EP’s and ALBUMS: KNOW THE DIFFERENCE
Let’s face it: the music industry is getting more blurry and hard to understand. Not only are the genres starting to converge (which I’ll explain in our next blog), the terminology for music projects is getting blurred too. Artists are releasing 2 or 3 songs at a time, or 45 songs at a time! I mean, how are we supposed to keep track of what a certain music project should be called if everyone is calling it something different?
At COMP, we’re trying to fix that. Not only will COMP MUSIC make it easy for you all to tell your stories through music, you will learn more about the history of music too. Starting with the names for music projects:
We call all music works “projects” and then specify from there based on the length of the collection of songs. So, whether your favorite artist is releasing two songs or 20 songs, you can call both projects. Also, from an artist’s perspective, every song or collection of songs we put out is a project that we put a lot of time and effort into.
From there, COMP breaks music projects down as follows:
1 Song - Single
2-3 Songs - Pack
4-6 Songs - EP
7-14 Songs - Album/LP
15-25 Songs - Deluxe Album
25+ Songs - Playlist
Terms like “Pack” and “Playlist” have become more prominent recently in music history, but the EP and the Album go back to the start of the recording age almost 100 years ago. There’s a reason these project titles based on length should be set in stone.
When vinyl was the most common method of music recording and sale, the physical record could only fit a certain amount of audio time depending on its size. This is because each vinyl record was designated to have a specific number of rotations per minute (rpm). The most common rpm’s for vinyls were 33rpm, 45rpm, and 78rpm. EP’s and Singles usually existed on 7in vinyls at either rpm, while albums existed on 10in or 12in vinyls at either rpm.
Smaller records spun faster (45rpm) and had smaller diameters (7in), so the audio time available was shorter. The bigger the diameter of the record (10 or 12in) and the slower the rpm (33rpm), the more audio time the vinyl record could hold. That’s part of the reason why albums had A sides and B sides; because you literally had to flip the record over on the record player to hear the other half of the album! Here’s a few articles that explain it in more detail:
How do Streaming Services Define This?
So, in this previous era, EP meant 4-6 songs because that is all that could fit on the A side of a 7in vinyl. It had to be 30 minutes or less because that’s all the vinyl could hold. Albums were longer because they used both sides of the record and they used larger vinyls. As vinyls got bigger, the length of albums got longer for these same reasons. Then the cassette and the CD came along and artists/groups put out bigger projects, but had similar technological restrictions on length for different reasons. Now, the digital age has blown this all up. It was unheard of to drop a 30 song album before the digital age. Try fitting those album lengths with these constraints!
I think that we should respect the history of the recording history and keep the project length names the same as they were for our music ancestors. There isn’t much music tradition to hold on to since the industry is constantly changing and adapting with the technology at our disposal. But, that should not mean that we white out the foundation of recording. EP’s should be 4-6 songs as they were before, Albums, should be 7-14 songs as they were before, and we should build and expand on that.
Streaming services have different guidelines for what constitutes a single, an EP, or an album, so refer to the CD Baby article above to know where your next project falls in their system. Don’t be one of those people calling your 9-song project an EP. I won’t let you!
If you want a professional to listen to your mix or recent song and tell you how you can improve, try our service FEEDBACK by COMP S&R. Our team will help you take your tracks to the next level by evaluating things like song structure, and our feedback will give you helpful advice in the aesthetic, production, and engineering of your track! We're here for you!
