Wendy Day defines EPs as 5-9 songs and albums as 10 or more, and explains why streaming has made singles and playlists the priority. She warns that frequent releases drain marketing budgets and stresses that five great tracks beat ten mediocre ones. Choose your format based on what you can actually promote.
Chapters
Hi guys, how are you today? I'm so happy to be back with you. Um, today we're gonna talk about, um, EPs versus full-length releases, and you can call them mixtapes, you can call them street albums, you can call them releases, whatever you want to call them. That's what we're going to talk about today. Um, you guys have been asking me questions about this for some time now, um, and because streaming is growing in importance in hip-hop and rap and pop music, um, we're going towards a singles market. It's actually been a singles market for a minute. The joy of streaming is that playlists have become the hot commodity, and due to oversaturation in our marketplace, artists are dropping more frequently than ever before. For example, my clients put out mixtapes, or, or I'm just going to call it a project. My clients put out a project every 4 to 5 months. That's a lot of music to, to create and to promote, especially for artists with a limited budget. It becomes really hard to compete, you know. It takes money to record, it takes money to buy the beats, it takes money to market and promote every time you drop. And if you're dropping 3 times a year, then it's taking a lot of money, right? So many artists and have turned to releasing EPs instead of a full-length project. And just to be clear, um, an EP consists of between 5 and 9 songs roughly, and a full-length project is 10 or more songs. So a full-length album could be 10 songs, 12 songs, 18 songs, 15 songs, but anything less than 9 songs is considered an EP. Um, some people consider 3 songs an EP. I don't. I consider that a single or an extended single. Um, I think EPs start at 5 songs. I think 5 is a good amount of songs to give somebody for like a certain price, right? And bear in mind that, um, EPs cost less than albums. So when you're selling downloads, for those of you that still still sell downloaded albums, you're going to get paid far less for an EP than you will for a full-length album. Okay, and, and certainly I'm not going to sit here and tell you whether you should put out an EP or whether you should put out a full-length album. Um, you've got to do what's best for you, and your budget, your client base, and your own marketing plan are going to dictate what is best for you, right? So having great music is really important. I mean, it's, it's, it's very crucial to this, but even more important is the proper marketing and promotion of that music. I mean, if you don't have great music, then all of this is a moot point anyway because nobody's going to want to hear your music or share it with their friends, right? But if you've got really great music then you've got to properly market and promote that music. You've got to stand out amongst all the other stuff that's out there. You've got to stand ahead, so you're going to have to outwork everybody. And, um, in some cases you're going to have to spend quite a bit of money in order to market and promote so you can stand out. Um, for my clients, they usually take one of two routes. Either they drop a full-length project every 4 or 5 months, as I mentioned, and again, that's 10 or more songs. Or they drop singles, and they'll drop like a single a week or a single every other week. Um, some cases they drop a single one week and then the video the next week, and they just keep this schedule up so that they always have something in the marketplace. Sometimes for a year or longer they can keep this up, you know. Um, they work the singles to— they work singles like, like hit records, singles, right? To build awareness, but they keep enough music in the marketplace to allow fans to see like their full scope of work. This other music also allows the artist to see which songs are most popular based on listens, views, plays, etc. So data and analytics can be really helpful to you in, um, choosing your direction as an artist and as a marketer. You're gonna be able to see what you're doing that actually works based on your uptick at social media, your uptick at views at SoundCloud, your uptick at listens at YouTube. Okay, I said the better backwards. It's views at YouTube and listens at SoundCloud. But you can go into your analytics and you can see, you know, the dashboard and and you can see exactly where these listens are coming from, how many times people are playing your music. You can see so much information. And once you get a body of work and your marketing and promotion is solid, you're gonna be able to see what songs people prefer to others. Like, obviously on SoundCloud, whatever you have first is gonna get the most amount of hits, 'cause as people come to your page, they're gonna press on the very first thing. Um, most of my artists tend to rotate the songs throughout their SoundCloud so that nothing sits on top for too long. Um, but other than that, that first, uh, song that just gets natural hits from being on top, you can really get a feel for the type of music that you're making that people really gravitate to. You're going to be able to see by the numbers. Okay, so in choosing the number of songs for your next release, it should be based on quality. So if you've— if you're going to put something out, you would want to have 5 great songs as opposed to 10 mediocre songs, right? So that's going to play a role in dictating whether you're going to put out a full-length release or whether you're going to drop an EP. Also, depending on your marketing budget, it's better to have one project that's, that's worked thoroughly and well than it is to divide the marketing budget between two EPs, right? So your pockets are going to dictate your choices. Most new artists make the bulk of their income— I mean, once they start to make money, they make the bulk of their income from from shows and from streaming. And again, streaming is individual songs, so it helps to have as much music in the marketplace as possible because you want to increase your streaming revenue, right? You want to have as many songs as possible in the marketplace. And then you have to market and promote that music so that fans know it's available. There's just no way around that, and that matters so much more than the number of songs that you offer to people. So the bottom line in deciding whether to release an EP or a full-length is to decide what you can afford to spend, what do your fans expect from you, what do they want, and how much money are you going to put into promoting and marketing, and how much money do you have to record. Budget plays a really big role in this. So guys, I hope that was helpful. It's, it's down to each one of you. I can talk to 10 different artists and I'll get 10 different answers as to whether they prefer an EP or a full-length and why. But again, don't focus as much on the length of your music as the quality of your music, as well as the budget you have to work. When you work a record, You work the single, whatever is the best song on that release, you work that single, and then the remaining music is just what's there so that the fans can see what else you have once that single pulls them in to your movement or into your franchise. So, um, focus more on great music and focus explicitly on marketing and promoting that music well. That's where most of you are breaking down, is you either don't have a budget to market and promote properly, or you don't know how to do it. So the best thing is to do as much research as you can, learn as much as you can— that's why we're here— um, and then just do it. Don't, don't spend so much time learning and researching that you don't actually put into action. It's really important to get your music out there and let people hear what you have and gravitate towards you. Okay guys, I hope this was helpful in terms of EPs or full lengths. Okay, bye!
