Streaming playlists don’t have B-sides. Neither do digital albums in any meaningful sense. Sure, there are “deep cuts” and “bonus tracks,” but that’s not the same thing. A proper B-side exists in conversation with its A-side – it’s what the artist chose not to make the main event but still thought was worth hearing. That curatorial choice matters, and vinyl’s the only format where it still functions the way it was meant to.

I’ve been thinking about this because I’ve been digging through a stack of Australian indie singles from the 90s and early 2000s. The A-sides are what you’d expect – polished, radio-ready, designed to sell. But the B-sides are where the interesting stuff lives. Cover versions, acoustic takes, experimental noise tracks, drunken in-jokes that somehow got pressed to wax. The stuff that defines a band’s personality more than their hit song ever could.

What Made B-Sides Work

The economics of vinyl singles created space for B-sides. You’re pressing a 7-inch. You’ve got two sides. You need to put something on the flip. Early on, labels just pressed instrumental versions or threw on filler. But artists figured out this was real estate they controlled. Radio wouldn’t play it. The label cared less about it. You could do whatever you wanted.

So B-sides became the experimental zone. You could cover a song that influenced you. You could record a live version that had more energy than the studio take. You could put out the weird track that didn’t fit the album’s vibe but still deserved to exist. Some of the best songs by major artists never made albums – they were B-sides on singles that only serious fans bought.

The discovery factor mattered too. You’d buy a single for the A-side because you heard it on the radio. Then you’d get home, flip it over, and find something completely unexpected. Sometimes it was garbage, but sometimes it was brilliant. That element of surprise – the artist’s secret offering to people who actually bought the record – created a different relationship than just consuming the hits.

Digital eliminated all of this. There’s no “flip side” to a streaming track. Bonus tracks get dumped at the end of albums with no context. Rarities and covers get scattered across EPs or compilation albums. The curation’s gone. Everything’s just content in a database, organized by algorithm rather than artistic intent.

Australian B-Sides That Mattered

Some examples from the Spank Records back catalogue that illustrate what I’m talking about.

The Go-Betweens put “Cattle and Cane” on the B-side of “I Need Two Heads” in 1980. “Cattle and Cane” became one of their most beloved songs, arguably more important than the A-side. It wouldn’t exist if they hadn’t had B-side space to put it. According to interviews at the time, it was too different from their punk sound for the album, but perfect for a B-side experiment.

The Triffids’ “Wide Open Road” single from 1986 had “Time of Weakness” on the flip. Completely different tone, rawer, more vulnerable. It showed a side of the band that the polished A-side couldn’t capture. If you only knew “Wide Open Road,” you knew The Triffids as anthemic outback rock. The B-side revealed the melancholy underneath.

More recently, Courtney Barnett’s been good about treating B-sides seriously. Her single releases from 2013-2015 all had carefully chosen flip sides – covers, alternate versions, tracks that didn’t fit albums but expanded the conversation about what she was doing musically. She gets it.

The Modern Problem

Artists today who want to release music have two basic paths: streaming or physical. Streaming doesn’t accommodate B-sides. You can release singles one at a time, but there’s no “flip side.” You can put out an EP, but that’s not the same – EPs are collections, not curated A/B pairings.

Physical vinyl could maintain the B-side tradition, and some artists try. But the economics are different now. Pressing a single costs more relative to expected sales than it did in the 90s. Most artists don’t bother with vinyl singles – they go straight to albums or EPs. When singles do get pressed, they’re often just the A-side with an etching or a locked groove on the B-side, which is aesthetically interesting but musically empty.

The artists who do proper B-sides in 2026 tend to be either older acts who remember why it matters, or younger artists deliberately working in retro formats. There’s a small Melbourne label, Hobbies Galore, that only releases 7-inch singles with genuine B-sides. Every release is a band’s chosen A-side paired with whatever they want on the flip. It’s a niche operation but it’s preserving something valuable.

What Gets Lost

When B-sides disappear, artists lose a space to experiment without stakes. Albums are expensive to record and risky to release. Every track needs to justify its place. B-sides were throwaway in the best sense – you could try something that might fail, and if it did, who cares, it’s just a B-side. Some of the most innovative music came from that freedom.

Fans lose the discovery experience. Part of building a deep relationship with an artist is hearing their full range – the hits, the deep cuts, the weird experiments, the covers that show their influences. B-sides revealed context that made the main work more interesting. Without them, you get a flatter, more curated version of the artist.

Cover versions especially suffer. B-sides were where you’d find amazing covers – punk bands doing country songs, folk artists covering metal, garage bands doing tender ballads. These revealed artistic lineage and sense of humor. They’re not gone entirely – artists still cover songs – but they don’t have a natural home anymore. They end up as random YouTube videos or forgotten Spotify singles instead of permanent parts of the catalogue.

Why Vinyl Keeps It Alive

A 7-inch single still has two sides. That basic physical fact preserves the possibility of B-sides. If you’re pressing vinyl singles, you’re forced to think about what goes on the flip. Some artists waste that space, but others use it well.

LP albums have B-sides too in a different sense – the literal second side of the record. Artists who think about vinyl sequencing often treat Side B differently than Side A. Side A’s the introduction, the statement, the hits. Side B’s where you take risks, slow down, get weird. You can hear this in how classic albums are structured.

The physicality reinforces intentionality. When you press a song to vinyl, you’re making a permanent object. That encourages curation. You think harder about what deserves to be on the flip side of your single because it’s going to exist in someone’s collection for decades. Digital releases feel more disposable, so the choices get less thoughtful.

What Should Happen

Labels and artists who care about this should keep pressing singles with real B-sides. It’s not commercially optimal – you’ll sell a few hundred copies if you’re lucky. But culturally it maintains a tradition worth preserving. The artists who do this consistently build deeper fan relationships because they’re offering something beyond algorithm-friendly content.

Streaming platforms could create B-side functionality. Let artists designate a pairing – this song is the A-side, this one’s the B-side, they’re meant to be heard together. Display them that way in the interface. It wouldn’t have the same physical impact but it’d at least preserve the curatorial intent.

Vinyl reissues should include original B-sides rather than just the hit singles. When labels repress classic singles, they often just do the A-side or compile everything into a “best of” that strips away the original context. Reissue the singles as they were, B-sides included, so people can hear how the artist originally presented them.

The Bigger Picture

The B-side question is part of a larger shift in how music gets released and consumed. Streaming optimizes for individual tracks and algorithmic playlists. Vinyl optimizes for curated listening experiences. Both have value, but they privilege different things.

B-sides represented curatorial judgment – the artist saying “these two songs belong together for reasons that might not be immediately obvious.” That judgment’s what separates art from content. Content is optimized for engagement metrics. Art is shaped by intent, including the intent to experiment, to fail, to offer something unexpected.

Vinyl preserves space for that intent. You can’t algorithm your way through a record collection. You have to engage with the artist’s choices – what they put on the A-side, what they put on the B-side, how they sequenced the album, what artwork they chose. It’s a conversation rather than a feed.

I’m not naive about this. Streaming’s not going away. Most people consume music digitally and that’s fine. But vinyl exists as an alternative that keeps certain traditions alive. The B-side is one of them. As long as artists keep pressing vinyl singles with thought-through B-sides, that tradition survives. The day it dies completely is the day music becomes fully algorithmic, and we’ll all be poorer for it.