How to Release an Album: Do’s, Don’ts & FAQs

Pre-Production: Building Your Foundation

Spotify and YouTube are the platforms you’ll spend the most of your time on, with Instagram Reels and TikTok following. You’ll want to create accounts for each of these platforms, alongside a hoo.be or linktr.ee. 

Generally, you need these platforms to be a central hub for everything related to you. Your link in your social media bios should go to everything related to your career. If it doesn’t, you’re failing. If you can manage to find a platform that captures emails outside of Hoo.be and linktr.ee, use that one! Getting fan data will allow you to tap into your fanbase and keep your audience incredibly engaged.

You want to develop a general understanding of the algorithms for each of these platforms. 

• YouTube: YouTube tracks how long viewers watch videos and what videos they’re most engaged with. From there, it generates its algorithm for its users. 
• Spotify: Spotify uses BaRT (Bandits for Recommendations as Treatments) as its algorithm. It prioritizes overall listener retention, save rates, and playlist additions, meaning that the more playlist additions and saves to your music, the better. 

• Instagram: Instagram has multiple algorithms working simultaneously to deliver on its platform. The four most important ones are the Feed, Reels, Explore Page, and Stories Algorithm. 

• TikTok: For TikTok, the most important element in engagement. That means likes, comments, shares, and completed videos. 

The Complete Album Release Timeline

During the Recording Process

• Collect a variety of behind-the-scenes photos: Whenever you’re creating something for the album, capture it. You can use these little moments for content later on. 
• Make sure that every track on the album sounds professional. You can do this by hiring a producer, sound engineer, and masterer. If you have experience with self-production, you can work on that end. 

Publicity

• Write an artist bio, or hire a professional bio writer:
• Prepare your Electronic Press Kit (EPK) for the album release with specific information related to the upcoming project. 
• Choose 3-4 singles that you’ll highlight ahead of your single promotion: Plan your single releases, pre-promotional strategies, and post-promotional strategies well in advance.
• Collect at least six high-quality press photos that you can use to promote your tracks.

• Ideally, you’d have individual single art for each of your 3-4 singles ahead of the album release, alongside album-specific promotion photos. 
• The more images and environments that you can capture, the better. 

Business Strategy

• Keep all of your ducks in a row when it comes to your album’s future data: Keep a working list of collaborators involved in a spreadsheet. You’ll want to list their full name and the percentage of earnings they’d be entitled to. 
• Ensure that you have licenses for everything and anything you use, including samples or iterations that you referenced.
• Get a copyright for your project: it will give you the legal right to control how that work is used. 
• Make sure to register your release with a Performance Rights Organization. 
• Register your album’s tracks with SoundExchange.
• Make sure that you own the rights to the photos that you’re using of yourself. As in, when you’re hiring a photographer, ensure you’re buying the rights to use said photos in whatever capacity you want to use them in. 

How to Release an Album

• You’ll want to have a high-quality format for your album available. Make sure that you’re prepared with these things checked off:

-Your audio files for Apple Music (iTunes) and Spotify should be 44.1 kHz, 16-bit stereo WAV

• For YouTube, you’ll need to upload MP4s. 

-Your cover art should be 3000×3000 pixels.

• You’ll need to claim your artist profiles on Apple Music for Artists, Spotify for Artists, Amazon Music for Artists, Deezer for Creators, and Pandora AMP. You should also set up accounts on SoundCloud, Tidal, and Bandcamp to make your music easily accessible across platforms.

DistroKid: DistroKid is one of the most straightforward distributors, commonly used by emerging artists. It’s got a music sharing service embedded in it, making it easier to connect with its 2 million other users. 

TuneCore: TuneCore is another prominent platform and distributor with its own quirks and benefits. It’s best to upload your tracks at least four weeks in advance to ensure that your upload process works out. 

CDBaby: Another one of the top distributors for emerging talent, CDBaby is incredibly similar to the other two platforms above. It recommends pitching at least six weeks before you plan to drop a project, six weeks before release. 

How to Release an Album on Spotify

1. You’ll have to start by claiming an artist page through Spotify Music for Artists.
2. To upload songs to Spotify Music, you’ll need to use a music distributor. We described them above, but most emerging artists use CDbaby, Tunecore, or Distrokid. 

How to Release an Album on YouTube

Some things to consider:

• Make sure you’re familiar with YouTube’s copyright policies and that your music is copyrighted, with all audio samples credited correctly. 
  • You’ll miss out on monetization opportunities if you run into issues with this step, so make sure you’re attentive!
• Use YouTube’s Content ID system to verify all of your music and its copyright/licenses. 
  • It will also help you identify if someone uses your music without your permission on the platform.

Steps to upload your album to YouTube

• Upload your tracks with the proper name and title to YouTube. 
• You’ll upload these tracks as an MP4 file. Make sure to create the files with a static image of your album art, or create a cool visualizer for your video using Capcut, Rotor, or similar software. 
  • Note: if your peak loudness on your tracks is louder than -3.11 dB, YouTube will automatically decrease the volume. You can set your peak amplitude to -3.11db to mitigate this effect. 
• Place your songs in order in a YouTube playlist. There’s your album in order! 
  • Tip: If you want, upload bonus content in a separate playlist that also contains your album in order. That way, you have additional content that’s queued for those who want it to play afterward, but your fans can opt out of your self-created “deluxe” edition. 

If you want to maximize your album’s release on YouTube, here are a few tricks:

• Don’t neglect YouTube Shorts coverage. Use Shorts to share engaging clips from your music videos, and post those same clips to TikTok and Instagram.
• Check audience engagement and retention time. See when people are tuning in and what they’re replaying. Identify sections that perform well and re-upload those moments to other platforms. If something falls flat, note it and figure out what’s not connecting with your fanbase.
• Publish content both before and after your release to re-engage your audience once initial interest fades. Give listeners reasons to come back and revisit your music. Highlight a few key tracks and release additional content for them. If you complete interviews, feature clips on YouTube Shorts. If you publish another music video for a highlight track, upload it about two to three weeks after your album drops.
• Release the content you have instead of holding it back. Fans want consistent material over time, not less. It’s fine to have two versions of a music video for one track or lyric visualizers for each song. While you should limit the number of tracks on your album, there’s little reason to limit your uploads.

How to Release an Album on Apple Music

You’ll have to start by claiming an artist page through Apple Music for Artists. It will ask you to verify your identity as an artist. Once you get approved, you’ll add a bio, photos, profile information, and even Q&A info to connect with your fanbase. To upload songs to Apple Music, you’ll need to use a music distributor. Make sure to check out CDBaby, TuneCore, and Distrokid for emerging options. Other artists check out 

• Go to your chosen distributor’s site and create an account there. 
• Fully complete your artist information and profile for whatever distributor you’re using. Make sure that you have everything squared away BEFORE uploading to a distributor. It’s especially important for platforms like Distrokid, which have community hubs attached. 
• Then, connect your account to your preferred payout method. 

From there, you can start uploading tracks to your distribution service. 

• You’ll want to upload these files in the preferred format for your distribution service. Keep this in mind and make sure you read all of the information you can about how to upload for your specific distributor on their website. 
• You can enter your album title, artist name, genre, and release date from this point. 
  • You’ll also want to add songwriter, producer, and feature credits.
• Select Apple Music, along with other platforms you want your music to end up on. 
• Schedule your release 4-6 weeks out, or according to your distributor’s preferred timeline. Generally, you do not want to upload a single that’s coming out in less than four weeks. It will not get as great an opportunity to end up in editorial playlists. 
• When selecting territories where your song can stream, make sure you click Worldwide unless you have any specifications to include. 

Tip: Double-check everything before submitting your album. Distributors can catch even the slightest capitalization and spelling mistakes. If you accidentally spell a single word wrong or capitalize your artist profile differently, you may end up sending your song to a completely different artist profile. Or, your track will get rejected by Apple Music.

Once you have everything squared away, you can click submit or distribute. 

How to Release an Album on SoundCloud

SoundCloud has one of the easiest plug-ins for uploading music. To get your music on its platform, follow these steps! 

• Upload all of your tracks by going to the Upload page. From there, drag and drop your files onto the screen.
  •  It will transcode those files to 128 kbps MP3 and 64 kbps Opus for streaming playback.

•  From there, you can edit the track information and update that track with anything you want!
• When you have all of your tracks on your SoundCloud, place them in a playlist and mark that playlist as an album.

It’s really that easy. 

How to Release an Album on Tidal

Tidal is another relatively straightforward platform. You’ll just:

• Create an account with Tidal 
• Select the Upload icon in the bottom navigation bar of your Tidal profile
• Then, select the add icon. 
• Select the files that you want to upload and upload them!
  • From there, they’ll be private. Make sure to edit the details of your tracks to ensure that all of the necessary information is available there. Then, make them public!
• From there, create a playlist and organize your tracks in it. 

Viola!

Tip: Each track can be up to 5GB in size. Tida’s users can upload only up to 200 tracks. Make sure you’re aware of your upload size and how many tracks you have on the website, although you shouldn’t run into any problems starting out! 

How to Release an Album Independently

Currently, Bandcamp is one of the most popular platforms for releasing an album independently. It’s great for vinyl sales and independent sales, which is why we generally recommend having a Bandcamp profile even if you’re uploading on other platforms. Here’s how to release them:

Before you get started: Make sure that you have your tracks in WAV, AIFF, or FLAC (a lossless format) and create an artist profile. You can do this by:

• Go to bandcamp.com.
• Create an account: make sure that it’s a Bandcamp artist page. 

After that, you’ll navigate to your dashboard to add your album:

• On your artist dashboard, you’ll see an option that says, “add an album.” Click on it. 
• From there, drag and drop your lossless files in track order. 
  • Edit your track titles manually as needed.
• Choose between “Single,” “EP,” and “Album” while you’re on this page. In this case, you’ll pick “album.” 

Add your album information after you’ve uploaded those tracks

• This includes: 
  • Title: The name of your project. 
  • Release Date: You can schedule your release ahead of time or post it as is. 
  • Credits: Everyone credited for working on the album.
  • Description: A 1-2 sentence description of your album, or longer as needed.
  • Tags: These lead people on BandCamp to your project, so make sure you are accurately describing your music’s niche. 
  • Album art: You’ll need a version of your album art that’s at least 1400 x 1400 pixels and perfectly square. 

From there, you can set pricing to purchase your album. There are a few options:

• Free-to-download: make your project free to download onto any device
• Pay what you want: this is donation-based: users will send you what they have if they’d like to tip 
• Fixed price: You can market your album for whatever price you deem fit. 

Now, you’re ready to add any of the bonus content that you created during your songwriting sessions as extras. If you’re offering a version of your album that users have to pay for on this site but have it on streaming, it’s great to add exclusive bonus content so they actually have an incentive to purchase rather than stream. 

Once you’re done, you can hit “publish,” and your album will get posted on your artist page. 

Tip: Make sure to claim your Bandcamp artist link and that your album is properly connected to your profile. It will make your life a lot easier in the long run! 

How to Build Your Fanbase During Album Release

Generally, you’ll want to release a variety of videos across platforms when you’re building your fanbase. Your familiarity with social media algorithms is the key to your success. It will help you exponentially when you’re first starting out.

In order to build your fanbase, you should consider what platforms your genre is most suited for. For instance, metal artists perform surprisingly well on Facebook, so it’d be a miss not to post there. Similarly, Indie-pop and indie-folk artists have a lot of success on TikTok and Instagram Reels. 

The biggest key to building up a fanbase is consistency. If you post amazing videos at random once a month, you’re not going to develop a fanbase. You have to post consistently across pretty much every algorithm to ensure you’re actually getting into the fanbase you want. 

Curious how TREND’s services can take your album to the next level? Reach out to book a free call with our team.

What Album Releases Actually Cost

An album’s cost depends on a lot of key factors, including contributors, credits, and whatever promotional strategies you’re using. 

If you’re paying for high-end production and promotion, you can expect an album to cost 5,000+. You can also expect to pay anywhere from $2,000-$5,000 for a long-term publicist. 

Common Mistakes Artists Make When Releasing an Album

A lot of artists rush their product, recording an album in 10 days without really thinking about what they’re putting out and why they’re releasing it. When you’re an emerging talent, you have to produce well-crafted, thought-out albums to garner initial interest, because otherwise, no one will invest in your work and ability to create a project. 

Your first albums are essentially pitches to the music industry that tell others whether or not you’re worth investing in. There’s a good chance that you’ll struggle to find commercial success at first when selling it. Make sure you’re making your album for the right reasons, and build up to a point where music is your career.