Understand digital distribution, streaming platforms, artist profiles, platform tools, metadata, and opportunities to support a release.

Outcome. Choose a distribution route on its terms, and deliver a release that platforms can handle correctly.

Distribution is a service you buy, and the terms differ far more than the marketing pages suggest. Look at the cut, the term, the territory, whether you keep your masters, what happens to your catalog when you leave, and how quickly you are paid.

Label services arrangements can give you distribution reach while you retain control of your music. That is a different deal from a traditional label agreement and should be compared on its own terms.

Metadata is where releases quietly go wrong. Titles, credits, writers, splits, identifiers and artwork all have to be right before delivery, because errors surface as someone else’s song on your artist page and as royalties that do not reach you.

Claim and maintain your artist profiles on every platform, and learn the tools each one gives you. Your distributor also wants to know about press support, radio plans, tour plans and guests on the record, so arriving with your rollout already built is what gets a release taken seriously.

What you will produce

A distribution plan naming your route and its terms, a complete metadata sheet, and claimed artist profiles across platforms.