When creating an album you put you're best songs first?

[OreoSplitter]

So I've got 9 song done. I would say 5 of them I a, really happy with and the rest is filler. Not bad, not great, but good enough to release. None of them sounds like filler. Just some I am more proud of then others. I have a few of the "good" tracks as the first tracks heard since I figure you want people to to become hooked to the music to want to listen to more. From there the songs are ordered by feel. A mix between drum beat and tempo to decide what is more closely related to what so it flows. So the short version is I have a chunk of them at the start and a few others spread out.

How do you order your song for an album?

[fluffy_little_something]

Does that even matter in times of mp3 download sites?
It was important with cassettes I think.

[chk071]

Good question. I never really knew how an album's tracks are sorted. But, indeed, most of the times, the better tracks seem to be the first ones. I think it is about what fits together also, and, obviously, some concept albums are planned in terms of track order too. Considering all that, i would say there is no rule, and that it is purely a artist decision. Which doesn't help you at all in this case, i guess.

[BertKoor]

You don't want the flow of an album to go downhill. Otherwise people will stop after the second track.

First a good one, then The Hit, a filler and more good stuff.

[fluffy_little_something]

I think fillers are less acceptable today than they used to be when one had to buy an entire disc or cassette. With many albums one was already happy when every other song was good.

On vinyl records, denser songs requiring better audio quality were usually the first tracks on both sides, while less dense and demanding ballads were often the last tracks.

[dark water]

If you're making an album (and there are various arguments for/against the value of this concept nowadays, as suggested by fluffy above), then imho you want to think of the flow of the album from track to track in a way that best suggests an overall cohesive theme.
More practically, you would also benefit from making sure that the key in which one track starts co-operates well with the key of the track that just finished. For example, the Beatles would often have one track start a fifth up from the key in which the previous track ended. (This is even more useful if you're looking to mix / extend one track into another).

[foosnark]

Unless you have a contract with a deadline or some other need to crank an album out quickly, if you have filler, why not hold it back and do something else instead?

Anyway, I think the first track should be attention-getting but not necessarily the best one. It's not quite the same as the rule for writing novels -- you can build slowly -- but it can't be boring.

[ghettosynth]

I'd put the one that sounds most like Friday Friday first, that shit was a runaway hit and you want be at least as popular as Rebecca Black.

[an-electric-heart]

I normally put the three or so tracks that most sum up "the album's sound" first, most of my songs are loud energetic songs, but I always do a couple of mellow ones, so normally the mellow ones go in the middle to act as a break, and at the end as a "cool down". My last album had two songs that I didn't think were that great, so yeah, they went towards the end, the rest just kind of fall into place... but really, it's subjective, you can do whatever you want.

[AsPeeXXXVIII]

I generally order them in a way that makes sense contextually. Whatever sounds like the perfect opening track comes first, and the perfect closing track comes last. When it comes to the "middle" section, I like to order the tracks in a way so as to have a "transition" of sorts going. That's about it.

[Numanoid]

When vinyl/cassettes ruled the world, everybody put their best song as the first on side 2.

[jancivil]

I don't make things of very differing quality like that. That kind of reminds me of when albums were the single plus mostly filler. I don't buy albums expecting any of it to be weaker than the rest either.
I'm a composer, the ordering of things in an 'album' or anything is the composition.