How To Make an EP: A Guide for Musicians

EPs help you release a handful of tracks and build buzz around your music, without committing to crafting an extensive - and expensive - album campaign. We’re here to break down EPs and guide you through building, structuring and marketing your first release.

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What is an EP?

Slotting in somewhere between a single and a full album, an EP - short for extended play - typically features between 4-6 tracks and roughly runs for around 20 mins.

Due to their medium-length format, EPs provide musicians with some flexibility around what their release is going to look and sound like. Let’s take a closer look into why you should think about making an EP.

Why release an EP?

Releasing an EP is a fantastic way to promote yourself as a musician. It helps you generate streaming sales, gives you something to link out to when discussing your music and most importantly, helps you grow and develop your fanbase.

There are a few different angles you can choose to follow when planning your EP release.

Revealing your debut through an EP is a great way to announce yourself onto the scene. If you have a few songs recorded already, then this is your chance to get them out there and build hype around your songs!

As your EP will be a lot shorter than an album, you don’t need to worry about writing and recording 10 or so songs - you can just focus on nailing 4 or 5 tracks. Because of this, you’ll also be able to cut down studio time, production costs, instrument hire and every other fee that comes with creating your music.

If you’ve already released albums in the past, EPs can still help you whet fans’ appetites between releases. This type of EP can be made up of a range of different song types, from unreleased tracks to already recorded B-side tracks or remixes of your songs which didn’t quite make the cut on your last album.

Releasing EPs in between albums helps buy you time as well as showing fans that you’re still active and in the studio, boosting excitement and providing you with new material to share out via your music social media campaigns.

Due to the flexibility of an EP, you’re able to apply full creative freedom to your mini-album. Think of your release as a place to experiment - even adding in any remixes or live versions of your tracks that you may already have recorded. Providing something a little bit different can really help make your EP stand out from the crowd.

Post-release, check out reviews and social media and listen to what your audience is saying.There might be a particular song or sound that they like - so try and gear your future releases to what’s going down well with your fans.

How to build an EP

1. Pick the right tracks

With your EP being between 4 and 6 tracks long, you’ll need to take some time to carefully determine which songs are going to make the cut. Are you going to keep the same sound across all tracks or include a range of sounds? Analyse things and ensure that your EP flows smoothly throughout.

When uploading to Ditto, we’ll automatically format your tracks as an EP if it’s between 4 and 6 songs.

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Just follow our guidelines in our Release Builder to upload your EP and get your music sent out to all of the world’s major stores!

2. Structure

Consider structuring your EP around 1 song in particular. With the recent consumer shift towards cherry-picking and streaming playlists over albums, think about which of your songs have that big playlist feel to them.

That one big track can drive listeners to the full EP - and more importantly to your full catalogue and social profiles. Think about applying a waterfall strategy to your release to capitalise on this.

A waterfall strategy is based around releasing a new single every 3 - 4 weeks, just as the previous single is at its peak or just starting to decline, to maintain an audience and create an eventual EP over time.

Dublin-based Inhaler have utilised this strategy to great effect throughout their career.

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How to record an EP

After you’ve decided on your tracklist and order, you’ll want to turn your attention to the actual recording of your EP. Here are a few tips that will help you get the most out of your release.

1. Practice

It might sound obvious, but it’s always surprising how many new bands don’t take practice sessions seriously enough in the lead up to their recording sessions. To get the best sound, each band member needs to know their individual parts inside out.

Understanding your own sections as well as knowing what your band members are also playing is vital to crafting your music’s sound, so take your practice sessions seriously!

2. Tempo and timing

Before you head in to record, we’d recommend taking some time to figure out your timing and tempo. This normally takes place during practice, but often goes overlooked.

Think about rehearsing with a metronome. This will help things run smoothly when you come to work with sound engineers, as having your BPM to hand as well as any tempo or metre changes will save a lot of time on the day. Playing to a metronome is particularly important to drummers, so try and add this habit to your list of drumming techniques.

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3. Record a Demo  

Recording a rough demo of your EP before heading into the recording studio can help you identify any rough patches that you think need tweaking on the final version. Listen back to things and make note of what you like and especially, what you don’t like.

You’ll still have time to explore things in the studio, but having a demo ready to reference again helps save you time and get more out of your recording experience. Plus, you might also be able to add a demo version of one of your tracks onto the EP to give fans something extra.

4. Set your Budget

Agreeing all things financial with your band will make recording your EP so much easier. Get together and decide where you want to spend your money and agree on how much studio time you want to book in.

Also take marketing and promotional costs into account, and whether you need any instrument hire or session musicians to help record your EP.

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As with any release, you need to ensure that every song you’re putting out is as good as it can be. Even though an EP doesn’t require quite as much time, money or overall effort as a full album launch, you’ll still need to ensure you’re releasing a high quality set of tracks.

This is particularly important if this is your first release. Your EP will set the tone of things and give fans a taste of what they can expect from you later down the road, so book in that studio time and get all your tracks sounding sharp for release.

How to promote an EP

Releasing an EP provides you with another opportunity to market and promote your music. This can include carrying out ad campaigns based around your upcoming release, as well as promoting new merch to accompany your latest artwork.

Having eye-catching album artwork on your EP is a great way to boost sales of your music - especially if you are planning to release your music on CD and vinyl.

The resurgence of vinyl has been massive over the past few years, with collectors now often more interested in limited edition or attention grabbing artwork rather than the music itself. Keep this in mind when creating yours and really make your EP stand out in Spotify playlists or on the shelves!

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An EP provides you with a lot of new content to share out to your fans via your socials and music-related Discord forums. You can focus posts around each track on the EP, linking your audience to streaming sites and stores.

While launching singles is an effective way of releasing one song, putting out an EP is a really strong step in an emerging and independent artist’s career.

It doesn’t require the attention span of an album or recording costs, but lets you gain vital experience around what is required in a successful full album release.

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