What are the longest albums of all time?

Posted On January 9, 2026January 9, 2026

While the average length of an album comes in at around 45 minutes, there’s no limit to how long a record can be. Many acclaimed albums last less than 30 minutes, proving that excellence can be mastered in a short space of time. Yet, many artists have tried their luck at releasing albums totalling several hours, from Kamasi Washington to The Clash.

However, some musicians just can’t help themselves, finding their creative juices spilling into tens of hours worth of songs, leaving fans unable to listen to the finished record in one go. Although it’s certainly possible to listen to albums like 24 Hour Song Skull by The Flaming Lips at once – all you need is one full day – it’s improbable that fans will sit and listen to the whole thing without stopping. 

At a certain point, though, the concept of an album stops being about listening and becomes more about provocation. These ultra-long records are rarely designed for consumption in any traditional sense. Instead, they exist as conceptual statements, challenging what an album even is and whether the idea of completion still matters in an age of infinite digital storage. In that context, duration becomes the medium itself rather than a by-product of excess creativity.

That does not mean these works lack artistic value, but they demand a different relationship with the listener. Rather than sitting through a beginning, middle and end, the audience is invited to dip in and out, treating the music more like an environment than a narrative. For better or worse, albums of this scale are less about enjoyment and more about endurance, curiosity, and the limits of attention, asking not how long a record should be, but how long anyone is willing to engage with the idea of one.

It seems that many artists make ridiculously long albums just because they can, using it as an endurance test rather than something their fans can actually get behind. The champion of creating long albums is Bull of Heaven, an experimental outfit that holds the record for the longest album ever made. The project, formed by Clayton Counts and Neil Keener, released 310: ΩΣPx0(2^18×5^18)p*k*k*k in 2014, which is 3.343 quindecillion years long. How they achieved such a feat is baffling.

They also made the second-longest album of all time, 209: Blurred With Tears and Suffering Beyond Hope, in 2010, which is six and a half months long. Discussing their penchant for creating long albums, the band told Musique Machine, “Curiosity, absurdity, insanity. Technically, it’s a lot more work than people might realise. This project has evolved into a kind of semi-pseudonymous collective (or collection) drawing heavily from experiments in serialism and indeterminacy.”

They added: “Constructing these longer pieces is often not too different from writing a song. The production is much the same. It’s either written, or improvised, and retooled until it feels right.”

Bull of Heaven’s 2008 album 045: The Wicked Cease From Struggling is the fourth-longest record ever made, totalling seven days long. Sadly, they were beaten to third place by experimental American musicians Negativland, whose 2015 album Over the Edge Radio Archive, has a runtime of four and a half months.

Another record that makes it onto the top ten longest albums of all time list is the 56-hour-long Untitled #305 [Seven Nights] by Francisco López. The album, available as an SD card, was described by the experimental musician as “seven ghostly nights of expanded time and occult sonic space. Venturing into deep realms of audio subtlety and ambiguity. Open to the hearing creativity, sleeping patterns and dreams of the listener. A piece that blurs the limits between composition and sound environment.”

Discover the ten longest albums of all time below.

The 10 longest albums of all time:

1. 310: ΩΣPx0(2^18×5^18)p*k*k*k – Bull of Heaven (3.343 quindecillion years)
2. 209: Blurred With Tears and Suffering Beyond Hope – Bull of Heaven (six and a half months)
3. Over the Edge Radio Archive – Negativland (four and a half months)
4. 045: The Wicked Cease From Struggling – Bull of Heaven (seven days)
5. Untitled #305 [Seven Nights] – Francisco López (56 hours)
6. Das 6-Tage-Spiel des Orgien Mysterien Theaters – Hermann Nitsch (48 hours and 23 mins)
7. 22​.​2: Digital Pianist’s 30+ Hours Relaxation Improvisation For You – RINGEX PIANIST (34 hours and 11 mins)
8. Soulnessless – Terre Thaemlitz (32 hours and 14 mins)
9. The Noise – Hijokaidan (27 hours and 29 mins)
10. 中国民族器乐典藏 (Treasures of Chinese Instrumental Music) – Various Artists (25 hours and 48 mins)

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