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The 15 tracks thing was kind of just a general rule, tracks don't really mean anything. Locust has very short songs, and as for Husker Du, Zen Arcade easily justifies its length for me. Le Scrawl's entire discography "Too Short to Ignore" is 66 songs at something like 55 minutes... There are a lot of very slow bands, or very sprawling bands who might only fit two songs in that time frame.
I don't really understand what use extra time is, other than taking up time. In many cases I see the album as a whole to be just as important as each song, so it's not still getting the other stuff, it's getting inconsistency and mediocrity. The amount of material is not really what you're buying, it's the work as a whole...otherwise just go to a dollar bin and buy 10 CDs rather than one, it's a much better deal. Music doesn't really end with the start and stop buttons anyway, it just seems irrelevant...the work is either worth it or it's not. Compilations are a slightly different issue, but usually the length will depend on the goal, if you're trying to get an overview of an artist's entire career it makes sense that there will be more material. Though these tend to be an excellent example of poor choices in the tracklisting being a detriment to the work as a whole. The only reason I say 30-40 minutes is because that's what a lot of, shall we say pop, artists seem have in them. When something is great it doesn't matter how long it is, and greatness isn't so scarce that I need mediocrity to take up the extra time in between.
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