The song is finished. Now you are staring at a form that wants a release date, a primary artist name, a UPC, a language code and a square cover image, and every field looks like the one that could get your release rejected two days before it is due out. Most first-release problems are not artistic — they are ordering problems, and each costs a week. This guide puts the steps in the order that works, and explains why each rule exists.
Work backwards from the release date
Pick the date first, then schedule everything else against it. Delivery is not instant: the file and its metadata have to be sent, ingested, checked and made live by each service, each at its own pace. And anything you do before release — editorial pitching, a pre-save link, press outreach — only exists while the release is still pending.
A practical shape for a first single:
| When | What |
|---|---|
| 4 weeks out | Master and artwork finalised, metadata written down |
| 3 weeks out | Release delivered with a scheduled date |
| 2 weeks out | Editorial pitch submitted, links and assets prepared |
| 1 week out | Social lead-up, pre-save live |
| Release day | Check every service, fix anything wrong |
Three to four weeks is not padding — it is the window in which every pre-release opportunity exists. Deliver the day before and you have quietly opted out of all of them. A release planner lays these dates out against your chosen day.
Master with playback normalisation in mind
Every major service turns playback loudness up or down toward a target so tracks in a playlist sit at a similar level. That changes what "loud enough" means.
Spotify publishes its numbers: an integrated target of −14 LUFS, with a true peak ceiling of −1 dBTP, tightening to −2 dBTP if your master is louder than −14 LUFS. Spotify also states that positive gain is applied to softer masters so they reach the target, while considering the track's headroom and leaving 1 dB for lossy encoding — so a quiet master with peaks pressed against the ceiling may not be raised all the way.
Beyond that, most of the numbers traded around for other services are reported rather than published by anyone, so chasing them means mastering to a figure no company has ever confirmed — the loudness reference sets out which targets are actually documented and by whom.
The practical consequence: master to −8 LUFS and a service targeting −14 turns you down by roughly 6 dB. You do not get to be louder than everyone else — you keep only the damage, the flattened transients and missing dynamic contrast, at the same playback level as a track that was never squashed. Over-limiting buys flatness, not loudness.
One measurement detail worth knowing: true peak is not sample peak. It is measured on an oversampled signal, because peaks between samples can exceed the highest sample value — so a master reading −0.1 dB on a sample-peak meter can still clip. Measure your file before you deliver, rather than trusting the number your limiter shows.
Write your metadata down before you type it in
Metadata is the most common cause of a release looking wrong, and it is entirely preventable. Decide once, in writing, and reuse it forever:
- Primary artist name, with exact capitalisation and spacing. It has to match on every future release, or your catalogue splits across two artist pages.
- Track title, with version information in parentheses — "(Radio Edit)", "(Live)" — rather than invented punctuation.
- Featured artists in the featuring field, not glued into the title.
- Every songwriter's full legal name, and every producer.
- Language and script of the title, and whether it is transliterated.
If your title uses Arabic, Persian, Urdu or Hebrew script, mixing Latin tokens into a right-to-left string is where display corruption comes from: bidirectional text ordering (Unicode UAX #9) is resolved at display time, so a stray Latin word or bracket can land somewhere you did not intend. Check how the string renders, not how it looks in your notes app. The Music Biz Metadata Style Guide is the industry reference here.
Understand your identifiers
Three codes, three jobs. Confusing them causes real problems later.
- ISRC identifies the recording. Twelve characters: two country, three registrant, two year-of-reference, five designation. Hyphens are a display convention only, and there is no check digit. A new ISRC is required for a remix, edit, live version or instrumental — any materially different recording — but not for re-releasing the same recording. Remasters are where this gets misread most often, and the test is narrower than the common advice suggests — the ISRC and UPC reference works through it.
- UPC identifies the release — the product, not the recording. UPC-A is 12 digits; an EAN-13 is the same code with a leading zero, and the check digit does not change.
- ISWC identifies the composition, a publishing matter rather than a distribution one.
An ISRC stays with the recording if you ever change distributor, so keep your codes somewhere you control.
Sort the money questions before there is money
Two pieces of paperwork are far easier now than retroactively.
Agree splits in writing with everyone who wrote or performed on the track, while they still remember what happened in the room. A split sheet signed now costs nothing; reconstructing one during a dispute costs a lot.
If you are outside the United States, file a W-8BEN: with no form on file, US-sourced royalties carry the statutory 30% withholding, and a W-8BEN can reduce that where a treaty covers your country, which the payout calculator will show you. Withholding is tax, not a distributor's cut, and bank transfer fees belong to the bank.
Choosing how you deliver
A distributor delivers your finished release to digital services and passes royalties back to you. Some charge an upload fee, some a subscription, some a percentage of royalties, some a combination.
Mazufa is free to release — no upload fee, no subscription, no per-release charge — and takes 0% commission, no percentage of your royalties. It is invite-only, with human review of every complete application. Which services a release goes to depends on the release, territory, eligibility and current provider support, and is confirmed per release before delivery. You can apply here.
The week before, and release day
Submit your editorial pitch through Spotify for Artists. The pitch form states the minimum lead time Spotify wants before release day — read the current figure there and count backwards from your date, because a scheduled, undelivered release is a prerequisite for pitching at all. Prepare the pre-save link, the artwork crops you need for social, and a short description you can paste wherever one is asked for.
On release day, open the track on each service and read it as a listener would: artist name, title, featured credits, artwork, explicit flag. Fix anything wrong immediately — corrections propagate slowly.
Then set expectations honestly. No service publishes a per-stream rate, and Spotify states plainly that it does not pay one: revenue is pooled and divided by streamshare, so what a stream is worth depends on the pool and everyone else's plays in it. Anyone quoting a fixed figure per stream, or per country, is quoting something no service has published.
Checklist
- Release date chosen, 3–4 weeks out
- Master exported as uncompressed WAV at the session's native bit depth and sample rate, never re-encoded from a lossy file
- Integrated loudness and true peak measured, not guessed
- Artwork a large square image, RGB, JPG or PNG, no URLs or handles, legible at thumbnail size — check your distributor's stated minimum
- Artist name, title and version wording written down exactly, once
- Songwriters and producers listed with full legal names; features in the featuring field
- ISRC assigned; new code if this is a materially different recording
- UPC assigned to the release
- Split sheet signed by everyone involved
- W-8BEN filed if you are outside the US
- Release delivered and scheduled, not same-day
- Editorial pitch submitted ahead of the minimum lead time stated on the Spotify for Artists pitch form
- Pre-save link and social assets ready
- On release day, every service checked field by field