36 minutes, 5 seconds

C/A/T
ATF

So it turns out that today is the 25th anniversary of the compact disc, according to this article, filed by the Associated Press. Hard to believe it's been around that long already, and harder still to believe it remains the top-selling music format, even in this age of iTunes and illegal MP3 downloads. Not for long, though, as the article hammers home. Pieter Kramer, a retired engineer from the Dutch electronics company Philips (which, along with Sony, created the CD format in the '70s) says, "The MP3 and all the little things that the boys and girls have in their pockets...can replace [the CD], absolutely."

The article also tackles an age-old question, at least for this blogger: Why does the CD have an 80-minute maximum length? Details are sketchy, with some rumors pointing to the size of the disc (was it designed to be as large as a Dutch beer coaster?) and others alluding to one Sony executive who wanted the disc to be just long enough to accommodate Beethoven's 9th Symphony.

A Wikipedia entry on the compact disc throws some cold water on these rumors, pointing to competitive business maneuvering between Sony and Philips as the real reason for the ultimate length of the CD. It also mentions that "non-standard" CDs can contain up to 99 minutes' worth of music, but the compression needed to burn these kinds of discs makes for poor sound quality upon playback.

Fun stuff. Uh, at least to those of us for whom CD total time is an unhealthy obsession.

Also today:

36:02 Empty, Open Aeon
36:00 Current 93, Faust
35:56 Delerium, Euphoric
35:55 Current 93, I Am Black Ship
35:54 In the Nursery, Monumentum II
35:45 Corvus Corax, Congregatio
35:44 Chirleison, A Whisper
35:42 Unter Null, Sacrament
35:40 Darkly Pale, Darkly Pale
New arrival! 71:27 Von Thronstahl, Sacrificare
New arrival! 51:55 Marsen Jules, Les Fleurs