But if i found a album with a long track I always give a chance and listen to that. 

The current music tend more and more to become shorter. This is important to you in time to hear an album?

It is interesting to see an OP going from the opposite angle than we're used to hearing, where we have to defend our suites before those who stick too closely to standard and shorter lengths.

This is interesting, but looking to top 10 albuns in Prog Archives we see all albums with 10+ minutes song. The only exception is for Dark Side of the Moon, but the entire album is pratically one music with multiple parts.

Gentle Giant is a band that i hear, and their musics are beautiful and well built. But most of the songs have more than 5 minutes. Maybe 5 minutes is the time for a well construct music. I hear several 3 minutes songs, and even if they are good they could have evolved better music to be perfect. It always seems that something is missing. 

As written above, length does not matter. There's loads of fantastic music out there that clock in at less than 3 minutes long. This is just one example (stoner/blues rock, not prog). Awesome track.

I agree. Sometimes a song is way to long and it looses it's meaning. Most prog fans like long pieces (epics as they are known) and tend to treat the shorter ones as "Fillers" and not very important, but I have found many short pieces quite interesting, enjoyable and well written, so at this time in my life, I just enjoy the music I like, for my very personal reasons, not giving much importance to the length of the song, if it's "proggy" enough, etc. If l like it, l'll listen to it.

Yeah, I'd say that 30-35 minutes is about the minimum length of what I'd consider a very strong album. The only real examples I can think of that I really like that are that short are a few RPI ones, like Storia Di Un Minuto and Quella Vecchia Locanda. 

As far as the upper limits on album length, I usually get disinterested around 55 minutes if the music is stylistically similar throughout, though there are some exceptions that go on for much longer that I can't get enough of (Tales From Topographic Oceans, L'Heptade, any of the Arco Iris double albums).

The longer the work, the more skilled the artist needs to be. Most films shouldn't surpass 3 hours. Most novels shouldn't surpass 500 pages. And most albums shouldn't surpass an hour. 

There are countless great instances of each being done successfully, but it takes a level of artistry not found all that commonly. My concern isn't with attention spans, but with maintaining a certain level of quality. The more content that you have to incorporate into the work, the greater the chance that the disparate elements of the work are not properly unified. Lots of classic groups recorded more than they released, and they're known now because they only used their best material. That's increasingly less of an option, so we're left with potentially great artists stretched beyond their limitations (even as their talents may surpass those of the original "greats") 

I'd actually put it the other way as well. Producing something great with little is even more difficult. Works of average length (4 minute songs, 2 hour movies, 200 page novels) are generally where the laziest artists are (although exceptions always exist of course). 

That sums it up pretty well actually. Pursue the Aristotelian mean between deficiency and excess. As long as the song calls for, no more, no less. 

I also have to count myself among the rare prog & punk fans. Though I agree that the two genres are hardly compatible . Also, didn't punk develop as a counter-reaction to prog which was believed to be "the anithesis of rock n' roll"?

While song length doesn't necessarily have any bearing on quality, longer song lengths do allow for more development and variation, and larger climaxes, which I'm sure is the main reason why the long epics are almost universally more popular than the shorter interludes. 

It is difficult to imagine people who are progressive and punk fans, since they are completely opposite genres. But you as a fan of punk prefer shorter progressive music?

Well, that would mean skipping much of Gentle Giant because they have very few long tracks.  AND they are plenty progressive.  Track length is not very important imo. 

I haven't, but similar, I have made a 60 minute piece that used only 10 notes and another 60 minute piece that used only 1. 

In theory 20 minutes of two-chord drone could be recorded in 5 minutes then slowed down four times.

I hated popmusic and dance and hiphop etc., without even listening to it.

 

I hated short songs and lyrics about love etc. I even only bought records with long, long songs, because only long, long songs where quality. Grendel by Marillion was the best song I ever heard (I didn;t know better).
I even bragged to others saying; look at this cd, it has only songs clocking above the 8 minutes. See how special and intellectual and serious the music is, where I listen to.

Then I grew up, and discovered all kinds of music: punk, metal, R&B, hiphop, country, blues etc. etc.

A lot of other genres (blues, jazz, pysch and dance) have even longer songs than most progrock bands.

Disco-acts have songs ranging from 8 to 20 minutes. House-acts have songs around the 6 to 8 minutes.

It really doesn't matter what genre, long songs are not a prog-thing. Really.

Another thing; in thrashmetal there's the bands with long songs and there's the bands with short songs. Sometimes the short songs work better, sometimes the long songs.

I think the best thing is balancing out. I know Neo-prog doesn't like balance, so let's forget about the neo-prog acts.

A perfect, balanced pop/rock/metal album to me is: 40-50 minutes long, 10-12 songs, 8 songs of average length and two long, extended songs.

 

A double LP with 4 songs is just silly, but Thick as a Brick is silly aswell. Good thing, there's not too many of those albums. Although I like them, I have a love for good, short rocking songs.

 

Oh, and I don't really like long extended jams. I used to like them, but not anymore.