How To Release Your First Single In The UK

The track is mixed, mastered and sitting on your desktop. Now what? Releasing a single in the UK is genuinely simple once you know the order of operations, and most of the stress comes from doing things in the wrong order or too late. This is the sequence we walk artists through in mentoring sessions, from the master to release day and the week after.

Step One: Sort The Rights Before Anything Else

Nothing goes out until you know you are allowed to release it. Three checks.

• The beat. If you recorded over a bought instrumental, read the lease. Most leases allow a set number of streams or sales and forbid certain uses. Some “free” beats on YouTube are free for non commercial use only, which means you cannot release the song commercially without paying. If in doubt, message the producer and get it in writing.
• Samples. If the track uses a recognisable piece of someone else’s recording, it needs clearing. There is no length below which a sample is automatically fine.
• Collaborators. Agree splits with anyone who wrote or performed on the track before it is released, and write them down. A text message is better than nothing.

Step Two: Register Your Songwriting

In the UK, songwriters and composers collect royalties through PRS for Music. Membership is a one off fee and it means that every time your song is streamed, played on radio or performed live, the writing royalties come to you rather than sitting unclaimed. Register the work once it has a final title.

If you own the recording as well as the song, which most independent artists do, PPL collects the performer and recording royalties from radio and public performance. Both are worth setting up before your first release rather than after your tenth.

Step Three: Choose A Distributor

You cannot upload directly to Spotify or Apple Music. Everything goes through a distributor, sometimes called an aggregator, that delivers your track to all the platforms at once and pays you the streaming income. The well known ones for independent artists include DistroKid, TuneCore, Amuse, CD Baby and Ditto, and they differ mostly in whether you pay an annual fee, a per release fee, or a percentage of income.

For a first single the differences are small. Pick one with a clear pricing page, check that it delivers to the platforms you care about, and move on. You can change distributor later.

Step Four: Get The Assets Ready

The distributor will ask for the following, and having it ready saves a lot of back and forth.

• The master. A 16 bit or 24 bit WAV at 44.1kHz is the standard delivery. Your mastering engineer will provide this. Do not upload an MP3.
• Artwork. A square image, at least 3000 by 3000 pixels, with no blurry edges, no website addresses and no text that misrepresents the release. Platforms reject artwork that breaks their rules, and rejections cost you days.
• Metadata. The exact song title, artist name spelt the way you want it to appear forever, featured artists, songwriter names, genre and whether the lyrics are explicit. Check the spelling twice. Fixing a misspelt artist name after release is painful.
• An ISRC. The unique code that identifies your recording. Most distributors generate one for free. You only need to supply your own if you already have one.

Step Five: Pick A Release Date At Least Four Weeks Out

This is the step everyone rushes and regrets. Upload the track and set the release date a minimum of four weeks ahead. Two reasons.

First, delivery takes time. Distributors need a few days to process and platforms need a few more to ingest. Upload today for release tomorrow and the track may arrive late or not at all on some services.

Second, and more importantly, a release date in the future lets you pitch the song to Spotify’s editorial team through Spotify for Artists. Pitching is only possible for unreleased tracks and it is the main route onto editorial playlists. You need at least a week’s lead time, and more is better. If you release the day the track is delivered, the pitch window has already closed.

Step Six: Claim Your Artist Profiles

Once the distributor has delivered the track, claim your profiles on Spotify for Artists and Apple Music for Artists. This lets you add a photo, a bio and links, see who is listening and where, and pitch future releases. Do it before the release, not after, so the profile looks like a real artist’s page on day one.

Step Seven: Pre Save And Tell People

A pre save link lets fans add the track to their library before it comes out, so it appears for them automatically on release day. Most distributors generate one. Early saves and streams in the first day or two are what the platforms’ algorithms look at when deciding whether to push a track into Release Radar and Discover Weekly, so the goal of the run up is to get everyone who already likes you ready to press play on the morning it drops.

You do not need a marketing budget for this. You need a short clip of the track, a clear release date, and to tell everyone you know more than once. Post the clip, post the date, post the pre save link, and then do it again the day before.

Release Week

On the day, share the direct link everywhere and ask people to save the track, not just stream it once. Saves and playlist adds count for more than plays. Reply to everyone who shares it. Play it at any show you have that week.

Then keep going. The most common mistake with a first single is treating release day as the finish line. The track is now a permanent piece of your catalogue and every future release lifts the older ones. Post about it for weeks, not hours.

What Not To Do

• Do not buy streams or playlist placements. Platforms detect it, remove the streams and in some cases take the track down.
• Do not release without a plan for what comes next. A single with a second single already tracked behind it does far better than a single on its own.
• Do not spend the promotion budget before the song is finished. A well mixed and mastered track with no budget outperforms a rough one with adverts behind it.

Where We Fit In

Release planning is one of the unglamorous things our artist development mentoring covers, alongside the studio time. If you have a track and no idea how to get it out properly, that is a normal place to be and a good reason to talk to someone who has done it before. And if the track is not quite finished, our mixing and mastering is booked by the track and quoted once we have heard it.