How To Plan A Release: The Six-Week Countdown To Friday

Every day in 2025, around 106,000 new tracks were delivered to streaming services, according to Luminate's 2025 year-end report, up 7% on the 2024 daily average of 99,000. The same report found that 88% of the 253 million audio recordings it tracked had 1,000 streams or fewer. In a market that crowded, the difference between a release that lands and one that disappears is often decided long before the music goes live.

Most of that difference is unglamorous: correct metadata, delivery on time, pitches filed before the deadline and a release date that has been chosen rather than defaulted to. This is a working countdown for independent artists and small labels, from a finished master to release day.

Six Weeks Out: Lock The Master And The Date

The countdown starts when the music is finished, not when it is nearly finished. A master that is still being tweaked three weeks before release puts every later step under pressure. Before anything is uploaded, the final WAV files, artwork and full credits should be settled.

Release day itself is usually a Friday. The industry moved to a shared global release day in July 2015, when IFPI's New Music Fridays scheme set new releases to arrive at 00:01 local time on Fridays across more than 45 countries, according to the Music Business Association's FAQ from the launch. Editorial playlists, release radars and store front pages are still built around that weekly rhythm.

Not every Friday is equal. Artists who sell on Bandcamp can line a release up with a Bandcamp Friday, when the platform waives its revenue share (payment processor fees still apply). According to Bandcamp's help centre, the remaining dates in 2026 are 6 November and 4 December, with each window running from midnight to 11:59pm Pacific Time. Sales outside that window cannot be added afterwards, which matters for anyone in Europe planning a midnight announcement.

Five Weeks Out: Get The Metadata Right

Metadata is the information that travels with the audio: titles, artist names, credits, genre, release date, and the codes that identify the recording. Stores and royalty systems read it automatically, so errors spread quickly and are slow to fix.

The most important code is the ISRC, the International Standard Recording Code. According to IFPI, which runs the ISRC system, each code identifies one particular recording, and it is "normally assigned to recordings or music videos by the first owner", either directly or through an ISRC Manager. In practice, many independent artists get ISRCs from their distributor or label at the point of delivery. What matters is consistency: the same recording should keep the same code wherever it appears.

For electronic music, version naming is where things most often go wrong. IFPI's metadata list for each ISRC includes a version title or subtitle field, and it uses "extended mix" as one of its examples. An original mix, an extended mix, a radio edit and a remix are different recordings and need to be labelled clearly so that DJ stores, streaming services and collecting societies can tell them apart. A short checklist before upload:

• Artist names spelt exactly as on existing profiles, with featured artists and remixers in the correct fields rather than crammed into the title
• Version names (Original Mix, Extended Mix, Remix) kept in the version field, applied the same way across the whole release
• One primary genre that fits the record, not every genre it touches
• Full writer and producer credits, so royalties can be matched later
• Artwork with no URLs, social handles or prices on it

Genre is not a box to rush. Apple's guidance on editorial pitching says plainly that "submitting too many genres can dilute your pitch", and DJ stores use genre to decide which charts and pages a track appears on.

AI disclosure is now a metadata field

A newer field is worth knowing about. In September 2025 Spotify said it would support an industry standard for AI disclosures in music credits developed through DDEX, the body behind the data formats used to deliver music. According to TechCrunch, the disclosures can specify AI use in vocals, instrumentation or post-production, and are submitted by labels and distributors. Spotify's Sam Duboff said it "won't force tracks into a false binary where a song either has to be categorically AI or not AI at all." Because the information arrives through delivery, it needs to be decided before upload, not after.

Four Weeks Out: Deliver

This is the point where a distributor's job becomes visible. A distributor takes the audio, artwork and metadata, checks them, packages them in the formats each service requires, and delivers them with the release date attached. It also handles takedowns and corrections later, and collects and passes on the money that comes back. It is the pipe between the artist and the stores, which is why the quality of what goes into it matters so much.

Delivering about four weeks ahead gives room for problems. A rejected artwork file or a mismatched artist name can take days to resolve. DJ-focused stores in particular tend to need more lead time than streaming services: Soundcamps' guide to Beatport advises submitting "at least 3 weeks before your release date" so that both the distributor and the store have time to review. Missing that window does not usually stop a release, but it can mean the track is not ready for the store's new release pages on the day.

Two To Three Weeks Out: Pitch The Editors

Editorial pitching only works for music that has already been delivered, which is the main reason to deliver early. Both of the biggest streaming services publish firm deadlines.

Spotify's support pages say an unreleased song pitched at least seven days before release will be added to followers' Release Radar playlists, even if editors do not pick it up. Only one song can be pitched at a time, compilations cannot be pitched, and once a song is released it can no longer be pitched. Spotify also notes that more information gives a song a better chance.

Apple's deadline is earlier. According to Apple's pitch guidance, new releases should be pitched at least 10 days before release for full consideration, and at least seven days ahead for late adds. Apple says campaign details and rollout plans are "critical", while artist biographies are not needed. That is a useful steer for any pitch: editors want to know what is happening around the record, such as live dates, a video, radio support or a remix package, more than they want the story so far.

Release Week And After

By release week the technical work should be finished. The checks that remain are simple: confirm the track is live and on the correct artist profile, that versions and remixes are linked properly, and that DJ stores show the right genre and artwork. Profile mismatches, where music ends up on the wrong artist's page, are common enough that Spotify said in 2025 it would work with distributors to reduce them.

After release, the same metadata keeps working. It decides whether a play on a radio show, a stream in another territory or a sync placement can be matched back to the right recording and the right people.

What It Means For Artists And Labels

None of this replaces good music, and no deadline guarantees a playlist. But with Luminate's figures showing more than 100,000 tracks arriving every day, a release delivered late with messy metadata starts at a disadvantage that promotion struggles to recover. Working back from a chosen Friday, with the master locked six weeks out and delivery done at four, gives a release the full set of chances the system offers.

For artists releasing through ANGVIS Music Distribution or anywhere else, the habit is the same: treat the release date as the end of the process, not the start.

Cover photo by Techivation on Unsplash