Songs released as singles on one platform, compiled with previous singles on another platform: same or separate release groups?

MusicBrainz Style
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I’ve noticed it’s popular with some artists to release a new album/ep/single every time they release a new single and just add that additional single to the previous single, calling the new album by the name of the newest single. One artist I’ve worked on released 6 albums/ep/singles this way with their song counts being (1,2,3,4,2,6) and one song appearing in all 6. Normally it’s been straightforward to add those as I just treat them as they’re labeled and they’re released that way across all platforms. However today I ran into a case where the release method is different between streaming platforms:

On Spotify today Jessie Murph released the single Drunk in the Bathtub as an album with 6 previous singles. On iTunes and Deezer she released it as a single by itself. The same thing happened with her single If I Died Last Night (Spotify, Deezer, iTunes) last month.

Would we consider the single and the album where the only new release is the new single to be the same release group? Normally I’d consider a single and an album with that single separate, but if every new song is creating a single and an album that share the same name and the only new thing is that one song, I’m not sure if they should be treated as separate release groups or not.

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ooh, that’s a mindbender…

I’d probably enter both as seperate release groups, since they’ve got very different tracklists. you can add a relation that one release group includes another, so that could be a way to connect them. I just added such a relationship between both versions of Drunk in the Bathtub as an example.

as for the release type, you could enter it as an album or this might be a compilation single… I leave that entirely up to you tho~

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That relationship looks like it could help, thanks for mentioning that.

I hadn’t thought about labeling them as compilation singles, but that’s probably the best solution to avoid putting them in the same release group but also differentiate between the two. Looking at the single definition it definitely fits this case despite Spotify labeling them as EPs or albums.

  • In the US market, a single typically has one main song and possibly a handful of additional tracks or remixes of the main track; the single is usually named after its main song; the single is primarily released to get radio play and to promote release sales.

I’d say then that the final compilation of the tracks would qualify as an album since that would be the artist’s final intended arrangement of the tracks.

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