Double album
A double album is an audio album of sufficient length that two units of the medium in which it is sold (especially records and compact discs) are necessary to contain the entirety of it.
Recording artists often think of double albums as a single piece artistically. But there are exceptions such as Pink Floyd's Ummagumma, one live album and one studio record packaged together andOutKast's Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, consisting of one practical solo album by both members of the hip-hop duo.
The first double album ever released was Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde in 1966, although at the same time Dylan was recording the album Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention were at work on a double album Freak Out!, released two months after Blonde On Blonde.
Since then, the double album format has been continually used for live albums for which material is often plentiful.
In the late 1980s, the compact disc, which can carry more music than a typical vinyl record, became the most common format on which to sell music. Several albums which were originally packaged as double-records were sold on a single compect disc, such as The Who's Tommy and The Rolling Stones' Exile on Mainstreet. Also new albums often longer than ones of previous decades and were packaged on two records, if a vinyl copy was released at all.
However, an album is usually refered to as a double album when it sprawled across onto two units of the prominent format of its time period.
The following is a list of albums, each of which is double in the vinyl and/or the CD format.
