Tips for an Ep? (Page 1 of 5)

Make sure the songs are good.

I don't think he was being facetious, if it is your first EP the main thing which is going to influence peoples opinions of it, unless you get very lucky of course, is how good it is. If I were you I would write all your tracks, find people to give you constructive criticism and don't release the EP until you are damn sure it is very good. Once you think it is release worthy, wait a couple of weeks without listening to it then see how you feel about it.

If you don;t get the quality bar high then all the subsequent stuff like promotion and layout isn't really that important, especially bearing in mind, with all due respect, you aren't very well known.

Partially was. But mostly everything else you said.
There are really 3 approaches to releasing music.
1. Release 50 EPs in your first year and be ignored until at some point you reach a crossover of someone listens and it's good.
2. Become well known from forum interactions/individual tracks and people beg you to release an EP.
3. Work really hard on quality control and come out with something amazing first time around.

Last edited by godinpants (May 10, 2012 12:00 pm)

Oh yeah I mean "art is never finished only abandoned" and all that, one has to draw a line under a song and move on at some point. That is why I said "very good" not "as good as Trash80" or nobody would release anything.

be really into it yourself, make sure you know it is good, show your passion, pour yourself into this

make it something more than just the music, make it a piece, the image the sound, your bandcamp layout, your aura

honestly, promotion isn't going to work if you have no one to promote it to in the first place. make yourself an audience before you release something like this. (idk maybe you do have an audience, maybe you dont even care)

something else to note would be that 8bc doesn't exist anymore. the likes system on there made it easy for people to become known (even if they shouldn't have been) no offence chipmusic.org but it's really not so much a focus on here, you only listen to the artists you have heard before. i guess what i am trying to say is that, it will be hard to become known w/o 8bc. no one is going to catch you on the face of this website. you have no display of popularity.

oh and post it on reddit

Last edited by Je Mappelle (May 10, 2012 1:09 pm)

Reddit is a good idea!

Wow some great advice in here, thank you everyone. Posting on reddit is a good idea. Je Mappelle, yeah since 8bc closed, I've been using soundcloud to spread my music and build a base.

I think maybe I came off as not putting the music first in my post but that is not the case. It's true that I'm not as serious about people caring about this EP but that doesn't mean I don't want the music to be right. I could care less about the money or the art or even how many people download it for free, as long as the ones who do enjoy what they hear.

And I hope it didn't sound like I was just just going to release one tomorrow or something. This is a long process and I'm very nitpicky and kind of a perfectionist.  I just wanted any advice I could, and you guys stepped up. I was planning on posting in the constructive criticism forum.

Another question: how many songs would you recommend? I've been building up songs for this for a while and I need to start weeding some out.

If you're talking about me, I was being sarcastic.