Many of you might already be familiar with the concept of waterfall releases, IMO one of the most horrible “innovations” in the streaming-first approach to music. This is the situation when rather than releasing a bunch of standalone singles and then potentially an EP or album, the artist puts out first a 1-track single, then a 2-track single (including the first song), then a 3-track single (including the first two songs), etc., potentially ending up with things like a 10 or 15 track “single” where the only new song is the first one in the release, until the last song is added, they are finally done and the whole set is released as an album or EP.
This leads to many issues which confuse people and make it clear we need to document this model properly and probably have specific guidelines for it:
A fair amount of people don’t know this is a thing at all, so they don’t know even to look for it. It’s also not trivial to explain.
It’s unclear whether these releases should each be in a separate release group, or be considered as all the same thing. At least in one case it seems like the label people thought of it as just “the album” which they were expecting to update with extra tracks.
Assuming we put each in a separate release group (which probably makes sense in my opinion), it is unclear what types to set on the release groups:
On one hand, they are mostly all meant as “singles”, at least until the time the last track makes the last one an “album” or whatnot.
On the other hand, platforms often just call them EP or Album as they grow, so unless the editor knows about waterfall strategy and is sure the release is part of one, they are likely to just follow the platform and set them as EP or Album.
Additionally, although probably a secondary worry, a 14 track “single” with 14 different tracks rather than versions of the same track or two is super confusing as a concept.
An additional source of confusion is that sometimes these singles have all the same cover art (that of the album, in many cases). In other cases, each gets a new cover art for the “new track” in the single.
Finally, it seems that in some cases, the new songs are released as a waterfall single in Spotify, but as a “normal single” without additional tracks in other platforms. These are I expect clearly different releases, but I imagine they should still share a release group, right?
Basically, for now I’m just looking for people’s opinions on the whole thing. How have you dealt with waterfall releases? What can we do to make them less confusing? Do we need any extra ways to indicate them? (RG types, release status, a checkbox on releases saying they are a waterfall single…). Should they all be just linked as “single from” to the final album? Should they be linked in order to the previous one as “X is a waterfall single that follows Y”?
I hate it but I think waterfall singles/releases should be singles in our database schema.
I have missed that something is a waterfall single in the past, and put them in with the album or EP or whatever, and then had to split them out again because it got confusing/there’s an actual single on Bandcamp or something (yes, I would put these together).
Even when it’s a bunch of tracks the artist/label intent with waterfall is to release ‘a single’ (in my experience), and any user thinking “ooh a new album/EP from my favorite band” will be annoyed when the actual album or EP comes out a week later.
Stupid and annoying (I guess not really stupid on behalf of the artist, since it gets them more plays on their previous singles rather than auto-playing to a song by a different artist, which equals better algorithm and more playtime/money, but stupid overall)
I’ve seen similar done on Bandcamp a couple times, where an artist will simply add songs to an album as they’re completed, like Catch These Hooves (called a WIP album on the Bandcamp page) or all three Super Ponybeat albums
I’ve personally just conceptualized these as one release group in the past (tho I haven’t actually gone into the Wayback and entered the Ponybeat albums this way yet), with withdrawn releases for previous versions of the release, tho I could see the argument for these to be singles (tho the former is prolly easier to see with these Bandcamp examples, as the release title doesn’t change)
this is true, I mostly wanted to note this is not the first time we’ve had something similar done (tho in my examples, it’s probably less a marketing decision and more an easy way to release an album by an independent artist)
Different album art seems like a sane delineation.
The implementation can be iffy, but I see two paths forward.
Option A - Separated If the cover art is the same:
Albums get cover art & their own Album Release Group.
Singles do not get cover art, but do get their own Single Release Group.
If the cover art is different:
As above, Singles get their own Single Release Group, but can have cover art uploaded if it is not duplicative of the Album.
+ Pro(s): Keeps the status quo of separating types.
- Con(s): Would likely need some kind of constraint, or more language guiding users on when not to upload a cover. Could also become confusing when it isn’t initially clear that this is going to be a “waterfall” release until weeks later.
Option B - Unified If the cover art is the same
Place all releases in the same Album release group.
If the cover art is different
Place all releases in the same Album release group but do not upload duplicative cover art for the “Singles”.
I recently edited such a Bandcamp “waterfall release” (didn’t know, there was a name for it, thanks).
In this case, I decided to put everything into one release and document the stages in an annotation. The tracks were not meant to be singles as they are part of an continuing live show and not available on other streaming platforms (neither as singles, nor stages, nor the entire release). And I’ve put it together with the edited final version in one release group, although this release had one additional track and most of the introductory words removed. But it’s the same live show and has a very similar title.
I’m not entirely happy with the release date, although the true release dates are only recorded by editors and are not printed anywhere else. The show was recorded 20 years ago, so I found it acceptable.
In other cases, however, I certainly wouldn’t decide that way.
I’d likely document it like @ernstlx has. If the album is growing at a rate of one track per week then ultimately it ends up being an album.
What I am curious about is - if you bought this album when there were only three tracks. And you return later to download it and it now has 14 tracks, do you now own the full 14 track version? Or only three tracks?
I’d look at this as “what is in my collection?”. If I bought a three album track, but now it has expanded to fourteen tracks, then I’ll only keep one album. The 14 track version. I’d dump that original three track zip now it has been upgraded.
This is why I’d see one release. At the very least just one release group.
It is an album with a “drip drip drip” release method, but ultimately you end up with an album.
You don’t have to by this album, but to subscribe to the “Full Moon Club”. You will then be entitled to download all parts of the album and all future subscription-only releases.
One example I recall is a case of the four album singles being released waterfall style, using the album artwork. I created the releases in four separate single RGs, each connected with “single from” RG-RG relationship to the album. I haven’t dealt personally with a case where every album track is released week by week, just where every track is published as a single on the date of album release. I hate to split more hairs, but I think the idea of ‘the four album singles being released waterfall style’ and ‘the album being released track by track’ might be different cases. I could see an argument that these be grouped together, especially because it could make the artist overview tab more like the recordings tab over time. But generally, they should be separate singles.
Currently, I don’t see the need for additional indications on release status or RG types. I think the main reason artists do this is so DSPs play more of their music (and their other recent singles) when people don’t intervene after the song ends. It seems a bit unbalanced for us to “highlight” this relationship with RG-RG relationships, when the artist intent evidence is unclear about their relationship. Editors may want to link ordinary singles in order using this rel, which as far as I know isn’t currently possible, and wonder why we can only order them if they were released “waterfall style’“.
For me: They are separate single RGs (except in unique cases of an entire album released track by track, akin to a stretched out listening party - maybe that’s an album). They should have RG-RG rel “is a single/EP from” the album. They shouldn’t be linked to each other by database rel. Maybe it’s useful for the annotation? But if you open the single groups/releases linked to the album, it should be pretty clear by release dates and tracklists what occurred.
I’ve always added these based on artist intent. Usually an artist will post these on social media as singles for an upcoming album/EP. The worst I’ve seen is 7 singles released as a waterfall, but they were always intended to be singles and the track count is just from how many singles get pushed nowadays. Intent was still a single, not an EP.
I’ve even seen cases where some streaming services (almost always includes Spotify) will have the single as a waterfall single, yet others (Tidal is the most common from my experience) will have the single as just the single track. For these, same RG but separate releases to show the difference is what I’d do.
For the Bandcamp examples, when I’ve seen that, it’s usually on a page for an album with just certain tracks available, and that would always be an album to me. The individual songs in that state wouldn’t qualify as a single in my opinion, but usually they’ll still be released as a single on DSPs. Apple Music will also sometimes list upcoming albums in this same way and still have the singles separate.
For the linking part, I’d agree that they should just be linked to the album/EP the singles are coming from. The first single isn’t a single from the second/third one released as a waterfall, it’s a single from the album/EP.
Edit: I’ll also mention that under the docs for RG Primary Types, we do say:
EP is fairly difficult to define; usually it should only be assumed that a release is an EP if the artist defines it as such.
It’s not a style guideline yet, but that’s the advice already given, and would exclude waterfall singles as being EPs if it became a style guideline (which I’d be in favour of).
On Spotify, they often turn what is a one‑track single on every other service into a two‑track release by placing the new song as track 1 and the older single as track 2. Because of that pattern, I’ve always grouped those Spotify versions with the release group for the original one‑track single. It just made the most sense, since the ‘extra’ track is really just the previous single carried forward.
A bit of clarification: Bandcamp releases where people add tracks as they go, as @ernstlx describes, are not relevant to a discussion about ‘waterfall singles’, which is very specific to Spotify and similar streaming services. Even though it sounds similar. Waterfall singles are much more annoying
For what it’s worth, my suggestion of a potential new relationship would be a release-to-release rel to link waterfall singles together, rather than a RG-to-RG one (since as we have seen, the same single could have two releases in the same RG, one waterfall and one single-track). The idea would just be to have a way to show “Z includes Y which includes X which includes…”
And yeah, the Bandcamp case I thought was more or less “solved” as “withdrawn old version, official new version with the new track(s) in the same RG”, although I’m happy to have that documented more officially as part of some “digital weirdness” guideline together with waterfall and whatever else people come up with next (if we want to discuss that further, we can do it as a second thread).
Four singles from an album is natural. And agree with how you did that. I’ve done the same before. That is four single RGs and an album RG.
I had one release that I had pre-ordered the album on CD. Over the weeks they released four singles, one a week. During this time, Spotify had each track appearing as a single. And on the album page the tracks were lighting up one by one within the album running order. As well as them being separate singles.
The reason I remember this one clearly is one of the singles ended up being a different length version to that track on the CD. And yet Spotify (and the other digital stores) used the Single version in their album track list. Right down to the alternate ISRC.
With this release, it was pretty clear that it is an album and four singles as not the whole album was released.
I assume a definition of a Waterfall release would need to say “the whole album”? But I don’t see why this is much different to the above Spotify album. Where tracks grew slowly on an album page. I guess it is just me. I don’t really see the to need to say something was a different “album” when they are a few weeks into a promotional release waterfall. Their ultimate aim is the final album. And I expect their discography in years to come will just name the completed album.
Is the owner of this really going to say one day “Oh, I’ll just play the 4 track version of the album” and dedicated separate hard disk space for it?
To clarify: as per my example on the first post, this is not one album where the tracks start appearing. These are all different releases with different identifiers and sometimes different cover art. It doesn’t have to be the whole album, indeed sometimes it’s just the promo singles; the main difference is each single also includes all previous single tracks in it.
