Theoretically speaking, that's what I'd say and what I'd like to think I believe.
In the interest of honesty, though, in practice, I tend to be more drawn to longer tracks. I'm also kind of a sucker for long-winded prog and jazz noodling, so long as they're done well.

I listen to a lot of prog and post-rock so 95% of the music I listen to tends to exceed 6 minutes and pass 10 minutes and even reach 15 to 20 minutes. Longer songs are great, especially if an album is full of them.

A lot of the electronic I got really into when I was younger was usually around 7-10 minutes in length, so I'm used to longer songs, and have been for quite awhile. There can certainly be long songs that are unbearably boring, but just as others have mentioned, you can have a boring short song just as well.



Here's an interestingly long track, which was produced and based around 9/11.

Of the non-rap pop and rock genres that have gotten much airplay (at least in the USA), the one that often irritates me is prog. Due to song length.

Not me. Since I listen to tons of Congolese music, some great records are records that are over 7 minutes. In fact one of my favorite songs are those that are 16 Minutes.

The longer a song is, the more time it has to tell a story. A good story typically can't be condensed into 3-4 minutes; it takes a good 8+ minutes to develop one fully in lyrics and music.

There's a sweeping generalisation if ever I heard one, and I would venture to add, an ill-informed one. What experience have you with prog rock? How well do you know the music? Would you care to cite examples, and why these songs in particular bug you? Would you include "Echoes" by Floyd, or indeed "Creepshow" by Twelfth Night, neither or which could seriously be said to be boring or just extending the play time for the sake of it?

I never heard of "Creepshow" or even that band. I might have heard "Echoes" at some point. I have heard some lengthy Pink Floyd songs, and I do not like - they slog on, where I can't even tell where in the 'epic' things are . But I like many of the shorter Pink Floyd tunes. I have the same issue with (not prog) "Rosalita". If I want a story, I'll read a book or a magazine article or maybe the music video can add a story. I'm not against songs that are story-telling - for example, I like Bruce's "Atlantic City" and "Hazard" by Richard Marx. But I want a quick jolt in mood more than I want a story. Plus, often I like the ambiguity of story fragments as opposed to a full depiction. And it seems like some epics have to be listened to many times or studied via printed lyrics to particularly understand things - I don't want to have consciously work at it. Or, heaven forbid, have to listen to the whole album to figure it out. Coheed & Cambria songwriter, get a life.

Finally, I think most of us know that many long songs involve artists exploring instruments, soundscapes, whatever - which easily becomes self-indulgent. Prog rock is notorious for that, but Led Zeppelin did something similar with "Kashmir."

It's hard to argue with personal preferences, but based on what you're saying about how you approach music in general, it sounds like you're shutting yourself out from a notable part of the "listening experience" in general, as lofty and sterile as that may sound. It's like saying you read a couple of books in high school that you didn't like, so you just don't bother reading books at all. Yeah, a lot of books in high school curricula are trite, over-analyzed, and more often than not given way too much praise, but for every academically-lauded doorstopper, there's a genuinely riveting and fascinating novel that's relevant and worth every minute you put into reading through it, even if it doesn't get nearly as much attention.

Nope, I love them, but only if they're black metal.