How to get your music on Spotify and music distribution

Ways to get your music on Spotify

Selection of a suitable music distributor is crucial for an artist to get their finished songs to their potential fans or audience. There are different kinds of music distributors who can assist in uploading your music on Spotify or any other such service. They all have different price structures, depending on the services they provide. Some let you keep all 100% of your royalties but may levy a base fee to upload your music with a per month subscription fee, while some may let you to upload your music for free, with a share in your royalties. Moreover, some distributors may offer you additional services, like mixing, performance tracking, boosting to get you more plays, promotions and so on.

Once you’re through with the selection phase and chosen the distributor that best suits your requirements and budget, you will be asked to upload your music in a high resolution mp3 format or lossless wave file format, to the selected distributor, who in turn, will upload it further to Spotify and other music streaming platforms. The apt music file, accompanied with suitable metadata will be required by the music distributor from the artists’ end. Metadata is the information like artist name, title for the album, its release date, each tracks’ title, suitable genre for the album, release date and so on.

In addition to critical album information called metadata, that makes an artists’ work searchable for their listeners or followers, another critical element is the artwork, especially for artists who are releasing complete album. Artwork is usually the image that makes as the cover for your album. Every digital music streaming service provider has laid down different rules for image sizing, but some in general include – a square size image, at least 3000×3000 pixel image, exclusion of URLs and social media logos, with zero affiliation or endorsement of any brand, and so on.

When your music distributor has access to all the data – the music, the metadata, the artwork; the album will then undergo a review process. Once reviewed and approved, your music will be uploaded to music stores like Spotify and others. Generally, your music will go live on Spotify in about 24-48 hours. However, this time may differ subject to the music distributor that you select for the process.

With the proviso that you get a handful of vital things right, releasing an album will be as cheerful as striking that first chord and not at all fearful. Thus, it is important to learn where to start, how to start, what you require and how would you get it.