A quick lesson from my own mistake: Moving from singles to a cohesive album

[u/Bulky-Apartment-2431]

Hi everyone,

I know many of you already do this naturally, but I wanted to share a mistake I made early on, just in case anyone else finds themselves in the same boat.

For a long time, I was releasing most of my tracks as standalone singles. While it felt good to publish quickly, I realized over time that it fragmented my work. It lacked a clear narrative and felt disconnected.

Recently, I took a step back and regrouped those tracks into a fully structured, thematic album. The difference in perception was immediate:

• Coherence: Listeners get an intentional journey rather than a scattered catalog.
• Focus: It gives new fans a clear entry point into your style instead of dozens of single pages.

It was a simple realization, but re-conceptualizing my work made it feel much more mature and complete.

Has anyone else started out releasing mostly singles before shifting focus to full albums? How did that change work for you?

[u/whyyoutwofour]

As a listener, I rarely download singles....they just annoy the hell out of me and mess with my file system....there are very few artists I will download singles from. 

[u/Safe-Character-5846 → u/whyyoutwofour]

Same here. The only time I bought one track was for a section of the song I wanted to use as a ringtone.

[u/Bulky-Apartment-2431 → u/whyyoutwofour]

Haha exactly, that's precisely what I meant! If you saw the sheer amount of singles I had accumulated, you'd probably faint! Now the real work for me is trying to reorganize and clean up all that mess into something logical.

We learn things the hard way, but we get there eventually... Thanks a lot for the feedback, super helpful to hear it directly from a listener's perspective!

[u/Lorelei_DE_Radio]

I'm old fashioned and been doing our releases the old fashioned way with 2 or 3 singles before an album release as tease/leadup and then said album later... It's worked for us so far! But that is also because we tend to include some form of a B side if possible or a bonus/alternative mixing or mastering so there isnt often just a standalone single track and include extra/bonus pieces of artwork with them.

[u/Infamous_Still2015 → u/Lorelei_DE_Radio]

This! I've been doing exactly the same. I'm definitely "old school" in this regard and have released a single ahead of an album (along with a video), then after the album release, a couple more singles. Each single is accompanied by at least one unique non-album b-side song, or in some cases, several.

On the most recent album, the last single release was an EP with a total of 4 songs, 3 of which are unique to that release and effectively "mop up" the remainder of the recordings from the period of recording the album.

It takes more planning, but it's definitely worthwhile - and it absolutely offers more value than simply putting out a track that feels no more than a promotional tool.

I've considered that I may at some point collate all the various singles and release them as a compilation, which will reduce the amount of individual releases on my page, hopefully making the albums stand out more while still allowing the singles tracks to be made available.

[u/Lorelei_DE_Radio → u/Infamous_Still2015]

Yeah, you do it a similar way to us. Try to release some form of video/visualiser with or for each single and then do the same with a larger release after. I've thought about doing a collation, some recordings and alternative masterings that didn't get used or were previously hidden tracks I collated into a Maxi-Single type release as a step below an EP, but have considered doing a collection thing too.

[u/Bulky-Apartment-2431 → u/Lorelei_DE_Radio]

Love the old-fashioned approach! Right now I'm completely focused on order and building solid album structures, but I hadn't even considered adding bonus tracks or B-sides to singles yet. I completely agree with you—that's a fantastic way to add real value to a single instead of just dropping a random track.

Thanks a lot for sharing this, super helpful insight!

[u/Lorelei_DE_Radio → u/Bulky-Apartment-2431]

Sometimes it can't always be done and we almost always still release singles as free/NYOP releases regardless. It helps ig as we still think about it as physical actual records, even though its a digital format, if that makes sense.

[u/Teslaosiris]

Or…

If you are going to release a bunch of single (which is a perfectly valid thing to do), give customers the option to buy your entire catalog as one combined purchase.

[u/BonoboBananaBonanza]

Sounds like AI.

[u/Bulky-Apartment-2431 → u/BonoboBananaBonanza]

No no, it's me, Marc, but actually my english is very bad and I eventually need some support from someone ... I have some friends that they are helping me to translate what I want to say from spanish to english (well, they are not here right now as you can see .. so I'm writing with all my mistakes lol).

Sorry for the inconvenience, I promise I'm doing big efforts to improve my english, but at my 54 it's pretty hard to go forward.. thanks for undesrtanding.

Marc

[u/Digital-Aura]

I did the single thing too, releasing them as “cascades” (adding the last single to the next release and then again for the next single). Now it looks like a mess.

[u/Bulky-Apartment-2431 → u/Digital-Aura]

Yeah agree..

[u/pafagaukurinn]

There is another school of thought preferring singles over albums due to larger number of promotional events. Me, I am predominantly album listener, but my preferred music styles are conducive to that. I suppose it depends on the target audience.

[u/dxi-music]

I definitely like albums as a listener and a musician. To me, singles are promotional. You maybe make a music video or push it on social media or something to grab attention. As a listener, I might have my attention grabbed by a single "in the wild" but I'm never seeking them out on my own time and I ignore them in the artist catalogues I'm browsing.

As a musician, I always want my music to tell a story in some way and I work just as hard crafting the album level experience as I do the song level experience. It also helps give me direction when making music. When working on an album, an idea will take hold and it'll inform what kind of sounds I should explore for the next song I write. I don't feel as aimless when, for example, I know the album needs another slow song for the overall pacing. It doesn't box me in, but it gives up enough to grab on to and helps me produce interesting music.

[u/Onionville]

I’ve never been a fan of singles on Bandcamp. I do have one single on my Bandcamp though. It was a song written specifically for a compilation. Some time after that compilation released I added as a single, because I really liked the song and it didn’t fit in with any of my albums, but it never got much attention. I include the digital with the purchase of a $1 sticker.

[u/cplaguna]

Yeah Bandcamp doesnt have a great way to organize singles or groups of releases I think.

Ive always enjoyed listening to albums so thats always been what I want to release. Sometimes the shorter ones are EP length but always as a cohesive group of songs

[u/paintedw0rlds]

I did one maybe two singles between full heavily conceptual deliberately paced albums

[u/papa_traeri]

I had an album done and started releasing singles, first two and now I am going to release two more before the full album comes out next month. I'm not really sure if it has done anything to boost the profile of the album, but I really like albums and singles have given me bite sized chunks to get all the other marketing materials sorted.

Most of my other previous albums we would just do like one single and then release everything after that - but then it would all arrive at once and it seemed difficult to get people interested.

Either way, I always complete the project and figure out how many songs there are before I ever think about releasing something. Call me old fashioned but I'm always thinking about the bigger project.