Best Practices for Managing Your Spotify Releases
A consistent metadata strategy, a release checklist, and a post-release monitoring plan. Here's how to do it right from the start.
Most catalog problems are preventable. Not all of them, since distributors will sometimes make errors regardless of how carefully you submit, but a surprising proportion of metadata issues, availability problems, and royalty discrepancies trace back to inconsistent practices at submission time.
Here's what the front-loading looks like in practice.
Start With a Consistent Metadata Strategy
Before your first release, decide on your canonical artist name. This is the exact string that will appear on every release going forward. The casing, the spacing, any punctuation or symbols: all of it. Write it down.
Why does this matter so much? Spotify creates artist profile entries based on metadata. If release A has "The Midnight" and release B has "the midnight" and release C has "THE MIDNIGHT," you risk creating multiple artist profiles, a split, that fragments your streams, followers, and discoverability.
Be particularly careful with:
- Featuring credits: "feat." vs "ft." vs "Feat.", pick one and use it consistently
- Parenthetical content: "(feat. X)" vs "[feat. X]"
- Non-ASCII characters in artist or track names
- Punctuation in track titles: em-dashes, colons, parentheses, be consistent
This sounds pedantic. It prevents real problems.
ISRC Record-Keeping From Day One
Get ISRCs before you submit, not after. If your country's ISRC agency allows artist self-registration (many do), register. If you're going through a label or distributor, get the ISRC from them before submission and record it yourself.
Your ISRC log should include:
- ISRC code
- Track name (exact, as submitted)
- Release it belongs to
- Recording date (year at minimum)
- Your entity name as registrant
- Distributor submission date
Store this somewhere permanent. Not only in your distributor dashboard, which is a third-party system you may eventually leave. A spreadsheet in cloud storage is sufficient. The ISRC is yours, tied to the recording forever. Your record of it should outlast any particular distributor relationship.
Release Checklist: Before You Submit
Before hitting submit on any release:
- Artist name spelled exactly as canonical version
- Featured artists credited exactly as they appear elsewhere in your catalog
- Track titles finalized (titles can be hard to change post-release)
- ISRC obtained and recorded
- UPC noted (if you provide your own) or noted after distributor assigns it
- Release date set with enough lead time (2+ weeks minimum for Spotify pitching, longer for editorial consideration)
- Markets/availability configuration checked: is this intentionally worldwide? Are there territories to exclude?
- Cover art meets Spotify's requirements (minimum 2400x2400px, recommended 3000x3000px, no URLs or social handles in the image)
- Audio files encoded correctly (WAV or FLAC for submission)
Release Checklist: Day of Release
When the release goes live:
- Confirm the release is accessible in Spotify (search by artist name and album title)
- Verify track order matches your intended order
- Check track durations match the submitted files (if very wrong, it may indicate a wrong file was uploaded)
- Check featured artist credits display correctly
- Check cover art displays correctly on the release
- Take dated screenshots of the release on both desktop and mobile Spotify
- Confirm the release appears on your artist profile page
If something is wrong, such as wrong track order, wrong credits, or missing tracks, file with your distributor immediately. Issues caught day one are resolved faster than issues caught later.
Handling Errors After Release Goes Live
Not everything can be fixed instantly. Some metadata corrections take days or weeks to propagate. A few ground rules:
Track titles, once live, are difficult to change. Spotify keeps the original title in its system and may show the old version for a period after correction. Finalize titles before submission.
ISRC corrections take time. If your ISRC was wrong, file the correction immediately, but budget 2-4 weeks for full propagation. Notify your PRO of the correct ISRC and the expected timeline.
Availability errors (missing markets) are usually fixable through a distributor metadata update. File promptly, especially if the territory is commercially significant to you.
Artist credit errors (wrong featuring credit, wrong artist name on a track) need a distributor ticket. Provide the correct metadata clearly. If this creates a split artist profile issue, also flag it as an artist profile problem, as these are handled differently than simple metadata corrections.
Post-Release Monitoring Checklist
After release, the work isn't done:
- Week 1: check that the release appears consistently across app, desktop, and web
- Month 1: verify streams are accumulating as expected. Sudden drops or complete stops warrant investigation.
- Quarterly: cross-reference your ISRC log against what Spotify shows; check availability in key markets; confirm artist credits are displaying correctly
Why Documentation Matters More Than You Think
Every release you document at submission time is a reference point for every future audit. Your catalog history is compounding. The records you create now make future investigations faster, cleaner, and more reliable.
When a royalty discrepancy surfaces 18 months from now, your ISRC log tells you what the correct identifier should be. When someone claims your catalog was modified, your dated screenshots show what it looked like before. When you change distributors, your metadata log ensures the new distributor has accurate information, not just what the old distributor had in their system, which may have drifted from your original submissions.
Good documentation is boring to create. It's invaluable to have.
Start Monitoring Today
ArtistGuard monitors your Spotify catalog automatically: tracks availability, metadata, profile changes, everything. Set it up in 5 minutes. Get started free at artistguard.app.