music

i've got a few vinyl records that keep the hidden track on a different groove. the record will spin and spin instead of reaching the end and detaching the needle, so you need to manually lift the needle and drop it into the groove of the hidden track. makes for a more interactive hidden track listening experience

yes.

The worst part about this today is that modern streaming services could easily clean this up automatically but don't. It would be so easy

Along with this, I remember when I first started looking into non-radio music and being shocked the first few times I was tricked by songs that actually have runtimes like that.

Remember that you could also rewind into the space before the first track!

There would sometimes be hidden songs in the pregap between tracks too. That meant you had to hold the rewind button at the beginning of a song to hear it. Sometimes it was hidden behind track 1.

The only CD I remember having that did this was Factory Showroom by They Might Be Giants but apparently it happened a lot.

The most interesting hidden thing I've seen albums do is sometimes have computer programs. The Christian rock band Prodigal put audio on a hidden groove on their album Electric Eye. If you recorded that onto a cassette and loaded it into a commodore 64, it would display quotes from Einstein and Jesus.

Yes, but if either song was a banger you were SOL for looping it. I'm looking at you SoaD!

My reaction to that information

As a kid I had Weird Al Yankovic's "Off the Deep End" and it had a hidden track at the end. It's a few seconds of a cacophony of random instruments, metallic screeching and Al himself screaming.

I found out about its existence the hard way when I dozed off while playing the CD. I got woken up by it, scared shitless and confused.

Edit: Found it. (CW: sudden loud noise)