What is the difference between a single, EP and album?

You may have noticed in your music distributor that you can’t typically select ‘single’, ‘EP’ or ‘album’ for your release. The streaming services categorize singles, EPs and albums automatically. But how do they decide?

The track counts for singles, EPs and albums on Spotify, Apple Music and other DSPs are:

• Single: 1-3 tracks
• EP: 4-6 tracks
• Album: 7+ tracks

There are some other interesting caveats that define a single, EP and album – so read on!

What does Spotify consider a single?

Spotify, Apple Music and other DSPs consider a single to be 1-3 songs. However, if one of the tracks is over 10 minutes long it will be considered an EP. Or if the total running time is over 30 minutes it will be considered an album.

Most of the time a single will just have 1 song on them. The exceptions are when an artist releases an alternate version of the song alongside the main, or a different song that fits well with the main song.

How many songs for an EP?

Music streaming platforms consider an EP to be 4-6 songs, as long as the total running time is less than 30 minutes. Additionally a release can have 1-3 songs and still be an EP if one track is at least 10 minutes long.

Often the ‘spirit’ of an EP is to release a batch of songs that fit a specific artistic vision too long for one song, but too short for an album. Most EPs nowadays are due to artists waterfall releasing songs and hitting 4-6 tracks and not due to an artistic vision – so it’s an EP in definition but not in tradition.

What do streaming services consider an album?

Anything with either 7+ tracks, or has more than 30 minutes of content, will be considered an album by streaming services.

Historically albums are the main way an artist releases music, but this was due to the physical nature of purchasing CD’s, cassettes and vinyls. With streaming, singles have become much more common. Nowadays artists use albums as a way to group related songs into a body of work, or as a way to ‘define an era’ and group a bunch of singles together into a package.

For more information, check out this article by DistroKid and this one by CD Baby.

Should I release a single, EP or album?

Typically singles are most common nowadays. It’s become common for artists to release a new song every 4-8 weeks (7-13 releases per year), while in the past artists might have 2 releases per year. Releasing more singles more frequently allows artists to keep people interested, and always have something to promote and talk about.

A 12 song album might only have 3 new songs on it because 9 songs were already released as singles. If you were to release that 12 song album without any singles, so every song is new, Spotify will make you choose 1 song to pitch to editorial and submit to Release Radar. By releasing more singles you get more pitches to editorial and more pushes in release radar.