School me, I'm listening.

Artists stopped making 12inch extended singles when 12inch singles stopped being made, its as simple as that. With the advent and poularity of cd, the manufacture of records all but dissapeared, although they are still available and in recent years have became something of an item again. Artists still made/make extended versions of songs for cd singles, although these are nowadays known as remix's.

Some artists still release them

mikeb71 said:

No offense, but that answer is downright uneducated and vapid. "When does the sun go down?" "It goes down when it stops being up." There's a better answer than that.

You're a bit incorrect on the "all but disappeared" part. Artists still release maxi singles with multiple remixes on them. Call them extended or remix, but it's all the same thing. Terminology means nothing. It's all how the artist labels it. Even as far back as 1982, groups like Culture Club were using terms like "Dub Version", "12" Remix", "Extended Version", "Dance Mix", etc. The principal and purpose of extended or reinvented is still there.

Also, vinyl never went away just because CDs came around. Even in Oklahoma, vinyl was in the stores until the mid 90's. It went underground for a while, but never went away. I have Prince albums as far back as 1999 on vinyl (namely Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic, as well as the 12" SINGLE 1999 the New Master). As 180 gram vinyl became popular in the last year or two, more and more artists are starting to release vinyl as a one of their primary formats, instead of a novelty secondary format.

But to answer the question....artists still do release 12" singles. Too many damn DJs wanting to remix something to not release something. The singles market has changed so much over the years. DJs still use and buy vinyl cuts (although some DJs are all digital in their live mixing). I miss Prince releasing 12" singles. That was like the icing on the cake when an album came out. You had a new Prince album, then you started getting all these remixes, extended cuts, plus the B-side. It was a constant treasure trove. It made the whole era of an album richer and more fulfilling. Nowadays, it just takes digging to find them.

I would say around the late 80's. OK Iam no expert but people like Robert Clivillés and David Cole actually added certain bits and bobs to the tracks whilst of course, still making them longer then the single version. They were one of the first to really popularize this as opposed to just making the track longer by extended the intro, middle and fade out. Same with Shep Pettibone aswell. Iam sure there were countless others aswell, but these guys actually made the remixes their own and did much more then merely extending them.


Infact going way back to The Jacksons "shake your body", that was much more then an extended cut of the track but most 12" until the late 80's were just "extended" and not "remixed", if that makes any sense. Teddy Riley totally remixed Jane Child's "don't wanna fall in love" for example, and that sorta thing rarely happened before the late 80's, where a track would get a total facelift like that....

....I guess as house started going overgound in the late 80's (and rave music in europe etc..) the remix really came into its own....

So when actual remixes came in (in the late 80's more and more), thats when extended mixes seemed to of died out or became alot less common. At least, thats my view of it.