It's always nice to keep the final result in hands, and to realize that here it is now, finally made - and now it's possible to move on... and start to work with all those albums which are not yet released (over 10 at the moment, maybe more like nearly 20!).
Of course the excitement was different in the early days, than now after 20 years of production. If and when I release by myself, it's a different type of "joy" to see the result, than if the stuff was released by the label. With labels there are often some unexpected (or even expected) changed to the original idea; but mostly the final result is anyway over 80% of what it should have been (physically), but as the label has the marketing/promotion/dealing, which I don't personally have (no idea how to do it properly, or just lazy to even think about it properly) - the final result goes anyways over 90%.
Self released stuff are nice, until finding out that no-one likes to get the stuff directly from me, as they prefer REAL labels and distros, where they can buy other stuff at the same time.
It's not often possible to find a real label to release my stuff (because I produce too much, and I don't like to spend time to send demo-emails), so I end up releasing alone small editions or just digitally. Both are fine, but not the ideal way (but still better than sending those demo-emails forever and begging labels to help). Even if the edition is just small or just digital, it's anyway out/available. Some recent stuff what I released digitally, has been heard only very few people - and of course that's not what I am looking for, but one day someone might think it would be good to have those more widely available and in a proper format (maybe, who knows).
It's always nice to have the release packed (in a way or another), because it's the end of production and can move on. Creation can roll on. Suffering comes often when thinking about all those unreleased tracks in a messy order somewhere in the folders - so it's always a goal to have that mess organized and packed into album form; ready to the world, where it can start to live in another level.
Is it "joyful"? In that sense yes, that it's literally released. Relief. Promotion is the next step, a boring but necessary step. Sometimes it leads into frustration, sometimes less. Why people still like to buy the latest Madonna and not the latest Yksi tape? Something is wrong, and cannot change that (but oh yes, I have still those unreleased recordings waiting to be released, so I didn't finish my total work yet...)
Not sure if I will ever make a release and then finding out that "that's it, no need to do more, at all"