Yes, there was a recent change in AFM union rules regarding re-use fees. Re-use fees account for the biggest reason why the bulk of score albums are short. Simply put, music recorded using AFM musicians (i.e. any score recorded in L.A) is licensed for release in blocks of time. I.e. if a score is recorded in L.A, then the longer the album, the higher the licensing fees. A recent change in union rules, however, does reduce the re-use fee cost dramatically if the number of units produced is below 15,000. I don't recall the specifics of the change, but the number of units does come into play.

As far as the length of albums not immediately increasing, there are other costs involved with lengthier albums. The tracks need to be selected, edited, possibly remixed or balanced, remastered, etc, so even without the re-use fees, the longer the album, the more preparation work is required. It's also possible that some recently released albums may have had the licensing details brokered prior to the change in policy.

Anyway, I'm still holding out hope that the change in re-use fees will result in longer albums, as well as more releases.

> I don't know about all that "units" stuff, but I know that it's
> not so much because of the label as to why albums are so short as it is
> because of how much the composer is willing to pay for the length of their
> albums. I have plenty of scores from other labels like Decca (X-Men score
> is only 40 minutes) and Hollywood records (Hildago is 45 minutes) or the
> Congo score from Epic Soundtrax which is 33 minutes long. James Horner's
> scores for Varese Sarabande are very long. Orchestral scores are
> expensive, yet if a composer does the entire score with a synthesizer for
> Varese (or any label), it's cheaper, and therefore, longer. So the
> "union" thing definitely comes into play (I even emailed Marco
> Beltrami once and he explained it to me), but i'm not sure if the certain
> number of units factors in.