How to get on Release Radar

Release Radar is the playlist of new music Spotify makes for each listener and refreshes every Friday. For an independent artist it is a dependable playlist, because Spotify's own rules say who gets your new song in it: your followers, and the listeners Spotify thinks will like it. This guide explains how the playlist fills, the 7-day rule that lets you choose the song, and how followers and pre-saves widen who hears it.

What Release Radar is

Spotify describes Release Radar as a playlist of new releases that updates every Friday. Each listener's version is different, filled with new music from three places: artists they follow, artists they listen to and other artists Spotify thinks they'll like. It is one of Spotify's personalized playlists, marked "Made for" with the listener's name.

The order inside the playlist depends on factors like release date and how much Spotify expects that listener to like each song, based on what they've played before. It stays fairly similar from one Friday to the next.

How your song gets in

The rule is generous: your followers get songs from your new release in their Release Radar. You decide which song through the pitch.

• If you pitch a song from Spotify for Artists, Spotify includes that song in your followers' Release Radar.
• If you don't pitch, Spotify picks which songs from the release to use.
• To pick the song yourself, pitch at least 7 days before release day.
• To be in Release Radar in the release's first week, your music has to be delivered to Spotify at least 7 days before release.

The pitch goes to Spotify's editors as well, so the same step that chooses your Release Radar song also puts it in front of the editorial team. The editorial pitch guide covers how to write it.

Spotify's Release Radar rules

Spotify lists a few more conditions on its support page:

• a listener doesn't get a song in Release Radar if they've already played it, though another song from the release may appear;
• songs are included where you are a main or featured artist, and remixes are included, but a remixer credit alone is not;
• songs by Various Artists and re-releases of songs already on Spotify aren't included;
• some alternative versions, like acoustic, karaoke or live versions, aren't included;
• each listener gets one song per artist per week;
• a song can stay for up to 4 weeks for a listener who hasn't heard it yet.

Two of these shape a release plan. Because each listener gets one song from you per week, releasing singles spaced apart gives each song its own Release Radar slot. Because a song stays for up to 4 weeks for listeners who haven't played it, people who miss it on the first Friday still have time to find it.

Grow the followers who get it

Your followers are your Release Radar audience, so every follow you gain before release day is one more person who gets the song on Friday. Spotify notes that followers get your new music through personalized playlists like Release Radar and the What's New feed.

Ask for the follow wherever people hear you, and give them a reason in the weeks before release. A pre-save helps here: it adds the song to a fan's library the moment it comes out, and many pre-save pages also invite the fan to follow you. Our pre-save guide explains how pre-saves work, and turning listeners into followers covers the follow in depth.

Release Radar also reaches people who listen to you without following you, and listeners Spotify thinks will like you. The saves and repeat plays a song earns after release help with both, which is why the weeks after the day matter too. The Discover Weekly guide covers the playlist that picks up from there.

How to see if your song was picked

Once the song is live, open its stats in Spotify for Artists and go to the Playlists tab. You'll see the recent and top playlists the song has been added to; if it is in your listeners' Release Radar, the stats for that show there.

What Audora sets up before the day

Release Radar rewards a release that is in Spotify's hands early and has its pitch in on time, and Audora builds both into every release. What every track gets shows the full release. Before the day:

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• Audora dates the release to give the editors time, so it is delivered well before Spotify's 7-day lines;
• every release goes out with a pitch for the people who market it to the stores, written from your answers;
• your own pitch in Spotify for Artists, the pre-save and the Canvas come up on the release's calendar on the day they matter;
• a promotion campaign is planned around the release, with every post written in your voice and the picture or video it needs, and you approve what goes out.

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.

What Audora sets up, and when, is in your account, dated to your own release day. Audora keeps tuning those steps as it learns what works best for its artists, adding and dropping steps and moving them earlier or later. Read the guide to getting more listeners to see where Release Radar fits among the other ways listeners find a song.