The song is done. The mix sounds right in the car, on the cheap earbuds, on the studio monitors. And then you realize the actual release — the boring logistical part nobody claps for — is a whole second project. I've shipped enough of my own tracks to know that the difference between a release that lands and one that just quietly appears is almost never the music. It's the two weeks of unglamorous prep around it.
So here's the workflow I actually run, roughly in order. It's built for an independent artist with no label, no manager, and a distributor account they set up themselves. Nothing here requires money you don't have — just that you do the steps early enough that you're not fixing them at 2am the night before.
Lock the metadata before anything else
Metadata is the least fun and most consequential part of a release. It's the text that follows your song across every platform forever, and it's a pain to change after the fact. Get it wrong and your track shows up under a slightly different artist name, or your feature isn't credited, or the language is tagged incorrectly and your song never surfaces to the right listeners.
For a Farsi-language release this matters double. Decide up front how you're transliterating your name and title into Latin script, and then be ruthlessly consistent about it everywhere — the distributor form, the artwork, your socials, the pitch. Pick one spelling and never drift.
- Artist name — exact same spelling and capitalization you use everywhere else. Claim your artist profiles on the streaming platforms so the release routes to the right page.
- Track and version — is it the single, a radio edit, an instrumental? Name it plainly so it doesn't collide with a future version.
- Songwriter and producer credits — every person who touched it, spelled correctly. This is how royalties find their way home.
- Language and lyrics language — tag it as Farsi if that's what it is, even when the title is romanized.
- Explicit flag — set it honestly. Getting this wrong can get a release pulled or auto-hidden.
- ISRC and UPC — your distributor usually generates these; just make sure they exist and you've saved them somewhere you can find again.
Artwork and the assets you'll need three copies of
Cover art has hard technical requirements — square, high resolution, no blurry text, no logos or URLs that platforms will reject. Read your distributor's spec sheet before your designer starts, not after, because a re-export the night before a deadline is exactly the kind of avoidable stress that eats your launch energy.
But the cover is just the hero asset. A release lives on a dozen surfaces, and each one wants a different crop. Build the full set while your designer's files are still open and layered — future-you will not want to reopen that project. At minimum: the square cover, a vertical version for stories and short-form video, a wide banner for profile headers, and a short looping video or animated cover if the platforms you use support it. Export everything, name the files clearly, and drop them in one folder.
Set the date, then work backwards
Most distributors want your final files a couple of weeks ahead of the release date, and that lead time isn't bureaucratic cruelty — it's what unlocks the good stuff. Deliver early enough and you can build a pre-save campaign, get considered for editorial playlist pitching, and give the algorithms time to notice the song before it's public. Deliver at the last minute and you've forfeited all of that.
A Friday release is the convention because that's when the charting week resets on most platforms, so your first-week numbers all count together. It's not a law. But unless you have a specific reason to break it, Friday keeps things simple. Pick the date, then count backwards and put every deadline on a calendar.
- Three to four weeks out — final master and all artwork delivered to the distributor; release scheduled; pre-save link generated.
- Two weeks out — submit your editorial pitch through the distributor or platform's own tool, in your own words, on time. A late pitch is an ignored pitch.
- One week out — start teasing. Short clips, the artwork reveal, the pre-save link in every bio.
- Release day — the checklist below.
- The week after — this is not the finish line, it's the middle. Keep posting.
The day-of checklist
Release day is not a work day, it's a monitoring day — if you did the prep, the song releases itself. Your job now is to make sure nothing is broken and to point people at it. I keep this list literally open on my phone and tick through it in the first hour after the song goes live.
- Confirm the track is actually live and correct on every platform — right title, right artwork, right credits, playing from the right second.
- Update every bio and pinned post with the real link now that the pre-save is done. Use a single link that routes listeners to their platform of choice.
- Post the announcement across your channels, spaced out — not all at once, and not all identical.
- Message the people who genuinely care before you post publicly. A real note beats a mass blast.
- Add the song to your own public playlists so it has somewhere to live.
- Check the streaming dashboard once, then close it. Refreshing numbers all day is a tax on your own morale.
That last one is the discipline that took me longest to learn. The release is a starting line dressed up as a finish line. The song will keep finding listeners for weeks if you keep showing up for it — and none of that happens if you burn the whole day staring at a counter. Ship it clean, then get back to the part you're actually good at.