I think it depends on the loop itself really. One contract I had was for 20 second loops for a short warioware style game with quick minigames. Looping them 4-5 times to get a proper song length just felt awkward and repetitive. That's why I started giving them intros, middle eights, and an actual ending. Even if the whole song ends up being only 1:30 long, it at least has a feeling of completedness to it. My guideline was "at least two loops of the main part, plus an intro" and if I ended up being inspired to add more, I would. Some of the final songs are quite short, but others ended up at the 2-3 minutes mark.

In the end, any way you release them is fine as long as you're happy with the end result. As long as it loops often enough to let the people enjoy the song, and not too often that it feels repetitive, you're in a good spot I think.

Thanks for the thoughts and suggestions, everyone.

n00bstar, I am glad that I am not the only one who has had this problem. I too hate the idea of fading out a song. But mostly only when it is a song style song (ie, not designed to be a seamless loop). For something like BGM in a game that was meant to loop seamlessly, I find fading out appropriate but really only because of how much NSF SPC and VGM files I listen to on the regular. I am just really worried about flow at this point for regular people.

I should probably just say to hell with regular people.

Interesting...

I'm presently compiling all the songs I made for video games in the last year and came up with a similar "problem" as a lot of them were short-ish loops. Thing is, I *hate* fading out a song. It feels like a cop out. Like... "well I didn't know how to finish my track so Imma just walk away slowly....."

So I started making "album versions" of all the tracks. I make an actual intro, outtro, add a few more things to the track and make it a real song. The main loop that's in the game is still in there though, unchanged. Kind of like if the game's version was actually a cut out of these tracks, even though the loops were the original versions.

It does add a shit ton of work though. What I thought I would be releasing last summer is just now getting finished. Phew!

I'd rather hear the loop twice even if it's long
I don't think it's important for a soundtrack album to be, like, digestible in one sitting or anything
idk if you want some ideas check out disasterpeace's monsters ate my birthday cake ost, he's done some stuff like partial loops and writing endings for tracks specially for the soundtrack

Make a special player that loops the songs till you press next. Then it will fade and start the next song.

What do you all prefer for this? Personally, I am a two loop and fade kind of guy, but if I do that for my albums, all the songs go to around 4 minutes long... That seems like too long. But one loop always annoys me if there is a part I really dig and I only get to hear it once per play.

I have been toying around with the idea of looping twice and fading out only for tracks shorter than a minute, and letting tracks over a minute just loop once then fade. But then some of the lessor tracks end up being longer then some of the main tracks.

If I double loop, my next album is like 56 minutes long. If I single loop it is 36 minutes long. What's the protocol here, I've always wondered?

Any suggestions? Anyone ever wondered this same thing?