How to release music as a producer

A producer can spend years making records that come out under other people's names. Releasing under your own is a different job: the beat or the track becomes the release, you're the artist on the profile, and the vocalists, players and co-producers become your credits. It's how a producer builds a catalog and an audience of their own, and how listeners who loved a beat find the person who made it.

This guide covers the producer side of a release: how to put out instrumentals and beat tapes, how to credit yourself and the vocalist, how to split with collaborators, and what to post. The phases of a release are the same as for any artist, and how to release music walks through them in order.

Your records and everyone else's

A producer's name reaches the stores in two ways. On other artists' releases you're in the credits as the producer, and the release belongs to them. On your own releases you're the primary artist: the profile is yours, the followers are yours, and the pitch to Spotify's editors is yours to make.

That matters because of one of Spotify's pitching rules: you can't pitch songs you're a featured artist on. If a song is billed to the vocalist with you featured, it's their pitch. Billed to you, with the vocalist featured, it's yours. Pitch at least 7 days before release and Spotify puts the song in your followers' Release Radar.

Pick one producer name and keep it. Every release under it builds the same profile, and listeners who find one record find the rest.

Credits: the producer credit and the featured vocalist

Spotify shows all the credits a distributor sends, from producers and engineers to songwriters and featured artists, and other stores show theirs. For a producer, two things decide how a track reads:

• The billing. Who's on the artist line and in what order. You as the primary artist with the vocalist featured; both of you as primary artists; or the vocalist primary, with you in the credits as producer. Agree it with the vocalist before release.
• The credits. Producer, co-producer, songwriters (the topline and the beat both count as writing), the engineer who mixed it, the mastering engineer, players and the sample's original writers where a sample is cleared.

Keep names in the artist and credit fields, where the stores read them, and out of the song title. Song credits and metadata explains each field.

In Audora, you state each song's credits in the release form: who's billed and in what order, who wrote it, who produced it and who played on it, down to the arranger and the mastering engineer. They're delivered with the metadata as you entered them.

Splits with vocalists and co-producers

Agree the splits before the song comes out, in writing, even with a friend. A song earns in two ways, and each is split on its own.

• The recording. What the release earns from streams and downloads. Producers and vocalists agree a share of it, often called points.
• The songwriting. The beat and the topline are both writing, and the writers agree their shares and register the song with their collection societies.

On Audora, royalty splits on a release name who shares in what it earns, and how much. Each collaborator is invited by email, and Audora pays each person their share.

Releasing beats and instrumentals on Spotify

Instrumental music has a big audience of its own on the stores: people listening while they study, work, drive or wind down, through focus, chill and instrumental playlists and Spotify's own recommendations. A beat can be a release in its own right.

• Make sure it's yours to release. Every sample cleared, and no beat you've sold exclusive rights to. If you lease beats to other artists, keep a record of who has which one.
• Name the genre and mood. Lo-fi, trap, boom bap, ambient, house: the tags are how playlists and recommendations place an instrumental, so be specific.
• A beat tape is an EP or an album. A set of beats released together, with one cover and one release day. Single, EP or album helps you choose the size.
• A cover that reads as you. A producer's covers can carry a look from release to release. Keep it square (3000 × 3000 px is the size most distributors ask for) with words limited to your name and the title.

Versions. The instrumental of a vocal song is its own recording with its own ISRC, and so is a remix or a clean edit. In Audora, a version of a song (an instrumental, a remix, a clean edit, an acoustic or live take) starts from the song's credits, lyrics and store answers. A single holds up to three songs, each with its own audio and ISRC, so the vocal track and its instrumental can come out together.

What to post as a producer

Producers have something most artists don't: the making of the track is the post. Posts that suit producers:

• The beat built from an empty session, sped up.
• The flip: the original sound next to what you made from it, where the sample is cleared.
• One sound designed from scratch.
• The vocalist in the booth, then the finished hook.
• The rough version next to the final mix.
• The drums on their own, then the full track.

Post in the weeks before release so people know it's coming, on the day so they know where it is, and in the weeks after, when listening builds. How to promote your music covers each channel, and how to get more listeners covers what moves the numbers after release day.

How Audora runs a producer's release, track by track

Every step happens inside your Audora account, for every track. You bring the music, the credits and the splits you agreed; Audora sets each step up or dates it on the release's calendar.

• The credits. Each song's credits as you state them, with the order the artists are billed in, delivered with the metadata.
• The splits. Who shares in what the release earns. Each collaborator is invited by email, and Audora pays each person their share.
• The versions. An instrumental, remix or clean edit starts from the song's credits, lyrics and store answers.
• The pitch. Every release goes out with a pitch for the people who market it to the stores, written from your answers about the track.
• The date. Audora dates your release to give the editors time.
• The delivery. Your music goes to Spotify, Apple Music, TikTok, YouTube and 140+ stores, and into the databases radio stations, cars and song recognition read (Gracenote, Shazam and others), with every release.
• 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.
• 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 everything made.
• 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 your track 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.

Set a release day and your account lays out the steps for that release on their own dates. Those steps keep being tuned: Audora adds, drops and retimes them as it sees what works best for its artists. Audora is the label on your release, and the masters and ISRCs stay yours. A person answers when you ask, and you usually hear back within one business day.

What every track gets shows a release in Audora from before the day to the weeks after.