[ledaero]

It's long been a rule on this website that EPs are not considered albums in the same way that LPs are. There's the strict rule that an album can only be added if: 1) It contains more than 4 tracks, or 2) Is at least 20 minutes in length. But it seems with each passing year, especially in the era of widespread digital streaming platforms, many artists are releasing LPs less and instead releasing consistent EPs and mixtapes that never amount to an LP. The songs are meant just for those small albums, and they often don't become tracks on LPs. As I've noticed this being a more consistent circumstance, it's made me question the rule of not allowing EPs to be in charts. It's keeping a sufficient number of artists/tracks/art out of the database, and it seems unfair to restrict them from the site. I know I would like to rank and organize some music from EPs for myself.

Does anyone else feel similarly? I'd like to open a discussion regarding the restriction of said albums and whether or not the restriction should continue.

[albummaster]

This is an album site QED. I understand the desire to add other types of release but BEA has a cut-off because it's an album site.

[ledaero]

Right, but the conversation I’d like to open up is that it seems the definition of an album and its function as a collection of released songs seems to be changing rapidly. So many artists just aren’t sticking to the traditional LP format. Even mainstream albums from this year like Grae and Pedals For Armor were released in revolutionary manners, in essentially EP chunks. Or Kanye has discussed (and demonstrated with Pablo) that an album can now just be treated like a software with patch updates if an artist wants to change the songs. It seems looking forward that there is going to be a lot more music being released in non traditional formats, and being strict about LPs seems to be a limiting venture going forward.

It seems like there could be many solutions to the problem, like maybe allowing non-LPs into the database and creating an organizational format that distinguishes between LPs and EPs so that they aren’t categorized in the same rank system.

[baystateoftheart]

This discussion has happened a lot over the years. The good thing is that by the current parameters there are a lot of EPs that are already eligible for BEA! And all your examples are in that category. I agree that it would be useful to have an EP tag that people can sort those releases by, even though eligibility for BEA is not likely to expand beyond 5 tracks / 20 minutes.
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[albummaster]

I appreciate the arguments about technology making new types of release possible. Pablo is certainly innovative in that regard and not easy to categorise. If there was a clearer definition of what constitutes an EP, rather than interpretation, then it could become slightly more viable (we've debated this before and it always comes back to this). The album rule has always constrained the growth of site, but BEA would lose a lot of its identity if it opened the doors to EPs (and then 12" singles, and then maxi-singles because we allow 12" etc).

[baystateoftheart]

I've flagged several maxi singles lately, and none have been marked as suspect. I thought singles were not allowed regardless of length. Or has that changed? If the artist/label intent is for the release to be a single, it seems wrong for it to be part of an album site.
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[albummaster]

If the original release is long enough to qualify as an album then it would be inconsistent to apply the rules differently (especially when there are also some EPs here that are also questionable as albums). On the plus side, there's clarity around the rules which makes the site easy to administer with a tiny percentage of oddities sneaking through the net.

[baystateoftheart]