How to release music on all platforms at once

Releasing music on all platforms doesn't mean uploading it a dozen times. You put one release together, with its audio, cover art and credits, and a distributor delivers it to every store and service you choose, on the same release day. Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, TikTok, Amazon Music and the rest each receive it in the format they require.

This guide covers where a release goes, what has to match everywhere, and what to set up on each platform once your music is out. It sits within how to release music, the guide to every phase of a release.

One release, every store

Spotify, Apple Music and most other streaming services don't take uploads from artists. Spotify says to work with a distributor, Apple works with labels and distributors, and Pandora's help center makes sending your music through a distributor step one. The distributor holds one copy of your release and delivers it to each service.

That gives you one place to make changes. A corrected credit or a new release date goes to your distributor, which sends the update everywhere. It also means one set of statements: the distributor collects what your music earns on every platform and pays you.

Where your music goes

A full release reaches four kinds of places.

• Streaming services. Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, Deezer, TIDAL and the regional services that lead in their own countries.
• Video and social apps. On TikTok, Instagram and Facebook your song becomes a sound people can add to their own videos. On YouTube, Google creates an Art Track for each track it receives: the recording with its cover art, so every song you release has a YouTube version even without a music video.
• Radio-style services. Pandora takes releases from distributors and analyzes each track for its Music Genome Project, which matches songs to listeners' stations.
• The databases. Car screens, media players and song recognition apps identify a song by checking it against databases such as Gracenote and Shazam. A song that's in them shows its title and artist on a dashboard and comes up when someone looks it up.

Download stores such as the iTunes Store usually come along with the same delivery. How to get your music on the radio covers the databases and radio in more detail.

What ties a release together on every platform

Two codes travel with your music everywhere. The ISRC identifies one recording, and the UPC identifies the release it's on. YouTube, for one, says it identifies tracks by their ISRC and release code. When those codes match, a song is the same song in every store, and its plays and history stay with it. Who owns your ISRC codes explains why yours should move with you.

Then there are the names. Each platform files a release on an artist's page by the name in the metadata. If your name is spelled one way on one release and another way on the next, a store can file it as a different artist, or on someone else's page when two artists share a name. Use the same spelling, capitals and punctuation on every release. Song credits and metadata covers every field.

Should you pick every store?

For most independent releases, yes. Listeners are spread across services, and someone who hears your song on a TikTok video, in a car or on a friend's playlist needs to find it on the service they use. A release on every platform also means your link pages, pre-saves and posts can point everywhere at once.

There are a few reasons to hold back a store, such as an agreement with a label or a sync deal that names where a song may appear. Without one of those, choose them all.

The same release day everywhere

A release you schedule goes live at the time you set, either at midnight in each country or at one moment worldwide. Spotify explains how release dates and times work and why the date shown in Spotify for Artists can differ by a day from the one you picked.

To land everywhere on time, the release needs to reach every store before the day, and stores process releases at their own pace. Sending it weeks ahead covers that and leaves time for a pitch and a pre-save. How early to send your music covers the timing, and the waterfall release guide shows how to build an album out of singles.

After release: claim your profiles

Most platforms give artists their own dashboard once their music is live. Each one shows your listening and lets you update your page.

• Spotify for Artists for your profile, the pitch to editors and your stats.
• Apple Music for Artists, which you can claim once your music has been live for five business days. Your artist image there also shows on Shazam.
• YouTube, where an Official Artist Channel brings your uploads and your Art Tracks together.
• Pandora AMP, Pandora's tools for artists.
• Amazon Music for Artists for your listening on Amazon Music.

Releasing on Apple Music covers what Apple asks for in more detail.

Every platform with Audora

Audora sends each release to Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Deezer, TIDAL and Pandora, and 140+ stores in all , and into the databases radio stations, cars and song recognition read (Gracenote, Shazam and others). You set the release up once, and it goes out in one delivery.

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• The codes. We create your ISRCs, they're yours, and they move with you if you leave. Audora is the label on your release, and the masters stay yours.
• Your pages. Link your Spotify and Apple Music artist pages and the release lands on them, even when another artist shares your name.
• The checks. The cover, the audio and the credits are checked before you submit, so the release goes out once.
• The date and the pitch. Audora dates your release to give the editors time, and every release goes out with a pitch for the people who market it to the stores.
• What comes back. Every playlist your song is on, shown back to you (editorial, algorithmic and listener-made), with plays and saves from the stores' own reporting.

Your account holds the steps for each release, dated from its release day, and Audora keeps refining them, adding, dropping and retiming steps as it learns what works best for its artists. What every track gets shows a release from start to finish.