Since the rules of the site were updated to allow for streaming-only releases in big platforms to be added to the site as valid releases, I have found something that, in my opinion, could become a bit of an issue.
Labels tend to release various singles before the release of a full album, and as they release them they make it so the new single release also includes previous singles, so you end up with what would be releases with 4 tracks which include the latest single and all the previous ones. Here's an example:
Korpiklaani - LeväluhtaKorpiklaani - MyllyKorpiklaani - Sanaton maaKorpiklaani - NiemiIn this case, the digital singles were deleted from digital platforms after the release of the album, but this is not the case with all of them. I'll just make another example, and I know that Rise Against aren't a metal band but it's the first one that came to mind:
Broken Dreams, IncNowhere GenerationThe NumbersTalking to OurselvesTheir album was released shortly after the last single but the singles are all available still. Again, it's just an example, and there are a lot of similar cases from metal bands that I've seen, I just can't remember any specific one at the moment.
What I find as an issue here is that these releases are cumulative singles that can go up to 4 or even more songs in one release, so I don't know is there's a line to be drawn at which they stop being singles and rather become EPs. Also, as with Korpiklaani, they can get deleted and once they're gone it's practically as if they never existed, because unlike Bandcamp digital releases that are deleted, these ones were streaming-only and they could never have been bought/downloaded and kept.
I don't know, maybe I'm seeing an issue where there's not one, but I feel like these releases could prove problematic in the long run; how can we be sure that we have the entire discography of a band in the archives when some of these releases might have been available for sometime and then all proof of their existence was practically erased?
So what are the mods' thoughts on this?