[strandinthewind]

Originally posted by The Tower
In the old days (mid nineties and older), artists' album royalties were based on being paid for ten songs. If an artist released an album with twelve songs, they would be paid the same amount as if they released only ten songs. Why he said twelve, I don't know- maybe the recording industry upped in in the last couple of years. This is a standard policy throughout the record industry, although I have heard of some very rare exceptions.

This explains why most artists limited their releases to ten-ish songs. One could hold other songs that didn't make the cut (but were good enough to be released on an album) for future releases. How many times did Stevie/FM make demos of "Destiny", "Smile at You", "Think About It", etc. before they actually made it onto albums??

Also, when SN put 13 on TISL - she said "no one puts 13 songs on a record."