Successfully releasing a song in 2025 is as much of an art and science as the actual creation and performance of music. Spotify receives around 60,000 songs a day. With so much music coming out, it’s important to plan your release so that your songs don’t get lost in the fray. With so many factors to a successful release, it’s easy to forget about a step, or miss an opportunity to give your song more traction. This post will move through the different steps you should follow in order to release your songs as effectively as possible.
1) Plan one song at a time
The days of walking into a record store and paying $25 for a 10 song album from an artist you’ve never heard of are over. Streaming platforms only care about 1 song per release. When you submit new music to Spotify, they will pick one song from that release to promote - that’s true of a 1 song single or a 20 song album. Don’t risk 19 of your songs being forgotten; spend the time to release each one on their own into streaming.
Even if you are thinking of bundling songs into an album, do that after all the songs have been individually promoted. Streaming services allow artists to bundle past releases into albums for this reason.
2) Finish writing the song
Try and have as many things about your song defined as you can before you go to the studio to record. This will help you save time and money and focus on fine tuning details of your song.
Things can change in the studio, but trying to have all your lyrics, melodies, and as solid of a song arrangement as possible before going in to record are extremely helpful.
A great producer can help with writing a song from scratch or finishing a song, but doing as much work as you can will help save you time and money in the long run.
3) start thinking about your brand and goals
This will be painfully obvious to some, and sound like a crime to others. But, everything from the production process, to your album art, to the platforms you choose to promote your music on will be impacted by who you are and what you want your music to say (your brand), and what you want the impact to be (goals).
Most artists have deep hopes, beliefs, fears, and dreams around their music. Some of which they aren’t even aware of! Starting to think about questions around your brand and goals before you even start recording your music will help you better understand why your recording, how you can feel good about releasing music into the world.
There’s A LOT to think about here. But I’d say their are a few main buckets:
What are your core values as a person/musical artist?
What kind of music do you want your music to be associated with, or in other words, how do you want other people to describe your music? (This could be genre-based language)
Who are you creating your music for? If you are releasing your music anywhere then you aren’t just releasing it for yourself. Defining your audience a little bit can help you plan a more effective release.
How are you going to measure the effectiveness of your release? (Number of streams, albums sold, shows played, Patreon subsriptions, Grammys won, etc.)
You don’t have to get this perfect. Your brand and goals will change. But, starting to try to answer these questions is something you shouldn’t skip. Make sure to write this stuff down in a document that you can find and revisit as you continue to pursue your music.
Pro tip: picking a few fonts that you like can make ALL of your future design decisions much quicker and easier.
4) Capture the process
People want to go on this journey with you. Behind the scenes pictures and video of the writing and production process are great content for promoting your song. They don’t have to be super high quality either. Be intentional about capturing the process. You can share content as you go along, or wait to share it until the song is done.
5) Schedule a photoshoot
Now that you have some thoughts and ideas about your values, your goals, your audience, and who you are as an artist (since you took time to make a branding guide), it will be easier to start creating content around your music.
Wherever you plan to release your music, you’ll need pictures to accompany that music (cover art, website banners, artist page images for streaming platforms, social media images, etc.).
It’s important to have high quality photos of yourself that have a consistent brand and that strengthen the brand and message of your music (if you’re a folk artist, maybe don’t schedule your photoshoot in a nightclub).
Make sure you hire a photographer that has experience and understands what you’re going for. You can even ask them for guidance on what clothes you should wear.
6) Finish mixing and Mastering the song
While it’s a good thing to think about your release strategy before you finish your song, you shouldn’t plan a release date until your song is fully mixed and mastered. Only when this is true should you start scheduling your release.
Setting release dates before a song is finished is a great way to put yourself in a tight spot if the song takes longer than you originally anticipated. Do yourself a favor and wait until your song is finished to start planning release dates.
Giving yourself a little bit of time will help you make sure you LOVE the final master before you declare the song finished.
7) Copyright and Register your song
You should copyright your songs with your country’s copyright office once you’ve finished writing the lyrics of the song (her'e’s the US office website), and register it with a Performance Rights Organization (PRO). In the US, the two big ones are ASCAP and BMI. PRO’s help ensure that songwriters get paid.
8) Pick an album cover
Your album cover is often the first thing people will use to judge your song. It’s important to make sure your cover clearly represents your song and your brand as an artist.
If you are a new artist, I recommend incorporating an image of your face in the cover. You are introducing yourself to the world as an artist - it can be artsy, but it’s a good idea to let people know who they are listening to.
Now that you’ve done your photoshoot, look through your pictures and pick one that fits your brand. Go get those fonts that you picked earlier in your branding document, and start trying out ideas in Canva for your album cover.
If you don’t feel confident about any of your ideas, you can hire a graphic designer to help you, or see if someone you know that’s talented and willing can help you pull something together.
***please don’t use stock or AI images!*** - I can’t tell you how lame it is to see the same images recycled on different album covers across streaming. AI is getting better, but don’t cheapen your brand by putting AI art on over your music. You want to build trust with your audience, not make them have to wonder if you are a real perso, or if your music was made with a simple AI prompt.
9) Pick a distributor
If you don’t already have a digital distributor, it’s time to find one. A digital distributor will allow you to upload your song to all music stores and streaming services at once and pick a coordinated release date. They will also allow you to promote your release by doing things like presave campaigns.
Distrokid and Tunecore are the main ones, but there are a good amount out there with their own benefits, drawbacks, and pricing points.
Distrokid is owned by Spotify, so if building a Spotify audience is your main concern, then it might be the best option for you.
There’s also more alternative options popping up these days like Bandcamp, or selling your music on your website like Bandzoogle. Some people also use Shopify to sell their music and merchandise.
10) Pick a release date
Make sure to pick a date at least 1 month after you submit your song to your distributor. This gives them time to deliver your song to stores, and to potentially add your song to editorial playlists. If you don’t give streaming services enough time between uploading and releasing, you will lose out on potential free promotion from the streaming services themselves.
11) Claim your Artist Pages
Spotify is the big streaming platform that most people care the most about. Once your first song is delivered by your distributor to Spotify and other platforms like Apple Music, Tidal, etc., you can then go to those platforms and claim your artist profie/page. It usually takes a week or so for these streaming latforms to get your song(s) delivered to them by the distributor.
Once you claim your artist profiles, you can set your pictures, write your bios, and add links to your social media accounts and/or webiste, and on Spotify you can ad a “canvas” (a short video that plays with your song).
On Spotify, you can also pitch each song to editorial playlists. Editorial playlists are a HUGE boost to songs getting attention from Spotify users. It’s very difficult to get on them, so if you are just starting out, don’t feel discouraged if you don’t make it on one.
11) Promote your song
Now that your song is uploaded to your digital distributor and you have a release date set, it’s time to promote your song! Here are some ways you can do that:
Post about your upcoming song on social media - you can use behind the scenes pictures or video, share the story behind the song, or share a link to follow you on streaming platforms, or presave the song to their library.
Presave campaigns - a presave campaign is great for your first single. When someone presaves your song, it will show up in their library as soon as that song goes live. To do a presave campaign, you will need to get a presave link from your digital distributor to share with your following
Follow campaigns - once you’ve released your first song and have access to your artist profiles on streaming platforms, people can follow you on platforms like Spotify to get notified about new releases. Following an artist on Spotify is like presaving all of their future releases. If you’ve already released a song and have access to your Spotify for Artists account, getting follows is more valuable than presaves.
Release show - playing a release show is a great way to get people to come out to a show and to listen to your song. A release show says: “Hey, I’m going to be playing new material” and doubles as a celebration of your release.
Lyric videos and/or music videos - these are a great way to get your song in front of more people
Livestream - going live on release day to talk about your song(s), play live, and interact with people is a great way to let people know about your song.
Post about your song on social media. Tik Tok, Instagram, and Youtube are great platforms for building engaged followings. Pick a platform that you feel most interested in.
If you need extra ideas for song promotion best practices, here are a few great resources for you:
Jessie Cannon - He’s primarily focused on ways to get traction on Spotify, Tik Tok, and Instagram
Ari Herstand - Looks at the modern music industry as a whole
Curtis King - a hip hop artist and youtuber who takes a decidedly anti-streaming stance. He has a lot of interesting information on selling music in the age of streaming.
Promoting your music can feel like a grind, or even downright depressing at times. There’s people out there posting about their music everyday. It’s important to:
Believe in your music and don’t give up, even if it seems like no one cares at first. It can take time to break through the algorithm, even with AMAZING music. Don’t give up!
Pick a strategy that doesn’t burn you out. You aren’t going to take over the world in a week. Commit to a strategy that fits with your priorities, lifestyle, and personal goals.
Find community. Having people around you that care about you as a person and your music will hlep you keep going when your song doesn’t get as many streams as you’d hoped, or you feel like you’ve got a shadow ban on Tik Tok.
12) Reflect
It’s now time to look at your release and see what you did well and what you can improve upon next time. Make sure to be honest with yourself about what you liked and disliked. Make sure to write down your thoughts so that you remember them when you go to work on your next song. Make sure to reflect on:
Songwriting/production - were there elements that were particularly strong or week about the lyrics, melody, structure, chords, and instrumentation of this song? What contributed to the strength or weakness of these factors? Is there anything you could do to improve them on your next song?
Mix and master - were there elements that were particularly strong or week about the overall sonic quality of this song? What contributed to the strength or weakness of the end sonic result? Is there anything you could do to improve them on your next song?
Release strategy - how happy were you with the reception of your song? Did it get lots of streams, find you more fans, or help move your career in a positive direction? What are some things you did well to promote your song, and what are some ways that you can release and promote your song better next time?
The process - how do you feel about the process from start to finish of writing, producing, and releasing your song? Did you enjoy it? Was it stressful and panic inducing? What could you do next time to make sure you are able to achieve results more efficiently?
Don’t rush the reflection process. You might need a few weeks or months to answer all the questions fully.
13) Plan your next release
Now that you’ve finished your song and have recorded all the things you want to repeat, and all the things that you want to improve, it’s time to start on your next song!
Conclusion
There is no such thing as a perfect song or release. Every artist from Paul McCartney to the kid in their mom’s basement has things that they wish they had done differently about every song.
Every artist will grow, change, and that growth and change will be reflected in their music. This is a GOOD thing. Making music is challenging, and requires lots of work and soul searching. Fans don’t expect you to be perfect, they expect you to make music that speaks to them.
As you continue to grow and release music, make sure to remember to enjoy the process, and have grace with yourself. At the end of the day, streaming numbers, loud punchy mixes, and trendy production decisions aren’t what’s going to bring ultimate satisfaction and fulfillment to your life.