What's the Big Secret?

I'm sitting at the office listening to the three albums I received last night and ported onto my iPod. After the last track of one of the albums plays, I hear silence for several seconds. At first, I wonder whether my iPod had crapped out. But a few more seconds of silence later, I realize that IT'S ANOTHER DAMN HIDDEN TRACK! What's with those things?

The ol' hidden track was kind of a nifty gimmick back in the day, when the only thing that would play a CD was the clunky CD player on your stereo system. During those ancient days, it was a bit tricky figuring out that there was a hidden track on a CD, because you didn't have a slider that you could conveniently drag to skip through 3 minutes of dead air. So, if you were patient enough to let the CD play itself out, you could pat yourself on the back for discovering an Easter egg.

But, c'mon. Who listens to CDs on CD players anymore? In an age when most every CD gets transcribed into MP3 form, a hidden track is no Easter egg; it's a rotten egg.

Thanks, silly record producer/marketing guru, for turning 5 lousy minutes worth music into a bloated, 10-meg MP3 file.