Track listing

Robert Christgau wrote in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981) that the popularity of this format "complicated how we perceive and remember what was once the most evanescent of the arts", observing that "the long-playing record, with its twenty-minute sides and four-to-six compositions/performances per side, suits my habits of concentration perfectly.

"[8] The development of this format required musicians and record producers to consider the ideal arrangement of the collection of songs to be included in an album, including concepts such as story-telling, presenting a mix of different kinds of songs to avoid repetition, and presenting the best tracks at points in the record that will be most likely to catch the attention of the audience.

The song is not necessarily free nor is it available as a stand-alone download, adding also to the incentive to buy the complete album.

In rare cases, a 'hidden track' is actually the result of an error that occurred during the mastering stage production of the recorded media.

[11] However, since the rise of digital and streaming services such as iTunes and Spotify in the late 2000s and early 2010s, the inclusion of hidden tracks has declined on studio albums.

For example, "Her Majesty," which is preceded by fourteen seconds of silence, was originally unlisted on The Beatles' Abbey Road but is listed on current versions of the album.

Alternatively, such things are instead labeled as vague audio experiments, errors, or simply an integral part of an adjacent song on the record.