Explain Like I'm Five

[zevthepaparazzo 1,220]

How do artists have hidden tracks on their albums??? Like where do they put it????

I was reading the Gagapedia entry for Stuck on ****ing You and it said it was meant to be a "hidden track on the expanded edition of the album"???? Then Wikipedia didn't help and kinda just said "the artist hides them" 

[CautiousLurker 19,647]

Imagine an album of songs as a picture album, and one of the pictures is stuck to another and it lines up perfectly so you can't tell that it's there unless you reeeeeally pay attention to it's girth - its functionally hidden, and if an artist does it on purpose, they are the one who hid it - that's what happened with Stuck on f*cking you-whoo... Hope that answers your question 

[Bronco 15,544]

Hidden songs don't exist for streaming.

But back on physical media they weren't shown on the tracklisting and would start playing at the end of the final listed track - often after a small silence.

[bpmMonkey 6,604]

Plastic Doll remix got an extended version on the Vinyl edition btw. I know most people just buy them as merchandise, but it's worth playing them every now and then as well 

[dollardays 4,112]

On the tracklist the track is said to be, let's say, 4 min long but it actually continues playing another one that's not listed

[hELXIG 44,083]

Hidden tracks have been in existence since records! They would leave a bunch of space on the record after the last song and then the hidden track would play. So you would only discover it if you left the record player going for a while after the last song. And they usually weren't listed on the tracklist. They did the same with cassette tapes and even CDs. But in the digital age it was pretty easy to see them on CDs as most of us immediately put them in our computers and they'd show up on Windows Media Player   also if I remember correctly to access some hidden tracks you would have to rewind the CD to a point before the first track. Like it immediately clicks to the first track when popped in the CD player, but if you hit rewind it would rewind back into the hidden track. I have a vague memory that with some casette tapes you could use a pencil or something to wind it back past the 'starting point' and find a hidden track but maybe I'm making that up. The streaming age totally killed it off though

Edited May 19, 2025 by hELXIG

[Quartz 12,620]

Man, records were fun back then

[Illuminati 15,958]

The concept of a hidden track is kinda like a tour encore.

Except back in the day the physical media hidden tracks were more of a surprise because people didn't rely on external sources to know the tracklist