Releasing a single independently: the full checklist

June 5, 2026 · sauvachi

Releasing a track independently is not difficult, but it has a lot of small parts, and the parts that go wrong are almost never the musical ones. They are a mis-typed artist name, a missing credit, a cover that gets rejected two days before release, a feature who never signed off on a split.

This is the order I work in. Adjust it to taste, but do not reorder the first three.

1. Agree the splits before anything else

If more than one person touched the song, decide in writing who owns what before it goes anywhere near a distributor. Not after. Splits agreed while everyone is happy take five minutes; splits agreed after a song does well take lawyers.

Two separate things are being divided, and people confuse them constantly: the composition (the writing — melody, lyrics, chords) and the recording (the master itself). A producer might own half the master and a quarter of the composition. Write both down, get everyone to confirm by email at minimum, and keep it somewhere you will find it in three years.

2. Finalise the master

  • Get a dedicated master, whether from an engineer or a service. Do not upload a loud mix and hope.
  • Keep the highest-quality file you have — deliver WAV, 24-bit, at the session's sample rate. Distributors transcode; you should never be the one who compressed it first.
  • Ask for an instrumental and a clean version at the same time. You will want both later, and going back to an engineer six months on is its own small ordeal.

3. Get the metadata right

This is the step everyone rushes and everyone regrets. Metadata is how your song is identified everywhere, forever, and some of it cannot be edited after release.

  • Artist name spelled identically to your existing releases — capitalisation included. A different spelling creates a different artist profile.
  • Features credited in the artist field, not buried in the title, if you want them to appear on the other artist's profile.
  • Writer and producer credits filled in properly. This is what feeds the credits listing listeners see, and it costs nothing but attention.
  • ISRC — usually issued by your distributor. One per recording, permanently. A remix or a re-record is a new recording and needs a new one.
  • Explicit flag set honestly. Getting this wrong can pull a release from editorial consideration.

4. Artwork that survives being small

Requirements are consistent across the major platforms: square, 3000×3000 pixels, RGB, no URLs, no social handles, no “out now” text, nothing you do not have rights to. Beyond compliance, the only test that matters is what it looks like at 60 pixels in a queue — which is where nearly everyone will see it.

5. Pick a distributor and a date

Distributors differ mainly on cost model (per-release, annual, or commission) and on how quickly they pay out. For a first release the differences are smaller than the internet suggests. What matters more:

  • Deliver at least three to four weeks ahead. Editorial pitching windows close well before release day, and delivering late forfeits them entirely.
  • Friday release unless you have a specific reason not to — the industry's chart weeks are built around it.
  • Keep your rights. Read what you are signing. Distribution should be a service you pay for, not an assignment of your masters.

6. Register everything

Distribution puts the song on platforms. It does not collect your publishing. Separately:

  • Register the composition with your performing rights organisation.
  • Make sure a publishing administrator is collecting mechanicals, unless you enjoy leaving money uncollected.
  • Claim your artist profiles — the artist-facing dashboards on the major platforms — so you can update photos, bios and pitch tracks yourself.

7. The week before

  • Check the release appears correctly on every store as pre-save links go live.
  • Set up one smart link that routes each listener to their own platform.
  • Prepare the assets you will actually post: a short clip, a still, the artwork, and the sentence you will say about it.
  • Write the email to your list. Send it on the day, not three days later.

8. After release

Update your own site the same day — catalog entry, links, and the writing that goes with it. Add the track to your own playlists. Then start the next one: the most reliable promotion for a release is another release.

Two related pieces on this site go deeper on parts of the above: what actually moves in the first 48 hours, and why one smart link beats five platform links.