you might be getting ready to record or release your first single
ep or album but what are the differences between a single vs ep vs album
in this video i'm going to go over what the differences are
and how spotify and even itunes treat the different releases
i'm zane welcome to simple green tech where i do weekly audio tech tips
tutorials and reviews to help you conquer the tech
and unleash your creativity so first i'm going to go over the basic differences
and then i'll talk about how spotify and itunes
treat your different releases or how they categorize them
and first up what makes a single. a single
is 1 to 3 tracks and the total duration can be no more than 30 minutes
meaning all of your tracks combined can be no
longer than 30 minutes plus each of your tracks
must be under 10 minutes long so if even one of
those tracks is 10 minutes or longer then this will make
your single an ep on itunes lately eps have
become very popular to release they are short
enough that you can crank them out quicker when compared to a full length
album and they also give your listener a bit
of a bigger sampling of your music compared to a single so
what makes an ep well to have your release be considered an ep it must be
four to six tracks and can be no longer than
30 minutes in length so all of your tracks combined on your ep
can be no longer than 30 minutes if the total running time on either your single
or your ep is longer than 30 minutes then it's
going to be considered an album now for years albums were the
primary method for releasing music but that's changed
since artists and musicians now have the
ability to crank out more music more often but there's still something
great about releasing a full length album even if it has
some of your singles that you previously released and maybe you include a couple
of new songs or maybe it's just a collection
of a bunch of your singles put together on one album with some new artwork
and you can give a bit of a discount on it so what makes an
album well before i answer that i just want to ask if you're enjoying this
video so far and getting some value out of it can you please hit the thumbs up
button it really helps my channel out and i
appreciate it so much now what makes a full album
well it must be seven tracks or longer or it could have a total running time
like i said earlier of 30 minutes or longer so you could
have a two track album and your two tracks
are maybe 15 minutes in length each and that's an
album or you could have eight tracks and each track is under two
minutes long so say 16 minutes in total run time but
you still have eight tracks and that's still an album
so if you create a lot of progressive music that has
longer run times then you're likely going to be releasing what's considered
a full album even if you have fewer tracks than
seven so what's the difference between a single vs
ep vs album on stores like spotify and itunes
well on itunes if you release a single and you don't include the word
single in the title then itunes may actually
add single to the title of your track now if you release a single to spotify
it doesn't change the name of your track but it does categorize it in the singles
category and if you release an ep on itunes and
you don't include ep in any of your tracks then itunes
may actually add ep to all of the track names
in that release if you release an ep on spotify it doesn't change the name of
your tracks but it does categorize them in the ep
category now if you release an album on itunes or
spotify there's no changing in the title so
there are also some pricing differences and i'm not talking about the price to
actually release them i'm talking about the price that you can
charge to your fans and by default i think a single is 99
cents per track but i think you can also change this to
69 cents or a dollar 29 but if you release an ep or an album you
can still set the tracks to 99 cents each or one of the other options
but you also can give your fans a little bit of an incentive to purchase
all of your tracks together by giving a discount on purchasing the entire ep or
the entire album one thing to note is if your individual
tracks combined are lesser than the price you set for
the album then it will go with the lesser price for the
album now i have a question for you have you recently released music on
itunes or spotify and all the other stores or will you be releasing some
music very soon let me know down in the
comments now if you don't have a distributor for
your music yet i've included a link down in the description to
distrokid that's who i've been using lately to release my music and know this
video is not sponsored by distrokid it's just
i use them and i really enjoy their service it's
easy to use and they get you on all the platforms you can release as much music
as you want anytime you want and they'll get you on
spotify itunes and all the big platforms they also get you
the spotify verified artist badge on your spotify account
plus if you use the link down below you get a seven percent
discount on their service which i think is around
twenty dollars for the basic service so be sure to check out that link to
distrokid that's down in the description save that money and start releasing your
music i found that by having the distrokid account i've
started to create more and more music because i can
release as much as i want whenever i want
also if you get the musician plus or the label account on distrokid
you can release music under different band names so maybe you have a couple of
different projects with different band names
then you can do that also this allows you to change the music label name that
you release your music under so maybe you can start your own record
label locally and get some local artists and start
releasing their music to spotify and itunes and all those
places it's super easy to set up payments for all of your band members
and maybe any artist that you collaborate with
and i've actually got a video where i go through the whole upload process
on distrokid so you can check that out i'll link to that down in the
description as well so yeah let me know about any music that
you've recently released or are going to be releasing very soon
and if you want to check out that distrokid video that i did it should be on the
screen right now you can click on that or you can click on the other video on
the screen to see what youtube recommends
if you like this video can you please give it a thumbs up also subscribe to
the channel for more videos like this thank you so much for watching for
simple green tech i'm zane keep creating and we'll talk
soon