How to Release Your First Song the Right Way

What does releasing your first song actually involve?

Here’s the honest version before the steps. Putting a song on Spotify is the easy part. You pick a distributor, upload the audio and artwork, fill in the metadata, set a date, and it goes live. The work that decides whether anyone hears it happens around the upload, not in it. Getting the metadata right, setting enough lead time, delivering and pitching before the 7-day cutoff, and having a plan for release week.

The other honest thing: a first release from an artist with no following usually doesn’t blow up, and no amount of pitching changes that on its own. Release Radar reaches your followers, so if you have zero followers, it reaches almost no one. I’m not telling you that to be a downer. I’m telling you so you spend your energy on the parts you actually control, and so you don’t fall for someone selling you streams. This page walks the whole thing, and links out to deeper guides on the first 1,000 streams, the full timeline week by week, and what to do after the song is out.

Which distributor should I use?

You can’t upload to Spotify yourself. You go through a distributor, and the main self-serve ones for independent artists are DistroKid, TuneCore, and CD Baby (now Downtown Artist and Label Services). RouteNote and Ditto are options too. AWAL exists but it’s invitation-based, so it’s not where you start. They all do the same core job: take your files and metadata and deliver the release to the stores.

Where they differ is how they charge. DistroKid is a flat annual subscription. TuneCore charges per release plus an annual store-maintenance fee. CD Baby takes a one-time fee per release and a cut of revenue. Pricing on all of these changes often, so check the current terms when you sign up rather than trusting a number you read somewhere. Whichever you pick, confirm it delivers to Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, and Deezer at minimum, and that it assigns an ISRC per track and a UPC per release. Most of the major ones do this automatically.

Don’t overthink the choice for a first single. Any of the major three gets your song on Spotify with the codes it needs. The thing that matters more than the logo is that you deliver on time, which comes down to your release date, not your distributor.

What metadata do I have to get right?

This is the step people rush and regret. The metadata is the set of fields your distributor asks for, and some of it is effectively permanent once the song is live. Get it right before you submit, because fixing the locked fields later means pulling the release down and re-uploading, and that can wipe your stream counts and any placement you earned.

The fields every release needs: the track title with exact spelling and capitalization, your primary artist name exactly as it should appear on the stores, the ISRC code (assigned per track, unique forever, never reused), the UPC for the release, the release date, genre, the language of the lyrics, and the explicit-content flag. Some of these can be corrected through your distributor after delivery, like lyrics and sometimes genre. Others are the problem ones. ISRC and release date can’t be changed without taking the release down. An artist-name change needs distributor support to sort out.

Artwork has its own spec. Make it at least 3000 by 3000 pixels, square, JPG or PNG, with no blurry edges, no streaming-service logos, and no URL text baked into the image. Distributors vary slightly, so check your specific one’s exact requirements. And keep your artist name identical across every platform. Once the song is live on Spotify, claim your Spotify for Artists profile, because you need a claimed profile before you can pitch to editors.

How far ahead should I set the release date?

Set it 3 to 4 weeks out. That’s TuneCore’s own recommendation, and practitioner guides often push for 4 to 6 weeks if you want room for press and curator outreach. The reason isn’t delivery speed. Spotify usually shows up a few days after your distributor sends it. The reason is everything that has to happen before release: the song needs to appear in Spotify for Artists so you can pitch it, and you want time to set up the pre-save and tell people.

Inside that runway, one number is a real cutoff, not a suggestion. The music has to be delivered to Spotify at least 7 days before the release date, and you have to pitch at least 7 days before release. Spotify states it plainly: deliver your music at least 7 days before its release date so editors have time to listen. That 7-day mark is the line where you stop getting to choose your own Release Radar track. Miss it and Spotify picks one from the release for you.

So the math is: pick a release date 3 to 4 weeks out, upload to your distributor right away, watch for the song to land in Spotify for Artists under Music then Upcoming, and pitch the moment it appears. The 3-to-4-week figure is best practice, not a Spotify rule. The 7-day mark is the one Spotify actually publishes. For the full week-by-week breakdown of what to do when, see the music release timeline guide.

map your dates backward from release day with the free release timeline builder →

How do I pitch my first song to Spotify?

You pitch through Spotify for Artists, under Music then Upcoming, once the song has been delivered and shows up there. You need a claimed Spotify for Artists profile first. You pitch one unreleased song at a time. You can’t pitch a compilation, and you can’t pitch a song where you’re only listed as a featured artist. You can keep editing the pitch up to release day, though there’s no guarantee an editor sees the changes.

Pitching does more than chase the editorial slot, which most first releases won’t get. Pitching at least 7 days out is how you choose which song from your release goes on your followers’ Release Radar. Skip it and Spotify chooses for you. Spotify’s own blog also recommends pitching at least two weeks before release to give editors more review time, so the 7-day rule is the floor, not the target. If you get picked, Spotify emails you and you’ll see it under Music then Playlists. If you don’t, you hear nothing. There’s no rejection notice, so don’t wait on one.

Is a pre-save worth setting up?

If you have any audience to point at it, yes. A pre-save lets people opt in before release day, and when the song drops it lands in their library as a save. Saves are one of the engagement signals Spotify weights heavily, so a real pre-save that converts is doing something for you on day one.

For the mechanics: Spotify’s native pre-save is its Countdown Pages, available through Spotify for Artists for albums and EPs. Singles generally go through a third-party tool instead, like DistroKid HyperFollow or Feature.fm, which use Spotify login to authorize the save. You can’t just mint a native pre-save link from a URL without one of those. Spotify has said that, on average, nearly 70% of users who pre-save an album stream it in the first week, and that artists who added Clips to their Countdown Pages saw about 2x more pre-saves in a study of over 500 artists. Those are album figures from Spotify’s own blog, so read them as Spotify-reported, not as a promise for your single.

What should I expect after the song is out?

Release day is a start, not a finish line. Spotify gives you real-time streaming data in Spotify for Artists for the first 7 days, on the Home screen, so you can watch early traction. Don’t make decisions off the first 24-hour count, because the numbers bounce around early. The song stays eligible for Release Radar for up to 4 weeks, and any new followers you pick up in that window still get it, so the work you do after release keeps paying in.

There’s a real number behind that. Spotify’s Fan Study found that, on average, 75% of a release’s first-year streams happen after the first month. That figure is scoped to tracks released in February 2024 with at least 1,000 annual streams by artists with at least 1,000 monthly listeners, so it’s a specific sample, not a universal law. But the shape of it holds: a slow first week doesn’t mean the song failed. In the first week, post about it, reply to comments, and ask people to save the track and add it to their own playlists. For the full post-release plan, see the week-after-release guide.

How do I actually get my first streams?

There’s no guaranteed path, and anyone selling you one is selling you trouble. Spotify doesn’t publish a stream count that turns on the algorithm. The “first 1,000 streams” goal is a milestone artists adopted, not a Spotify threshold. Whether you hit it depends on your existing audience, your follower count, Release Radar reach, engagement, outside promotion, and how well the song fits real listeners.

What you can do without guarantees: tell your social followers to follow your Spotify artist profile specifically, not just stream, because Release Radar goes to followers. Run a pre-save and convert it to day-one plays. Pitch editorial at least 7 days out. Pitch independent curators through services like Groover or SubmitHub, targeting playlists that match your genre. Promote in the 48 hours after release while the early signals are forming.

For the honest mechanics of how those early streams actually accumulate, what Release Radar and Discover Weekly do and don’t do, see the first 1,000 Spotify streams guide.

Putting your first release together

So the whole thing in order. Pick a distributor and confirm it covers the major stores. Fill in every metadata field carefully, because the ISRC and release date are hard to undo. Set the date 3 to 4 weeks out. Deliver to Spotify and pitch at least 7 days before release so you keep your Release Radar track. Set up a pre-save and get people to follow your profile. Then promote through release week and keep going, because most of the streams come later.

None of it guarantees a hit. What it does is make sure your first release goes out clean, on time, and set up to be found, instead of tripping on a typo or a missed cutoff. The easiest way to keep the dates straight is to work backward from release day.

build your release timeline backward from the date with the free tool →