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Thursday, January 19, 2012

Size isn't Everything!

Christmas tree has come down, time to make plans! I've been talking a bit about making Album No 3 up until now, but I've changed my mind.

Remember, back in the day, when you used to buy singles? As in the plastic variety, not the downloadable doodads. For an artist, it was a big deal to release a single and get the physical product manufactured, distributed etc. You'd usually have at least two singles from the album and then release the album (LP) itself.

Some people opted to release EPs instead but I always found them annoyingly short. As a listener it meant I had to get off my bottom after only 15 or 25 minutes to press the repeat button or change the disk, compared to the at least 40 minutes playing time you'd get out of an album.

Well a lot of this is irrelevant now isn't it? I know one of my greatest enjoyments is making playlists for my plethora of music-playing gadgets, from a selection of my favourite digitised songs. I can make that playlist as long as I like. And so you could say that whether the artist chooses to release a single, an album or EP is really irrelevant - as a fan I can choose to cherry pick my favourite tracks from my nearest download etailer anyway.

I got to thinking, I don't HAVE to release an album. In fact, if I opt to go for something closer to an EP, I can actually do releases more often. So... from now on I'm going to be talking about my upcoming EP 1 in a series of 3, although let's hope I can come up with a more interesting title than that. And I will probably make the plastic version as well as the digital doodad.

I know there are the purists out there who still like to hold those shiny disks in their hands...but just think of all that exercise, getting off your bottoms and (hopefully) pressing the repeat button on my new EP!