hour. Lemonade is about 45 minutes long.

I'd say ideal album length is 40-60 minutes. Anything over that is asking a lot of anyone trying to absorb the project in one sitting.

Yeah, longer albums trying to do better numbers killed a bunch of albums like Culture 2.

True but in the last 10 years, only a handful of albums that run over an hour were actually amazing.
So, we cant help but look at lengthy albums as a red flag, especially from artists that have never delivered a strong album before.
Also most current long albums are still under an hour but with short tracks. Any 18 songs album that doesnt even cross a 60min runtime is obviously streaming bait. It has nothing to do with artistry.

It did because artists are bombing the albums with songs hoping that more songs = more streams = more placement on playlists = more hits

Also they make more features with the same rappers (Lil Baby, Travis, Gunna, Uzi, etc) to promote them on top of playlists and there's less standalone hits

Still though? Sales tricks always existed, artists who are album artists never cared about those and always tried to make good albums

2015-2019 have been great years for music

There are lotta long albums I like it depends on the album itself

If they wanna giv us a all those deluxes, let them. Won't hurt. It's just more music. & tha 1s who don't, well i cant word it. But uk what im sayin. Or hav an gist 4 what im sayn

Yea when it was just youtube/Spinrilla s*** was much better. No sample clearance getting in tha way. Hidden gems. Mfs not so chart consumed. Everyone in tha youtube music era was just having fun w/ making music & we were having fun listening. YaKno

You're gonna get answers from kids who weren't even around when regular album sales were a thing. They basically only know this era and can only guess what it was like before

But yes there's a clear difference in feel and quality to me. I just never knew how much of it was my own mind processing it differently

Evolution. It might be interesting really pausing an album & going back. Idk. We'll see 4 sure tho

obviously

I think it has, as it feels like Artists aren't really crafting albums per se, rather releasing a collection of songs that may end up on a playlist. For someone who enjoys the album experience it's dissapointing

y'all better listen to this new Nas

It often does when actually listening to an album in one continuous sitting.

yes it does. a 30 song album is just too long when most people listen to albums in one sitting. Even if there's no filler, it's just too long to keep the audience's attention

and most artists doing these long albums now are doing it to increase streams. not to draw out a story.

so in the end a much higher percentage of longer albums do = bad or poor(er) quality