Release your first single properly
Masters, artwork specs, credits, splits, and the boring paperwork that protects the work.
This is the least glamorous guide on the site and the one most likely to save you actual money. Almost every dispute young artists end up in comes from something on this page that took ten minutes and got skipped.
Splits, in writing, before release
Decide who owns what percentage of the song and the recording, write it down, and have everybody involved agree to it in writing before the record comes out. Not after. Not when it starts doing numbers. Before.
A one-page document naming the track, everybody who contributed, their percentage, and their signature is enough to prevent the overwhelming majority of these arguments. The conversation is awkward for about five minutes when nothing is at stake, and it is unfixable once something is.
Producers, featured artists, and anybody who wrote a hook all need to be on that page. “We will sort it out later” has cost more independent artists more money than every bad mix in history.
Deliverables and specs
- Master: WAV, 16-bit or 24-bit, at the session sample rate. Do not deliver an MP3 to a distributor.
- Leave headroom on the master — around −1 dBTP true peak — because streaming platforms transcode, and transcoding creates peaks that were not in your file.
- Do not chase loudness. Platforms normalize playback anyway, so a crushed master ends up quieter and worse rather than louder.
- Artwork: square, 3000 × 3000 pixels, RGB, no logos or URLs that violate platform rules, and nothing in it you do not have the rights to.
- An instrumental and a clean version, if either could plausibly be asked for. Making them later means recalling the session.
Metadata and credits
Get an ISRC for the recording — your distributor will usually issue one. Register the composition with a performing rights organization, because that is a separate revenue stream from the streaming royalties and it does not collect itself.
Spell everybody’s name the way they spell it, every time, on every platform. Inconsistent artist naming splits your catalog across multiple profiles and it is genuinely tedious to unpick later.
Timing
Deliver to your distributor at least three to four weeks ahead of the date. That window is what makes editorial playlist consideration possible at all, and it protects you from the delivery going wrong on a Friday morning.
What not to buy
Anybody guaranteeing playlist placement for a fee is either selling you bot streams or selling you nothing. Both outcomes are worse than doing nothing: platforms detect artificial streaming, and the penalty lands on your record, not on the person who sold it to you.
None of this makes the record better. All of it makes sure the record still belongs to you in two years, which is the part nobody thinks about until it matters.