Having looked at the style guide for release groups, there isn’t a clear cut answer as to whether this is the case. There’s two albums in question I’m wondering, both are slightly different.
For The Plot in You by The Plot in You, the album consists of 3 EPs, all in order, with some additional tracks (that likely would have become the 4th EP anyway).
For CHRONICLES by Void of Vision, the album consists of 3 EPs, with no additional tracks, however the order does differ from the original album.
What would you consider these two release groups to be, both compilations, both normal albums, or one of each?
An example album which was released in stages as EPs and Singles with the final Album then appearing with all of these plus some new. Eight of the Thirteen tracks were earlier released as on EPs.
Artist clearly called that a “new album”, but digital shops had been putting out various EPs of this in the run up to the main album release. As a good percentage of tracks were new to the album I’d call this an album.
You also see plenty of albums that get separate singles released in the run up to the main release. Digital Media makes this too easy to do.
Personally I would look on the Artist’s own website and see what THEY call it. Are they treating it as a new album to sit alongside their previous albums? Were the EPs being released as a promo for the soon to come album? With common branding\looks?
Or were the EPs released far apart from each other and then collected together for the new release?
Yeah the intent from what I’ve seen is that they’re not a compilation. The only thing is that usually when something is intended to be a compilation, it’s a mix of songs from various releases, not a final release of a series of EPs like these two.
If I (wasn’t a MusicBrainz user and) decided to release multiple EPs (instead of singles) in the lead up to an album and then people said it wasn’t/couldn’t be an “album” because of that, I would be quite confused. To be fair, it’s unlikely that person would ever find out so it doesn’t really matter, I guess
Depends on context I think though – in the first example from the original post, all the EPs were released two years before the album, and they are obviously a series (named Vol 1–3). It’s not clear that they were ever intended to be leading up to an album, so much as the album length release is just a convenient way of re-issuing them in one package. I know a few cases like this, and the artist didn’t market the re-issue as “our new album”, and doesn’t include it as an album in their main discography. Of course if they do make it explicit that they consider the release as equivalent to a regular studio album, then artist intent applies, but if they don’t really say anything one way or the other I would assume it is a reissue compilation of the EPs.
The second example from the OP is a bit different because of the changed running order and the fact that the release dates of the EPs do seem to lead directly up to the album-length release. Without being more familiar with the artist and what they said about the releases, I don’t really know.
This doesn’t look like a compilation of previously released EPs to me, but rather like a major album release. The Plot In You – Fearless Records → “The Volume series concludes July 10” (the release includes 3 new songs that complete the album)
I would consider both examples to be album releases.
I don’t think this can be answered generally, it depends on the intent. An artist releasing EPs in the leadup to an album is not any different than the traditional pre-album singles, but there are also releases where it’s clearly meant as a collection of previous EPs.
Should have looked closer at this specific case: that swings it for me. (I think though that because nobody is disagreeing that artist intent takes priority, the question is more about what to do in other cases where no clear intent is indicated. The length of time between the release of the EPs and the album-length release seems at least relevant, although there will probably always be a bunch of competing factors.)
(I think though that because nobody is disagreeing that artist intent takes priority, the question is more about what to do in other cases where no clear intent is indicated. The length of time between the release of the EPs and the album-length release seems at least relevant, although there will probably always be a bunch of competing factors.)