Jump to content

User:Lectrician1/Mini album RFC

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As someone who documents KPOP discographies primarily on Wikidata, the lines are becoming more blurred every day between what mini albums are EPs and what are albums, along with the multitude of other problems incurred when assuming every mini album is an extended play.

For example, Loona just came out with a mini album called "&" that has 7 songs. YouTube Music and Apple Music categorized it as an Album because it went over the Western standard "an EP is 6 songs or less". Clearly, releases types don't matter anymore in the digital age and Koreans calling shorter albums "mini albums" is both a marketing strategy and cultural norm at this point with no bounds to actual number of songs per release.

Another reason to make a mini album release type is the current strategy of using both the "EP" and "mini album" terminology on the same article. If they "mean the same thing" (which they don't, as proven above), then one should be decided upon. Clearly, the best solution is to go with what the artist who released the release calls it, and that's always a "mini album". It's always streaming services or Western media outlets who clearly don't understand the fluid standards and definitions of the global music industry and are messing up the naming scheme.

We can solve this multitude of issues by creating a mini album release type and using it as the sole term when describing releases of the type.

What this means:

  • Article names that use "(EP)" in them to distinguish need to be changed to "(mini album)". Other Wikis already do this, but the EN does not. EN can lead the way and establish a scheme that can actually be followed.
  • EP discographies will need to be changed to mini album discographies. This actually works really well because releases are often officially named by their chronology by mini albums. For example "Taste of Love: The 10th mini album".
  • A dedicated mini album article should be created.

Thoughts?