Music release checklist template

These are the essentials. The full list, dated to your release day and checked off as you go, is inside your Audora account.

Before release day: the essentials explained

Most of a release happens before anyone hears it. The files, the words and the dates all have to be right before the stores take it, because changing them afterward is slow and can break links you've already shared.

Your master and cover art

Send the stores your highest-quality master, ideally a stereo WAV or FLAC at the sample rate it was mastered at. Spotify's audio guidelines ask for your music as it was mastered, with no converting or upsampling. The cover needs to be square and sharp: Spotify accepts 640–10,000 px, and 3000 × 3000 px is the size distributors ask for. Our album cover checker reads your file and tells you what to fix.

Titles, credits and splits

Write titles and names once, the way you want them shown, and keep them identical everywhere. Credit every songwriter, producer and featured artist, since credits are how the right people get named and paid. Agree on splits before release, while everyone is in the same conversation. Our guide to song credits and metadata covers the details stores check.

Codes

Each track needs an ISRC and each release a UPC. Your distributor creates both if you don't have them. If a song has come out before, reuse its ISRC so its play history stays with it.

The date and the send

Pick a Friday, when Spotify's Release Radar and New Music Friday refresh, and send the release weeks ahead of it. Spotify asks for at least 7 days to get a pitched song into your followers' Release Radar. Our release date planner shows the dates for the Friday you pick.

Spotify for Artists, the pitch and the pre-save

Claim your Spotify for Artists profile, then pitch one unreleased song to Spotify's editors from the Upcoming tab. Tell them what the song is, how it sounds and who it's for. Share a pre-save link so fans can save the song before it's out and have it in their library on the day.

The Canvas, bio and photos

A Canvas is the short vertical loop that plays behind your song in Spotify; the Canvas checker tests a video against Spotify's specs. An up-to-date bio and a few good press photos are what a playlist curator, a blog or a radio host looks for when your name comes up.

Release day

On the day, check the release in each store: the right audio, cover, titles and credits. Then put the link everywhere you have an audience, post on each channel, set the release as your Artist Pick and reply to the people who share it. The point of the day is to send as many listeners as you can to the song while it's newest.

After release day

A song keeps finding listeners for weeks after it's out, and the work after release day is what keeps that going. Keep posting, use the song in short videos, and read your stats: the playlists it's on, where listeners come from and how many save it. Thank the people who picked it up. Then write down what worked, because the next release starts from there.

The full list, dated, inside Audora

On Audora, every release goes out with a pitch for the people who market it to the stores, written from your answers, and with cover art, a bio and a Canvas made to the stores' spec. 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. After release day, Audora shows you every playlist your song is on, editorial, algorithmic and listener-made, alongside plays and saves from the stores' own reporting.

The exact steps for your release, in order and dated to your release day, are in your account. Audora keeps refining them, adding steps, 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, and our guide to releasing music explains each phase.