From what I understand, they record a load of songs and release them periodically, but I’m not sure if I’m 100% right
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There are a few main ways that this happens, and it can vary from project to project and artist to artist.
The first way, though this isn’t really what you’re asking about and is pretty obvious, is when an artist has a finished album with a planned release date and they unfortunately die before it comes out. An example of this is Life After Death by Biggie Smalls, which was finished in January of 1997 and set to be released in late March of 1997, but Biggie was murdered a few weeks before that date.
The second is that you have a recording that was previously unknown. For example in 1965 John Coltrane performed A Love Supreme live in Seattle, and saxophone player Joe Brazil recorded the concert. Brazil kept the tapes in his own personal collection. After Brazil died a friend was going through his stuff and realized what they were. Prior to this there had only been one known live recording of A Love Supreme, so eventually they were released. The material didn’t come out during his life because nobody knew it existed.
The third way is that there is a part of a track or an outtake that gets turned into a full one. For example after Phil Lynott from Thin Lizzy died the surviving band members took vocals from a demo called [Dedication](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkktlPHFqjo) and recorded a song around those vocals. Phil Lynott recorded those vocals (and possibly the bass part), but the guitar and drums and everything else was written after his death. Another example of this is Born Again by Biggie Smalls, which took verses he had written and recorded earlier in his career and put them together to make new songs.
The fourth way, which is similar to the third, is that an artist has recorded something in a complete format, meaning they actually finished the song and kept it in their own collection for some reason, as opposed to it just being a part of a song like Dedication or Born Again. This can range from a demo that was never fully finished to a song that was cut from an album to full mixed and mastered albums of material. For example some estimates say that Prince’s vault at Paisley Park contains as many as *8,000* unreleased songs.
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