I have a theory why bands (such as Marillion on their new album) make epics run across several tracks nowadays. You can buy individual tracks off albums. Say the price was 99p per track, regardless of length. So a 23-minute song would cost the same to download individually as a 4-minute song. Whereas if the 23-minute song was split across four tracks, it would cost £3.96 if you wanted that song. Perhaps a better reflection of the more significant chunk of the album that the epic takes up.
Not really. Most websites, like Amazon, will not put longer tracks up for individual sale. They'll say "Album Only", which means you'd have to buy the WHOLE album to get those longer tracks. I've seen some prog albums with lengthy tracks and one or two shorter songs, and only THOSE one or two tracks will be available for purchase as single mp3s!!!
So I don't think dividing the epics up is a monetary decision. Splitting them up hardly makes sense digitally anyway since they'll flow and segue into each other, so what happens if you don't buy the whole album? You end up with parts of a song that don't have their next parts, or some other stupid reason. Epics, with movements, should be single tracks, IMO, when in digital stores. It makes the most sense musically, and doesn't ruin the integrity of the piece by dicing it up.
As for whether or not length matters, I'd say so for the case of Marillion. When I ran the Marillion Survivor 5 years ago, a lot of the band's longer tracks were in the top 1 or 2 spots for their respective albums:
"This Strange Engine" placed 1st on its album (the longest track on the album)
"A Few Words For The Dead" placed 1st on the album
Radiation (the longest track on the album)
"Interior Lulu" and "House" placed 1st and 2nd respectively on the album
marillion.com (both over 10 minutes long)
"Quartz", "This Is The 21st Century" and "If My Heart Were A Ball" were the top 3 from
Anoraknophobia (all over 9 minutes long)
"Neverland", "The Invisible Man" and "Ocean Cloud" were the top 3 from
Marbles (all over 12 minutes long)
"Somewhere Else" placed 1st on its album (the longest track on the album)
"Happiness Is The Road" placed 1st on Volume 1 of the 2-part album (the longest track of Volume 1)
"Grendel" placed 1st among the band's Fish-Era B-Sides
So yeah, even here, Marillion fans look forward to the band's epics. They're sprawling musical canvases painted with strong emotional strokes of instrumental skill. While their epics might not ALWAYS be what *some* fans enjoy, for many, they're highlights to an album, sometimes the epic opener or closer, or at very least, the centerpiece. In the case of
Marbles, the epics were ALL THREE.
-Marc.