See the verdict before you apply

What this screen can decide, and what it cannot

It can decide anything with a right answer. A barcode either has the correct check digit or it does not. A cover is either square or it is not. A true peak is either below the published ceiling or above it. A featured artist is either in the artist field where the stores say it belongs, or in the title where they say it does not. None of that is a matter of taste, and none of it needs a human.

It cannot decide the part that matters most. A person reads every complete application and listens to the work, and nothing on this page predicts what they will think of it. Passing every check here is not an acceptance and is not a promise of one. It only means that nothing would come back to you before anyone got that far.

Why a gate exists at all

Free distribution with no review is a business that fills with material nobody made for a listener. The review is what keeps the catalogue worth being in. That is the honest trade: you wait for an answer, and in exchange the thing you are joining stays worth joining.

What a gate should never be is a mystery. If an application is going to come back, you should be able to find that out yourself, in a minute, before you spend a week waiting. That is what this page is for.

The checks, and where they come from

The metadata rules are the stores’ own published rules — Apple’s style guide and Spotify’s metadata guidelines both state that a featured artist belongs in the artist field, that promotional words do not belong in a title, and that version information belongs in the version field. The loudness and true-peak mechanics are ITU-R BS.1770-5, the edition in force since November 2023. The barcode arithmetic is the GS1 check-digit algorithm. The ISRC structure is the IFPI handbook’s.

Where a check is a judgement rather than a rule, this page says so and marks it amber rather than red. Amber is not a rejection. It is the list of things a reviewer would otherwise have to write to you about, and answering them in advance is the difference between an answer in a week and an answer in a day.

What it deliberately does not tell you

It does not score your music. It does not estimate your chances. It does not tell you a per-stream rate, because no service publishes one. It does not tell you how long a review takes, because that depends on how many applications are open. And it does not claim that a clean sheet here means anything at all about the answer you will get.