EPs vs LPs

[Ombrenuit]

Evidently EPs sell like shit. We were planning a six song ep for our first effort, but my friend in the biz is insisting we go full lp.

Admittedly I prefer lps from bands, but the music nerd in me likes eps because they are a weirder animal. Like novelettes or some shit.

Our songs average five minutes. Should we just add 10 - 15 minutes of more material? Would an lp look more professional?

[Mr. Foxen]

I think its about being honest about what you have to work with. Filler material to bulk out a record is just that. Unless it happens to be really good like Paranoid. If the biz says pack out your good work with half assed work to make up length, then fuck the biz because I don't buy records because they are long, not being full of suck is the important bit.

[clockwork green]

Your friend is probably right but I don't think it means you have to listen to him. What you should be worried about is being the best musician in the best band that you can be and not the best psychologist or marketer. Take your favorite band, if they had released their first album as an EP they'd still be an awesome band. It's a weird l, uncertain market for bands. People seem to be completely okay wih downloading your album for free and yet also okay paying $20 for the colored 180-gram vinyl. My goal with musc is to make it available and accessible while making it the of highest quality that I am capable. People also seem to have shorter attention spans n terms of albums plus there are plenty of 30-minute LP's ou there.

[Ombrenuit]

Agreed, fuck filler. We have a load of material, but our method was picking our six best songs. If that was the band's gut instinct, we should probably stick to it.

*edit* Nebula's EPs are probably my favorite ever. I prefer them to any of their albums.

[Lumpy]

Do a Google search for Albums are Dead. (Safari won't provide a link, blah blah blah). Some articles discussing this issue can be found. No time to read an article: People may prefer to download a few songs rather than an album. Unless your friend in the biz is releasing your record, I would follow your instincts. Also, a lot of the people working in the biz are responsible for running it into the ground. His experience may not necessarily make him a better judge than you.

[Ombrenuit]

Found a good article of eps vs lps.
http://www.advantagemusicproduction.com/2012/05/24/ep-vs-lp/

Tl;dr

An EP's best use is for promotional and demonstration purposes. The EP helps demonstrate the artist's sound, in order to help secure bookings, and it allows music fans to become familiar with the artist's sound.  Sales of the EP at concert events can be good, provided the artist delivers a compelling performance.

A complete LP album serves the same purpose as an EP in regards to promotion and demonstration, but has the potential to achieve media attention because it stands as a complete, newsworthy, sellable product.  This creates more community buzz, that can result in retailers stocking the product, and radio playing "the single", as radio can be assured that there is a full-length product for fans to purchase.

[Ombrenuit]

@Lumpy: I don't think people buying stoner / doom stuff are necessarily cherry picking songs on iTunes. Maybe I'm wrong. One thing I love about the genre is that albums are good all the way through.

[Lumpy]

Was that article written in 1995? Radio stations playing the single? Retailers stocking product?

And isn't this some type of really heavy rock music?

edit - hah, beat me to it. Check the links for Albums are Dead (google search)

[Lumpy]

@Lumpy: I don't think people buying stoner / doom stuff are necessarily cherry picking songs on iTunes. Maybe I'm wrong. One thing I love about the genre is that albums are good all the way through.

Maybe not so much cherry-picking the music, but maybe more willing to spend 5 dollars for 5 songs, instead of 10 dollars for 10 songs. Especially for a new band.

I don't know the answer. But I've even seen people make the argument (in the albums are dead discussions) that singles should possibly be a band's release priority, if they are selling their own music online.

[Ombrenuit]

Yeah that article is basically obsolete. The takeaway I got from it is that LPs can do media coverage and be sold in your local record store whereas EPs can't.

Those two things we don't really care about. And yeah, radio play isn't in our future.

[AgentofOblivion]

If you can swing a good LP, do it.  I think you'll be glad you did it in the long run.  It's great to get something out fast that you and interested people can enjoy, but it is a bit of a blue balls situation with a 4 or 5 track in my opinion.  As soon as it starts to really capture you it's over.  For the amount of work we put in and costs of the artist and pressing, I wish we would have done the full length.  We recorded it ourselves, however, so the cost of more material wasn't really a factor aside from the time involved.

We ended up doing a split with another band--so we did 4 songs and they did 3.  Our logic was that the printing/art costs would go down and we would get exposed to an audience that we normally wouldn't get exposed to:  their fans.  It has sold well at shows but basically nill outside of that.

[Lumpy]

Even with everything I already said, if you have an album's worth of good material, and it all seems to belong together, then there's no reason not to release it as an album.

If it's going to take another 6 months to round out your tracks, maybe go with an EP.

[Jake]

As someone who loves to (try to) create music and as someone who loves to buy music, I can honestly say this about the whole debate.

It is totally and completely dependent on the band and the music as to which is a "better" format for your release.

There are so many times in which I had wished there was 2x or 3x the amount of music on an EP. And equally the number of times I wish an LP had been 1/2 or 1/3 as long. When it comes time for me to release something again, I will likely aim for stringing together a series of EPs. This is for a couple of reasons. If it's between leaving the listener wanting more or potentially losing their interest, I'm going to err with the former. EPs are also a way to keep releasing music that's fresh for you as well as the listener. And let's face it, we are in a culture of constant newness and immediacy, like it or not.

[AgentofOblivion]

As someone who loves to (try to) create music and as someone who loves to buy music, I can honestly say this about the whole debate.

It is totally and completely dependent on the band and the music as to which is a "better" format for your release.

There are so many times in which I had wished there was 2x or 3x the amount of music on an EP. And equally the number of times I wish an LP had been 1/2 or 1/3 as long. When it comes time for me to release something again, I will likely aim for stringing together a series of EPs. This is for a couple of reasons. If it's between leaving the listener wanting more or potentially losing their interest, I'm going to err with the former. EPs are also a way to keep releasing music that's fresh for you as well as the listener. And let's face it, we are in a culture of constant newness and immediacy, like it or not.

The only thing I would add is that it's a fine line between the listener wanting more and the listener being unsatisfied because it's TOO short.  For instance, even though I love the two songs on Baroness's 3rd EP I never listen to it because I'm not going to get the CD out and put it in just for two songs.  I want to put something on, sit back and enjoy, not constantly changing things around.  I don't know about you guys, but I normally want to listen to music, not particular songs.  I'm irritated at the new Graveyard because I think IT is too short, and it's an LP.

[Jake]

Understood. But in the age of digitized music, less and less people will be bothering to physically handle CDs altogether anyways.

[VOLVO)))]

I prefer LPs.

[AgentofOblivion]

Understood. But in the age of digitized music, less and less people will be bothering to physically handle CDs altogether anyways.

That is true.  It's something I struggle with conceptually as well.  For instance, it's clear that the masses listen to music mostly on Pandora/streaming and typically through their phones or some other device.  That said, the people that do that are not really the ones likely to buy an LP of integrated ambient doom or something obscure like that (assumption).  And if you take your physical art seriously, there's not much room for that when people are just downloading the tracks.  So what's a guy to do?  Hope that your niche audience is like what you want them to be--buying physical products to enjoy a full album and the artwork--or think that you can convince people to digest your music in singles format (likely not played concurrently).  It's a matter of my supposed niche audience not embracing the wave of the future.  I guess I don't really know what most "real" music fans do.  I listen to CDs and vinyl because I have a shitty phone.  Most of my friends are not hardcore music fans.  I'll start a poll and we'll get to the bottom of this shit...

[Lumpy]

Are you working with a label, or doing this yourself?

If you're doing this yourself, only spend as much money as you're willing to lose.

[Jake]

Huh. It kinda seems like you're suggesting (I'm paraphrasing of course) that people who really "care" about less-mainstream music take the time to appreciate it in it's most "pure" form – a commercially produced vinyl record or CD – which somehow shows more respect to sound quality and physical album art versus digitized convenience. Is that close?

If so, I'm not so sure about that. That's seems like it's coming from a pretty narrow perspective of how all sorts of people (even scumbags like us) actually listen to music. Even if it were the case, it's pretty dag gone easy to cover all your bases by including a digital download card in with the vinyl, right? Seems like that's happening quite a bit already. Win-win.

PS – Jake0))), that LP is so tacky flamey. Like you. Ohhhhhhhhh snap! Oh no I di int.

[Chovie D]

For me the finished product is more of a document of my work than a product to sell.
i wish that werent the case but my records just never sold..

as a listener I prefer EP's or should say, I like them alot. over time there have been some classic EP's and something about their brevity and consiceness adds "punch", and their separation from an "album" makes them kind of like a rarity or special edition to me..

metallica
urge overkill
entombed
meat puppets
jesus lizard
mudhoney


those were good , in some cases better than the full albums that bookend them.

[Jake]

Also, not to make too much of the sidebar debate about having your music be a physical commodity, but I sold 1k+ or so CDs to a music store a few years ago because I think the writing is on the wall that the CD's days are numbered. I had to keep a few hundred rare, out of print, or nostalgic ones though.

[AgentofOblivion]

Huh. It kinda seems like you're suggesting (I'm paraphrasing of course) that people who really "care" about less-mainstream music take the time to appreciate it in it's most "pure" form – a commercially produced vinyl record or CD – which somehow shows more respect to sound quality and physical album art versus digitized convenience. Is that close?

If so, I'm not so sure about that. That's seems like it's coming from a pretty narrow perspective of how all sorts of people (even scumbags like us) actually listen to music. Even if it were the case, it's pretty dag gone easy to cover all your bases by including a digital download card in with the vinyl, right? Seems like that's happening quite a bit already. Win-win.

PS – Jake0))), that LP is so tacky flamey. Like you. Ohhhhhhhhh snap! Oh no I di int.

That is what I'm suggesting (asking?) and I share your feelings of "I'm not so sure about that."  I think downloads being packaged with the physical disc is a great idea.  Implementing it can be a bit tricky since presumably you would have a large variety of access codes, which means each download card would have to have a unique code printed on it--not easy to do at Kinkos as far as I know--or even if it were all digital you would have to have the system in place to manage that stuff.  But details aside, a multi-format approach is probably the best way to go.  From a band perspective, the more downloads the better because there is essentially no cost associated with them.  It sucks to print a bunch of CDs and then only sell a third of them or something.

[Lumpy]

If you don't know what to do, just do what your peers are doing. Odds are that your band is not going to revolutionize the music industry. So just look around and talk to other area bands at your level. Find out what they did, and how it turned out for them. Done.

The whole line of questions is too theoretical, and therefore the answers are theoretical, and maybe not that useful. Because how can a band measure themselves against a theoretical standard? Most bands are average, and should expect average results. But some bands are awesome, and they should get different advice. Likewise, a band who isn't ready would get different answers as well. Meanwhile, some bands are playing totally inaccessible music, and no matter how awesome they are, a large investment into commercial products is a waste of money.

[Ombrenuit]

While the theoretical stuff is great, we were primarily concerned with return on investment. If adding two songs made the release more sellable that would be worth examining. Maybe it would be perceived as a "finished" product or more professional.

I'd personally be more likely to buy a lp than an ep from an unknown band. Or even if I liked the material, I'd be more likely to wait for an lp release. Most eps in my collection were bought after I bought a band's lps and wanted more. That behavior probably applies to most of the market.

That logic implies the consumer perceives EPs as a "riskier" purchase even if it's less risk to the band.

[Mr. Foxen]

If return on investment is your interest, the music is the wrong game to be in.