Opinions? Albums: releasing one song vs the whole thing

[louderthangod]

More and more albums (at least on iTunes) seem to start out by releasing a song or two a few weeks before the album comes out. Do you guys prefer this vs releasing the whole thing at once?

Rarely do I find myself listening to those individual songs unless it's a band I really, really like. I usually prefer to listen to the whole album. I'm just curious if you find that releasing one or two songs early gets you more excited for the album or if people buy just one or two songs to test the waters. I usually preorder these albums so I just get them added when I'm not expecting them.

[oscillateur]

Well, in the old days people used to do that with vinyl and CDs too, you know. Though singles usually had at least one extra song to make the thing worthwile.

I prefer whole albums too and if there's no extra material I'd rather wait for the full thing.

[Blackened Soul]

I like albums, even if you only "like" one song on the thing I really love the idea of the effort and thought put into recording 40+ min worth of your art and the putting the songs in the right flow

[ProCarsteNation]

^^^yes, albums FTW!
It's so nice when the flow of an album is just right so that you can listen to it in a loop.
and even if you had only a handful of greatest hits on first listen,
loop for loop every track begins to make sense for the whole
i love that

and sometimes can get all grumpy-old-manly about the dying art of the album

[Iommic Pope]

Back in the days of singles, if you did the preluding single to the album, at least there was a cool b-side on there.
These days, those songs feel more like a trailer.

[D.o.S.]

So we're putting down 40 minutes as an 'album'? That seems kind of silly to me.

Anyway, I find a lot of bands leak the record over time to various websites and blogs, which can be cool. Don't use iTunes so I don't have any experience there.

[ProCarsteNation]

So we're putting down 40 minutes as an 'album'? That seems kind of silly to me.

How so? too long? too short?
But it is a fair question, what constitutes an album?
Album = collection of similar things...
But if you put out a single track that takes up the entirety of a CD: single or album?

blurred lines for sure, and possibly varying from genre to genre or mood of creator, when does a single turn into an EP turn into an album? Especially digitally?
With physical media maybe the format gives you pointers... but then who could stop you from releasing your "album" as a series of 7inches?
Or three 7inches, 1 cassette, 1 USB stick and a roll of 8mm film?

Does any of this even make sense?
It seems it made more before I started typing, but now that I took the time to type I guess I'll post


tl;dr:

[D.o.S.]

Well when I asked I was playing Group Sex. Great album. 15 minutes long.

[louderthangod]

Much like gender pronouns it's best off to use whatever a band wants to call their product. One band's album is another band's ep or even single.
I was just wondering if anyone thought leaking a song or two actually did something useful these days.

[D.o.S.]

I think it can be a good way to spread the word -- I would be a shiny silver nickel that Kowloon Walled City having a track released on NPR opens them up to a whole new audience, to use a recent example.

[casecandy]

The recent Beirut and Earl Sweatshirt albums were both just under thirty minutes. They were both preceded by a single about a week prior to the album's release. In the case of both, the albums benefit from the short length because you can digest the music very quickly, and then move on to digesting the ideas in the music, which is more involving process. I liked that release scheme and that album length. What you were saying, Pro, applies well: I loop both these albums in iTunes with a slight crossfade between the last track and the first and I'll listen to the Beirut one in particular, like, five or more times in a single sitting.

Some of best albums ever recorded have been under half an hour. I love Saosin Translating The Name EP, for example. It's brutal, it's emotional, some of the tightest post-hardcore there is, and widely regarded as the only good thing that the band ever did (save a song here or there). You can listen to it on the bus ride to work. Five songs, twenty-odd minutes, no fat to trim.

Re: do I like a song or two released before the album, it depends. Is the song good? It's very rare that a band is both an "album band" and a "singles band." Usually you have a solid greatest hits album, or you have a great discography. Most good bands' singles are tailored for radio in misguided ways, so that the singles aren't representative of the band's sound. Would you know how good an album Wintersleep's Welcome To The Night Sky is from the single, the relatively insipid "Weighty Ghost"? So if you can't find a good single on the album, then skip having a single, and let it be heard in context and in sequence. Promote the record. Promote your shows. Radio is largely a dead medium for (gag) "serious" bands...

Recent examples to the contrary abound, though. The Earl song mentioned, "Grief," was overwhelmingly the best song on I Don't Like Shit, and Kendrick Lamar's single versions of "i" and "The Blacker The Berry" really drummed up anticipation for TPAB. I listened to "i" pretty much every day prior to TPAB's release. So it's an issue of quality, across the board, IMO.

If the music is good, it will work, however you release it. If the music is not good, it won't matter how you release it, it'll still suck.

[casecandy]

What I find really interesting, though, is when album drops run contra the wisdom of the traditional album cycle. In Rainbows was a pretty big deal because it was the first time a band as big as Radiohead had offered an album essentially for free, and you saw Nine Inch Nails follow suit pretty fast with Ghosts and Year Zero (leaking the latter on USB keys left in the washrooms of venues), and now it's a legitimate alternative release scheme (de rigeur for independent artists in a lot of genres). Recently I've seen an artist selling their album for $100, an artist offering a multi-volume album as a bi-monthly subscription service, albums dropping without any promotion, an artist release only the sheet music to the album, etc., to say nothing of numerous innovations in packaging and (super) deluxe editions, etc. I think that in a lot of ways the album cycle is too predictable, whether or not there's a single. People want something cool and new.

EDIT: Forgot about that new Swans album, which I recall people around here thinking was pretty neat, and I think the pre-order packages for that drummed up some excitement. I hadn't seen a pre-order quite like that before.

[D.o.S.]

That's been Gira's MO since he restarted Swans, FYI.
From 2010:

Michael Gira: I Am Not Insane is a handmade thing I did and made a thousand copies of in order to raise the funds to record [the new Swans] album properly. The thousand sold out in eight days or something like that. Then I had to reckon with making them all. I thought it would happen in six months to a year. When they sold out right away, I had to make all of these things, and it's a really laborious process. It took a few months to fulfill all the orders because it was very time-consuming, and I was recording it simultaneously. I'm not complaining. It helped me make this record.

You used sales of that album to help finance the new Swans record. Why did you go that route, and what kind of response were you expecting from such an approach?

I had no idea what to expect. I actually did this several years ago to record an Angels of Light album. I handmade 500 CDs of some live performances and posted them on the website in order to raise the money to make the next Angels of Light record. So I had in the back of my mind that that works. The reason I did it was because I didn't have the money to record a Swans album properly.

http://www.westword.com/music/michael-g ... st-5715159

From 2014:
http://web.archive.org/web/201402022243 ... -cd-bundle

http://pitchfork.com/news/52639-swans-f ... about-you/

Etc.

[D.o.S.]

[casecandy]

Very cool re: Swans.