The format is not your enemy, it’s free to break the rules but know why.

Many artists follow all the rules and advice that are given to them at conferences, online or in workshops, etc. One rule seems though hard for them to understand, format.

Format is how the general audience listens and is presented to music. You have every artistic right and freedom to not follow these format rules. You need to be aware that you are excluding yourself from a lot of listeners. No, you cannot change people. Either you change for them or you accept a smaller range of audiences. Either way is the right way for you, it's your choice. Right now however I have too many people that have chosen to leave formats and then doing PR and efforts that are in a format world, and then complaining that they don’t get the same chance as other artists and that the world is to shallow.

What are the format rules? It varies, but I can take an example. I got in a demo from an artist. Every song was over six minutes long and an album of ten songs. Me working on the radio know that you need to make a really good exemption to play songs over 4:30 minutes. Why this rule? Studies have shown that the audience starts to change the channel if there is a song playing for too long that they don’t like. Of course, there are exemptions like Don Mcleans, American Pie that is eight minutes long. But then they usually fade it in the middle. And if you look at online radio, fading is not that easy to do, so you rather stay in the format of three minutes to four minutes. This is that the audience hangs on. Playing long songs is risky for me as a radio producer. If you then do songs that don’t fit that it’s my artistic freedom to choose to not play them. It’s your artistic freedom to release longer songs because they should be that way. You take a bigger chance though by leaving the format that I will play it.

Same rule that you should release it on a Friday. Friday is the official release day of music in the world. Many blogs, magazines, and stations has built up their release systems around that. Their working schedule is put that way. Many algorithms are programmed that way. You can release on a Tuesday you have to full right to do that. Don’t expect that all these people should change their schedules just because you don’t want to stay in the format. You can release it on a Tuesday but take a chance that you are not picked since it won't fit the editor's schedule.

A lot of complaining I seen the past weeks has just been around this. Either the artist didn’t know or understand that they broke a format rule, or they just wanted to be cool and different and think that would help them to reach an audience. The choice is simple. You lock your self inside the format and try to be creative inside that. Or be totally outside the rules. Whatever you do don't try to do it halfway that just gonna make people take things off.

If the things you release is mediocre, well then it doesn’t matter if you follow the format or not. It won’t fly. It’s only if it’s great and you follow the rules you might have a bigger chance if you also follow the format.

It’s no rules, it’s a choice but don’t complain about the system or if people mark it out.

EP is not a good format.

I just had a discussion with one of my artists around an EP and felt I have this conversation so many times that I should write about it.

So my artist has recorded three new songs and wanted to release it at the beginning of the autumn. Of course, recording of three songs has to do with limited time and resources. She doesn't have time to record a whole album and when she is in the studio is not worth it to record one song it’s more efficient to do three or four.

Back in the 80:s and 90:s this was the common reason for the EP. Mainly it was a budget thing. An album was too much but the artist had time and money to stay in the studio for a weekend and record a couple of songs.

In the 80:s you already had the single with two sides and also the bit longer format where you could put in 2 songs each side. So the EP was born as a marketing tool as we know it. Sometimes these EP:s was treated like real releases between albums so they could be stand alone sometimes. (to be clear sure it's EP:s before this, but they way we maket changed inthe 80:s)

In the 90:s they tried to experiment with it. There were several different packaging to support it. Still, a CD is 74 minutes so the format was not really that good, you left a lot of space on the format itself. The recording cost and time weight it up and you also saw that they loved to put in sing-along versions and remixes on to this ep:s. Making the EP many times five to six songs long even if it just where one original song there.

So the Ep format is still in the artist mind. It should have died in the 90:s but is still going on. And I see a lot of artist doing the ep format (not with remixes and stuff) on the distribution. But like I said to my artist the format sucks in the digital world.

Spotify doesn’t know albums is something that is told over and over again. And yes the digital era is really single driven. It’s not unusual to see an artist with 3 million streams on one song and the rest is under a hundred thousand. It’s THE song who gets the attention.

This affects the marketing. If you market an EP then it’s three up to six songs. Still the systems today are done so it will only listen to the first of these songs. Radio only takes one song and many of the blogs won’t review anything if it isn’t a whole album. So in practice even if you release five songs you actually only market one and the other four will be treated like nonexistent. You are wasting these songs. Also the marketing in the 80:s and 90:s where fast and was done over one week. Today’s marketing can be several months long for just one song.

The solution is to release all songs as singles. This makes the marketing can go for a longer period of time. Also, each song gets the shining it actually deserves. Then if a song fails you can easily get in with a new one faster. You can make them all go together by using similar artwork and videos to the songs so people see that they come from the same session. At the same time, you have more to write about on social media and keeping your brand alive. And with the consumer behavior, we see the singles are much better than an EP. The consumers look on one song but won’t explore the rest of the songs.

The Ep is really not any good it’s a format that should have been lost years ago. Only Time would be if you doing a vinyl in an ep format. Well, I'm not that keen on Vinyl but that is another story.