Understanding Velveteen: Releases, Artists, Pitches & More
Updated June 10, 2026
Velveteen is built around a handful of core objects: releases hold your tracks and artwork, artists are credited on those releases, persons appear in credits as composers and contributors, users get scoped access to manage your catalog, and pitches send your music to DSP editorial teams. Once live, royalties flow back and split between the shareholders on each track.
Every distribution platform has its own vocabulary, and most of them make you learn it the hard way. This page is the map: what each core object in Velveteen is, what it's for, and how the pieces connect. When you see a screen asking about releases, shareholders, or pitches, you'll already know what it means.
The core building blocks
Release
The distributable container: a single, EP, or album. Holds tracks, artwork, a release date, and metadata, and moves through states from draft to live.
Track
An individual recording inside a release. Each track has its own audio, credits, and ISRC. A release needs at least one.
Artist
The performing identity a release is credited to. One account can manage multiple artists: a producer's alias, a band, a side project.
Label
The owner-of-record for releases. Real labels manage rosters of artists; independent artists act as their own label.
Publisher
The entity that controls the composition: the songwriting side, distinct from the recording. Used in credits and composer/songwriting metadata.
Person
A credits entity on a release: a composer, lyricist, or contributor. Not an account; purely metadata that travels with your music to stores and PROs.
User
An account holder (email and login) with scoped access to your catalog: a manager, bandmate, or label admin you invite to collaborate.
Pitch
A submission to DSP editorial teams, linked to a release. Written once, tracked through review, so you always know where it stands.
Royalties
The earnings that flow back once a release is live, split between the shareholders on each track according to the percentages you set.
Shareholder
A person (identified by email) given a percentage share of a specific track. Shareholders are email-keyed and do not need an existing Velveteen account. If they have an account, royalties are credited automatically; otherwise their earnings accumulate until they sign up.
How they fit together
Ownership runs through users, not the hierarchy. A user (whoever holds admin permission) owns the artists in their account; on a label account, the label's admins hold ownership permission over the roster artists. From there the chain runs in one direction: an artist is credited on releases; a release contains tracks. Around that spine, persons appear in track credits as composers and contributors, users get scoped permission to manage any of those entities, pitches hang off releases to reach editorial teams, and royalties flow back up from live releases to the shareholders attached to their tracks.
In your catalog, the release is the thing you'll touch most. Here's what the release list looks like as your music moves from work-in-progress to live on stores:
Midnight Static
Babbage · 1 track
Glasshouse EP
Babbage · 5 tracks
Signal Fade
Babbage · 1 track
Tip
The lifecycle of your music
Everything in Velveteen follows the same arc. You build a release as a draft, adding tracks, artwork, and metadata at your own pace. When it's ready, you submit it, and it enters review before delivery to stores. While it's unreleased, you can pitch it to editorial teams. Once it's live, streams and sales generate royalties, which Velveteen ingests, splits between shareholders, and pays out.
Each stage has its own help section. The articles in the sidebar cover the concepts, and workflow guides for releasing and pitching are coming next.
Heads up
Frequently asked questions
Do I need a label to use Velveteen?+
No. If you're an independent artist, you act as your own label. You create one artist profile and one label entry, and your releases sit under both. The label concept exists so that real labels managing multiple artists can keep their rosters organized, but a solo artist fills both roles without any extra work.
What's the difference between a release and a track?+
A track is one recording: a single song with its own audio file and credits. A release is the package that delivers tracks to stores. See <a href='/help/understanding-velveteen/what-is-a-track'>What is a track?</a> and <a href='/help/understanding-velveteen/what-is-a-release'>What is a release?</a> for the full picture.
Can other people help manage my catalog?+
Yes. Every artist, label, and release supports collaborators with role-based permissions. You can invite a manager, bandmate, or label admin and control what they can see and change. Access is scoped per entity, so someone helping with one artist doesn't automatically see everything else in your account.
What happens after I submit a release?+
Your release moves through a series of states: it starts as a draft while you build it, goes into review when you submit it, and becomes live once it's delivered to stores. You can track exactly where it is from the release page, and you'll be notified as it moves.
Is a pitch the same as releasing my music?+
No. Releasing gets your music onto stores; pitching is the separate, optional step of asking DSP editorial teams to consider it for playlists. A pitch is always linked to a release, but skipping the pitch doesn't stop your release from going live. It just means editors won't be told about it.
Related articles
What is a release?
The distributable container: tracks, artwork, metadata, and the state machine from draft to live.
Artists vs labels
Who owns what, and why an independent artist is usually both the artist and the label.
Overview
The full pitching workflow: what a pitch is, when to submit, what goes in it, and how Velveteen tracks it from draft to delivery.
Users, people & roles
Two distinct concepts: a Person is a credits entity on a release; a User is an account holder with scoped access. Neither implies the other.