How to Plan a Music Release: Step-by-Step Checklist
Foundational Guide
Planning a music release means working backward from your release date to a timeline with milestones, owners, and promo tasks. Most plans start six to eight weeks out, so the master and artwork are locked, the song reaches stores in time to pitch, and fans hear about it before release day.
Most music release plans fall apart in the same place: the calendar. The song is finished, someone picks a date, and then the distribution deadline, the editorial pitch window, and the filming days all land in the same week. What follows is a seven-step plan you can reuse for every single, EP, or album, built backward from release day so each task has room in front of it.
It is written for whoever is holding the plan, whether that is the manager, the label or agency running several releases at once, or the artist running the release alone. Platform requirements and recommendations in this guide are attributed to the company that publishes them and were checked in August 2026. Everything else is our recommended spacing, and it is worth stretching when the team is small.
Why Releases Fail
Releases rarely fail because the music is bad. They fail because the rollout is disorganized. Without a plan, you spend release week fixing problems instead of promoting the song.
The Mistake | The Consequence |
|---|---|
Late distribution | The song is not in Spotify's system in time to pitch, and Spotify recommends pitching at least 7 days before release |
Missing assets | You are making artwork the night before delivery, and Apple Music lists low-quality art among its common rejection reasons |
No pre-save | You miss the chance to capture advance intent through a pre-save, leaving the campaign with one fewer release-day conversion path |
Silent launch | A single post gives the release little campaign support and may miss many of the people you want to reach |
No post-release plan | Promotion stops the week of release because you treated release day as the finish line |
The 7-Step Release Plan
Step 1: Define the release in one paragraph
Before you create tasks, define the release clearly so the plan stays coherent. Write one paragraph that covers:
Release type: single, EP, or album.
Goal: are you trying to reach new listeners, which points at short-form video, or activate existing fans, which points at email and community?
Core message: what is the story in one sentence? Example: "This is a breakup anthem for people who are happy about it."
This paragraph becomes your filter. Every decision should support it. If a promo idea does not connect to the core message, it waits for the next release.
Why this matters: without a brief, the posts pull in different directions. A studio clip, then a meme, then a lyric snippet, and none of it reads as one campaign. The brief is what makes six weeks of posting feel like one release.
Step 2: Choose a realistic release date
If you want a rollout, you need runway. Most releases benefit from six to eight weeks of lead time, and that is our recommendation rather than a platform rule.
Here is where those weeks go. Your distributor needs time to deliver the song to the stores, and published lead times differ by company and by plan tier, so check the one you use. Spotify recommends pitching at least 7 days before release, and its own advice is that the earlier you pitch, the better. Filming and editing content takes another two to three weeks if you want it in the bank before release week.
For the vendor-by-vendor lead times and what to do when you are already late, see How Far in Advance to Submit to Spotify.
Our recommended lead time by release type:
Single: six weeks.
EP: eight weeks. More assets to make, more pitching to do.
Album: ten to twelve weeks. Consider releasing singles ahead of the album so there is an audience waiting when the full record lands.
Do not announce a date until the master is delivered and the asset plan is locked.
Step 3: Build the release package
Your release package is everything the stores and the campaign need from you. Get it complete before you schedule anything.
Audio:
Final master in the lossless format your distributor asks for
Instrumental version
Clean version, if applicable
Visuals:
Cover art, square. Spotify accepts 1:1 images between 640px and 10,000px in TIFF, PNG, or JPG with lossless encoding, and says not to upscale. Apple Music's cover-art guidelines allow relevant text such as the artist name and release title, advise against blurry or pixelated images unless intended, and prohibit additional information such as social handles, websites, logos or references to competitors, brands, and advertising. Both checked August 2026.
Spotify Canvas, a 3 to 8 second vertical loop that replaces the cover art in the Now Playing view on mobile. You can add one to an upcoming release.
Press photo, at least one high-resolution option
Data:
ISRCs for the recordings and a UPC/EAN for the release, following your distributor's identifier process
Writer and producer credits with splits confirmed
Lyrics
Do not wait until after release to negotiate splits. That conversation happens before anyone uploads anything, and a signed split sheet protects everyone in the room.
Once the tracks are mixed and mastered, the next job is getting them to the stores. To avoid overpaying or signing away rights you did not mean to, read Best Music Distribution for Artists (Compared).
Step 4: Build the backward timeline
Start at release day and work backward. This is the spacing we recommend, with Spotify's recommended minimum pitch lead time marked as theirs.
When | What happens | Why it sits here |
|---|---|---|
T-8 weeks | Master and cover art locked | Everything downstream depends on these two files existing |
T-6 weeks | Upload to your distributor | Leaves room for a metadata error and a redelivery |
T-4 weeks | Pitch Spotify editorial in Spotify for Artists | A pitch needs the release sitting in the system with a future date |
T-3 weeks | Film the content batch | Ten videos in one day beats filming on the morning of every post |
T-2 weeks | Tease phase opens, pre-save link live | The campaign now has somewhere to send people |
T-1 week | Cover art reveal, hook teaser, countdown | Highest intent, right before the song exists |
T-1 week | Spotify's recommended minimum pitch lead time | Spotify recommends delivering and pitching at least 7 days before release so editors have time to listen |
Release week | Everything queued goes out | You are promoting, not producing |
T+4 weeks | Sustain | The people who missed release week are hearing the song for the first time |
One thing worth knowing about pitching. For eligible new releases, Spotify says followers get a song in Release Radar whether or not you pitch, and that playlist refreshes every Friday. Pitching at least 7 days before release lets you choose which song goes to followers' Release Radar. You can also edit a pitch up to release day, though Spotify does not guarantee editors will see the change.
This is a dependency chain, not a checklist. You cannot pitch until the song has been delivered, cannot deliver until the artwork is approved, and cannot approve artwork until there is a brief. Skipping a step never saves the week it appears to save.
Step 5: Give every task an owner and a date
A timeline with no names on it is a calendar, not a plan. For each milestone, write a task with one person responsible and a hard due date.
Audio tasks:
Mix revisions (Producer, T-8 weeks)
Master approval (Artist, T-7 weeks)
Upload to distributor (Artist or manager, T-6 weeks)
Visual tasks:
Cover art brief to designer (Artist, T-8 weeks)
Cover art final approval (Artist, T-6 weeks)
Canvas created (Designer, T-4 weeks)
Content batch filmed (Artist, T-3 weeks)
Promotion tasks:
Editorial pitch copy written (Artist, T-5 weeks)
Pitch submitted (Artist or manager, T-4 weeks)
Pre-save link built and tested (Artist, T-2 weeks)
Release announcement email drafted (Artist, T-2 weeks)
Ad assets created (Designer, T-1 week)
The rule: one owner per task. Not "the team," not "we," one name. If everyone owns it, nobody does.
Ask Apollo, Orphiq's AI music strategist, and it generates this timeline working backward from your release date, then reworks it when the date moves. Deciding who carries each task is a call only you and your team can make.
Step 6: Build the content plan in phases
A content plan is not "post more." It is a sequence that builds attention and then holds it.
Phase 1: Tease (T-3 to T-2 weeks)
Snippets, studio shots, hints with no explanation. Build curiosity without giving away the song. You are signaling to the people who already follow you that something is coming.
Ideas: recording session clips, a lyric with no context, the writing process.
Phase 2: Hype (T-2 to T-1 week)
The hook, the cover art reveal, the pre-save call to action. This is where passive scrollers become people who have done something. Give them one clear action rather than three.
Ideas: a 15-second hook with the pre-save link, cover art reveal with the date, behind the scenes from the shoot.
Phase 3: Launch (release week)
Out-now posts, lyric videos, release day from your side of it. Post more than feels comfortable. Almost nobody sees every post you make.
Ideas: the full clip, a reaction to your own release, the story behind the song straight to camera.
Phase 4: Sustain (weeks 2 to 4)
Most releases die here. Release day is one day, and discovery keeps happening after it, but only if there is something to find.
Ideas: acoustic version, lyric breakdown, fan reactions, the video or visualizer, a live take, a making-of.
Step 7: Run a post-release review
After week four, run a short review. This is what separates artists who improve from artists who release the same way twice.
The review questions:
Which posts performed best, in which format, on which platform?
Did the editorial pitch land, and if not, what would you change in the pitch copy?
Did any asset arrive late, and where exactly did the timeline break?
What was the save rate during release week? Spotify for Artists reports it for a release.
How many email signups came out of the cycle?
What would you do differently if you released this song again tomorrow?
Write the answers down. Update your template with them. Your next release should start from a better baseline than this one did.
What a Release Costs
Not every release needs the same spend, and rates vary by market and by who you work with. Treat these as levels rather than prices.
No budget. Master it yourself or trade with a producer. Design the cover yourself or with a friend who can. Film on your phone and promote organically, which means the plan carries the whole campaign.
Modest budget. Pay for a mix and master, and commission the cover art. Keep filming on your phone. Put whatever is left behind the one or two organic posts that already performed, instead of spreading it evenly across all of them.
Larger budget. Add a video, proper photos, and paid support behind proven posts. The risk at this level is buying assets before the plan exists, which gets you expensive files and the same disorganized release week.
Start with what you can afford. A well-planned release with no budget can outperform a disorganized expensive one. The plan is the part that compounds.
Common Mistakes
Announcing before the plan exists. You create pressure without structure. You tell fans the song is coming, and you do not have the master. Now you are rushing creative work to hit a deadline you invented.
Ignoring dependencies. A flat checklist hides how many tasks cannot start yet. Half the list is blocked, and you find out in the week you needed it done.
Starting content too late. If the first post is on release day, you are asking for a result with no buildup. The tease phase exists so release day feels like an event to people who already knew it was coming.
Treating release week as the finish line. Post-release consistency often matters more than release day intensity. A song can find its audience months later if someone keeps working it.
Copying a rollout without understanding it. What works for an artist with 500,000 followers rarely transfers to an artist with 500. Scale the plan to the audience you have and the hours you have.
Frequently Asked Questions
How far in advance should I upload my song?
Give your distributor several weeks, since published lead times vary by company and plan tier. Spotify recommends pitching at least 7 days before release, and the song must already be in its system to pitch.
Should I release on Fridays?
Friday is the global standard release day, and both New Music Friday and Release Radar update then. Other days are worth testing if you are not chasing editorial placement, but make the test deliberate and review what it changed.
How many singles should I release before an album?
Two or three is the common pattern. Each single builds audience and shows which songs connect before you commit to the full rollout. To make the catalog compound, look at a waterfall release.
What if my release date changes?
Push the whole timeline, do not compress it. If the master is two weeks late, the new release date is two weeks later. Cramming eight weeks of work into six is how assets and pitch windows get missed.
Read Next
Orphiq is where this plan lives instead of a spreadsheet. Ask Apollo, Orphiq's AI music strategist, and it builds the timeline backward from your release date and reworks it when the date moves.