Formats, the public, B-sides and YOU!

7" vinyl sales are up this year on last too

Personally I've never been too keen on the "EP", it's usually a mark used to signify "single with non-shit b-sides", and it's often wrong. And more often than not it leaves me wanting a few more tracks to get a better feel for the act. I do like the idea of 6-8 track mini album:- From the perspective of putting them together yourself you've got a little room to play with and you can structure things with a bit more freedom.

The 2trackandquid singles are fine enough, it'll mostly be done by major label/quasi-major label artists who are more about the zeitgeist-catching radiosong than the depth of interesting B-sides. I imagine most people are picking up the Darkness single for the A and not in the hope of finding a sensitive acoustic song written by the bass player about his nan's plastic hip on the flipside.

Slimmed down albums . . . fine. As long as there's still some indulgence for the album-as-album. Most jobbing "get the product OUT! so as I may gig and lig" acts could benefit from a little trimming.

More than anything I think it'd all be a good little shake-up. It'll be a lot easier for new, young acts when they're not using the same formats that have been around for a long while, deshackling them from the weight of history, as it were.

Actually, to further that effect we probably need new names for them too.

Bought a cheap copy of Sticky fingers £2.

No-one would get away with an album that short nowadays. But that's as long as it should be..

All are at least 50 mins, pretty much.

Proposed Format list:

2 track single
DVD single
mini ep
CD Album
DVD longform with bonusses.

oh yeah....
7"
LP

Discont...
Cassette
Minidisc

GOOD THING. i'd like to see singles "released from albums" eradicated entirely. all releases should STAND ALONE. i feel VERY VERY STRONGLY about this.

not much chance of that happening, as 99% of singles are just promos for the album they come from anyway

Hmm. It could happen tho.

2 track single number four from the album. No-one bothers...

hmm. dunno.

i realise it's an unlikely scenario but some bands do do this already. and i applaud their efforts. and i'm also not saying they shouldn't feel free to compile the tracks later. BUT ONLY IF THERE'S NOT JUST ONE UNRELEASED TRACK FUx0rs!!!!

Agreed.

That brings to mind one time, Amber and Alice found a cassette with a donkey made of straw on it and begged me to put it on. I tried to say "umm I dunno if you'd like it" but they insisted, and heck if they didn't bounce around like nutters to Glam Rock Cops etc..

I thought the Buzzcocks had it right. One single off album tops...