How to release and promote country music

Country is a songwriter's genre with a radio heart. Fans care who wrote the song, who played the steel and the fiddle, and whether the story rings true. They find new music on the radio in the car, on country playlists, at bar shows and fairs, and more and more on short video, where a hook sung on a tailgate can travel a long way. A country release done right speaks to all of those places at once.

This guide covers how to release and promote a country song as an independent artist: where your listeners are, what the release needs, how radio fits in and what to post. The phases of a release are the same in every genre, and how to release music walks through them. This page is about the parts country does its own way.

Where country fans find new music

• Radio. Country is still a radio format, and a lot of listening happens in the car. Commercial country radio runs on its own charts and promotion, and independent artists usually start closer to home: local, college, community and online stations.
• Country playlists. Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music all run editorial country playlists, from new country to classic and Americana, and listener-made playlists cover every corner of the genre. Spotify's recommendations (Release Radar, Discover Weekly and radio) follow who plays and saves a song.
• Short video. TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts carry a lot of country now: a hook sung to a phone, a writer playing the song they just finished, a dance hall clip.
• Live. Bars, honky-tonks, fairs, festivals and writers' rounds, where three or four writers trade songs and stories. A crowd that heard you live is the crowd most likely to stream the song on the drive home.
• YouTube. Live performance videos, lyric videos and acoustic takes of the single.

What a country release needs

Every writer credited. Co-writing is part of the culture of country, and a song can have three or four writers. Put every one in the credits, spelled the way they spell it. Spotify shows all the credits your distributor sends, songwriters and producers included. Agree the writing shares with your co-writers before release, and register the song with your collection society so the songwriting royalties reach each of you.

The players credited. Steel, fiddle, banjo, dobro, the session drummer, the harmony vocal. Country listeners read the credits, and the players' names help a song travel among the people who follow them. A guest singer belongs in the artist fields as a featured artist, kept out of the song title.

The subgenre named. Country is wide. Tag the song for what it is so it reaches the listeners who want it: a traditional ballad and a country pop single sit on different playlists.

A cover that reads country. Fans read the cover before they hear a note. Keep it square (3000 × 3000 px is the size most distributors ask for) and keep the words to your name and the title. How to make an album cover covers the rules.

The story. Country songs are stories, and so is a good pitch. Spotify asks for the song's genre, mood and instruments in its pitch form, and says more detail gives your song a better chance. Who it's about, where you wrote it and what it's carrying all count.

A date weeks out. Spotify takes pitches for unreleased music, and a song pitched at least 7 days before release goes to your followers' Release Radar. A date with room in front of it also gives radio, press and your fans time to hear the song before it's out.

Radio, cars and song recognition

When a country song plays on the radio or through a car's stereo, the artist name and title on the screen come from music databases such as Gracenote. When someone in a bar holds up a phone to find out what's playing, song recognition apps such as Shazam match it against theirs. Clean, consistent metadata in those databases is what puts the right name and title in front of the listener at each of those moments.

Getting a station to play the song is its own work. Start with the stations that play independent country near you, the college and community stations, and online country radio. Send a short note, the song, a photo and the story. Programmers and hosts like to hear a song before it's out, so a private listen link helps. How to get your music on the radio covers who to contact and what to send.

What to post around a country release

Country fans follow the person behind the song. Posts that suit the genre:

• The hook, sung to camera wherever you are: a porch, a truck, the back of a bar before soundcheck.
• The story behind the song, told in a sentence or two over the opening lines.
• The co-write: the room, the notebook, the guitar it was written on.
• The players: the steel part on its own, the fiddle solo, the harmony being stacked.
• A clip from last weekend's show, crowd singing along if they did.
• A lyric video that starts on the chorus.

Post in the weeks before release day so people know the song is coming, on the day so they know where it is, and in the weeks after, while listening builds and the stores' recommendations pick up on it. How to promote your music covers each channel in turn.

Shows, your page and the people who come back

The road is where country builds its fans, a town at a time. Give everyone who hears you a place to go. Your Audora artist page online plays your songs, and a show can go on it for your fans. Fans sign up for new-music emails on your page and get one email per release: the pre-save while it's coming, the out-now with your store links on the day. Ask them to follow you on Spotify too, since follows put your next release in their Release Radar. How to get more listeners covers what moves the numbers after release day.

How Audora runs a country release, track by track

Every step above happens inside your Audora account, for every song. You bring the song, the credits and the story; Audora sets each step up or dates it on the release's calendar.

• The pitch. Every release goes out with a pitch for the people who market it to the stores, written from your answers about the song.
• The date. Audora dates your release to give the editors time.
• The delivery. Your song goes to Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, TikTok, YouTube and 140+ stores, and into the databases radio stations, cars and song recognition read (Gracenote, Shazam and others), with every release.
• The credits. Who wrote it, who played on it and who produced it, down to the arranger and the mastering engineer, and the order the artists are billed in, delivered with the metadata.
• Your own moves. Your pitch in Spotify for Artists, the pre-save and the Canvas each come up on the release's calendar on the day they matter. A private listen link lets press and radio hear the record before it's out.
• The look and the words. Cover art, a bio in three lengths, a Canvas and a logo, made to the stores' spec, with full commercial rights to all of it.
• The campaign. A promotion campaign planned around the release, every post written in your voice with its caption, hashtags and the picture or video it needs. You approve what goes out.
• The weeks after. Every playlist the song is on is shown back to you (editorial, algorithmic and listener-made), with plays and saves from the stores' own reporting.

TikTok, YouTube, Instagram (Stories included) and Facebook Pages post automatically, and nothing goes out until you approve it. Stories carry no link sticker, so your release link goes in your bio.

When you set up the release, the dated steps for it appear in your account, counted from your release day. We keep reworking them as we learn what works best for the artists on Audora: new steps come in, some go, others move earlier or later. Audora is the label on your release, and the masters and ISRCs stay yours. A person answers your questions, and you usually hear back within one business day.

For a release in Audora from before the day to the weeks after, read what every track gets.