You have finished a song. You open Spotify, look for an upload button, and there isn't one. That is the moment most artists discover that streaming services do not take music from the public — they take it from distributors, in a packaged form, with the identifiers and metadata already correct. Almost everything that goes wrong with a first release goes wrong in that packaging step, weeks before anyone presses play.
This guide walks through the release the way the receiving systems see it: audio, artwork, identifiers, metadata, timing, and money. Every rejection you avoid at this stage is a release date you do not have to move.
Why a distributor sits in the middle
A streaming service ingests thousands of releases a day and cannot manually inspect each one. So it defines a delivery format — audio files, a cover image, a structured metadata package, and industry identifiers — and accepts that format only from distributors who have agreed to send it correctly. The distributor's job is delivery, validation, and passing royalty reports and payments back to you.
A distributor does not decide whether a service playlists you, and no distributor can promise placement.
At Mazufa, release is free — there is no upload fee, no subscription, and no per-release charge — and commission is 0%, meaning we take no percentage of your royalties. Delivery destinations depend on the release, the territory, eligibility and current provider support, and are confirmed per release before anything is sent. Access is invite-only, and a human reviews every complete application.
Step 1: Prepare audio for a system that will change its volume
The single most misunderstood part of a modern release is loudness normalisation. Services adjust playback volume so tracks sit at a similar level in a queue. Spotify publishes its target: an integrated loudness of −14 LUFS, with a true peak ceiling of −1 dBTP, tightening to −2 dBTP if your master is louder than −14 LUFS.
What follows from that is the part people get wrong. If your master is louder than the target, it is turned down by the difference on playback. Crushing your mix with a limiter does not buy you loudness — it buys you a flatter, more fatigued-sounding track that arrives at the same perceived level as a track with dynamics intact.
Quiet masters are a subtler case. Spotify states that positive gain is applied to softer masters to reach −14 LUFS, but also that it considers headroom and leaves 1 dB of headroom for lossy encodings. So a very quiet master with high peaks may not be raised all the way. Neither "quiet tracks never get turned up" nor "quiet tracks always reach target" is accurate.
Other services are less transparent: most publish no normalisation target at all, so the figures that circulate for them are reverse-engineered rather than specifications and should not be treated as targets.
Practical approach:
- Measure integrated loudness and true peak on the finished master, not on a mix bus estimate. True peak must be measured on an oversampled signal — a sample peak reading will miss inter-sample peaks that clip on decoding.
- Aim to sit near −14 LUFS integrated with true peak comfortably under the ceiling, and let dynamics survive.
- Deliver uncompressed audio at the session's native sample rate. Never bounce a WAV from an MP3.
You can check both numbers with the loudness checker, which runs in your browser — no audio is uploaded anywhere.
Step 2: Artwork that passes review
Cover art is checked by both automated systems and human reviewers. The recurring rejection causes are consistent across services: URLs, social handles, streaming service names or logos, prices or promotional text, third-party trademarks, and imagery you do not have the rights to use.
The file should be square, high resolution, and unwatermarked, with any text in it legible at thumbnail size — because that is the size at which almost everyone will see it. A cover art check before submission catches the mechanical problems; the rights question is yours to answer honestly.
Step 3: Identifiers — ISRC and UPC
These two codes are what make your release addressable across the industry, and they are not interchangeable. An ISRC identifies a single recording; a UPC identifies the release you are selling — the product a store lists, whether that holds one track or twelve. A ten-track album therefore carries ten ISRCs and one UPC, and getting that relationship backwards is a reliable way to have a delivery bounced. The exact character layout of each code, the reason a UPC can be machine-validated while an ISRC cannot, and the conversion between UPC-A and EAN-13 are all set out in the ISRC and UPC reference.
An ISRC stays with the recording for life, including when you change distributor. A new ISRC is required whenever the recording is materially different — a remix, an edit, a live version, an instrumental. It is not required to re-release the same recording. Remasters are the case artists get wrong most often, because the industry rule turns on whether real creative input was applied to the recording rather than on routine technical tidying.
If you already hold codes, validate their structure and check digits before you submit anything, not after a store rejects the package.
Step 4: Metadata, including non-Latin script
Metadata is what listeners search, what royalty systems match against, and what breaks silently when it is wrong. Follow one convention across every track: consistent artist name spelling, correct featured-artist tagging (in the artist field, not appended to the title), version information in parentheses, and songwriter credits with legal names.
Arabic, Persian and Urdu titles need extra care. Most display corruption in right-to-left titles comes from mixing Latin tokens — a "(Remix)", a Latin artist name, a number — into an RTL string, where the Unicode bidirectional algorithm reorders characters in ways that look wrong in a store's player. Check how the string renders in the direction it will actually be displayed, and run it through the metadata checker before delivery.
Step 5: Date, profiles and pitching
Set a release date far enough ahead that delivery, ingestion and store-side processing all complete before it arrives. Nobody publishes a guaranteed turnaround, so treat a comfortable lead time as insurance rather than optimism — several weeks is normal practice, not caution.
Before the date arrives:
- Claim Spotify for Artists and Apple Music for Artists so streams credit your profile and you get analytics.
- Submit an editorial pitch through Spotify for Artists ahead of release, following the lead time Spotify states there. A pitch is a submission, never a guarantee.
- Agree splits in writing with everyone who played on or wrote the track, before release.
Step 6: Getting paid correctly
No service publishes a per-stream rate, because there isn't one. Revenue is pooled and divided by streamshare, which is why payouts move with subscription pricing, ad rates and total listening in a territory.
Two things do change what reaches you, and neither is a distributor commission:
- US withholding. Without a W-8BEN on file, US-sourced royalties are taxed at the statutory 30%, and filing a valid form with your country's treaty claim is the only thing that lowers it — line 6 accepts a foreign tax identification number, so most artists do not need a US ITIN.
- Bank and payment provider fees, charged by the institution moving the money.
Mazufa's commission is 0%, and royalties received for a release are passed through in full.
Pre-release checklist
- Master measured: integrated loudness near −14 LUFS, true peak under −1 dBTP (−2 dBTP if louder than target), measured with oversampling.
- Audio delivered uncompressed at native sample rate, never re-encoded from a lossy file.
- Artwork square, high resolution, no URLs, handles, logos, prices or unlicensed imagery.
- ISRC per recording, correct structure, new codes for materially different versions only.
- UPC valid, check digit verified, correct to the release rather than the track.
- Metadata consistent across tracks; featured artists in the artist field; RTL titles checked for bidirectional display.
- Spotify for Artists and Apple Music for Artists claimed.
- Editorial pitch submitted ahead of the release date.
- Splits agreed in writing with every contributor.
- W-8BEN filed with the correct treaty claim before royalties accrue.
When those ten lines are true, the release is ready to deliver. If you want Mazufa to handle the delivery, apply here — applications are reviewed by a person, not a queue.