Music release timeline planner

How far in advance to release music

Send your finished release to your distributor three to four weeks before the date you want it out. That gap is the most common advice in the industry, and it lines up with what the stores ask for themselves.

Spotify says it needs 5 business days to get new music live, and that music delivered later than that may appear a few days after its release date. Its Release Radar page asks you to deliver at least 7 days before release, and a pitch made by then puts the song in your followers' Release Radar. Those are the floors. The extra weeks on top give you room for the things that slow a release down: a cover sent back for a text rule, a credit spelled two ways, a store that takes longer than usual.

Earlier is fine too. A release sitting ready in the stores' systems a month or more ahead loses nothing, and it gives you longer to build up to the day.

Why releases come out on Fridays

New music around the world comes out on Fridays. Spotify's New Music Friday playlists update every Friday, and so does Release Radar, the personal playlist that puts new songs in front of the people who follow you and listen to you. Most charts count their week from Friday too.

A song that comes out on a Friday lands in those playlists on its first day, with a full week of listening ahead of it before the next refresh. A song released on a Tuesday waits until Friday for its first Release Radar slot. That's why the planner checks the day you pick and points you to the nearest Friday when it isn't one.

The three dates on every release timeline

Send it to the stores

This is the day your audio, cover art, credits and release details leave your hands. Everything after it depends on it: the store pages, the pre-save link, your pitch to Spotify's editors and the countdown to release. Treat it as the real deadline of your release and plan the creative work back from it.

Your Spotify pitch

Once Spotify has your release, it appears under Upcoming in Spotify for Artists, and you can pitch one unreleased song to Spotify's editorial team. Spotify's rule is plain: pitch at least 7 days before release day and that song goes into your followers' Release Radar. Editors plan their playlists ahead, so a pitch that arrives well before the 7-day mark gives them longer with it.

Release day

The release goes live at midnight local time in each country. This is the day to share your links, post, and point everyone you can reach at the song. What you do in the days around it decides how many people hear it in that first week, while it sits in your followers' Release Radar.

What fills the weeks between them

The three dates are the frame. A release done well fills it in: the cover and the Canvas made to spec, a pre-save link shared while the song is still on its way, a pitch that tells the editors what the song is and who it's for, posts that build toward the day and keep going after it. Our guide on how to release music walks through each phase and why it matters.

Which of those moves you make, and on which day, depends on the release: a debut single and a fifth album need different runs, and so do a release with a video and one without. That's the part a calendar dated to your own release day does better than any general list.

Where Audora takes it from here

Every release on Audora goes out with a pitch for the people who market it to the stores, written from your answers about the song, and Audora dates the release to give those editors time to hear it. Your own moves (your pitch in Spotify for Artists, the pre-save, the Canvas) come up on the release's calendar on the day they matter, alongside a promotion campaign planned around the release.

The exact steps for your release, each one dated to your release day, are in your account. Audora keeps adjusting those steps, adding some, dropping others and moving them earlier or later, as it learns what works best for its artists. What every track gets shows the whole release, phase by phase.