Every streaming service has a cut-off for pitching, and they are all different. These pieces are built from the platforms' own documentation, so you can plan a release week around dates that actually exist rather than around advice from a forum.
AIM says UK indie music is an early-warning sign for the sector, citing chart falls, customs costs and AI risks; practical steps for indie artists and small teams.
The EU’s Article 50 transparency rules applied on 2 Aug 2026; IFPI also pushed industry labelling. Here’s what independent artists and small teams must do next.
Yoto’s fourth‑generation players add a configurable Green Button and bigger onboard storage; make short, routine-ready playlists and check Yoto’s content specs before pitching.
bbno$ is a playable character in Subway Surfers from Sept 14–Oct 4; with the game's global scale, indie artists should plan tight, measurable in-game activations.
Music Ally reported a street‑level, burner‑account campaign for Deki Alem’s debut; no public performance figures were available, so measureable tracking is the missing piece.
Billboard will include Smart Media Albums in US chart tabulation beginning the Oct. 2, 2026 tracking week. Read what to change in your release plan and the exact counting rules.
Luminate counted 106,000 new recordings delivered to streaming services every day in 2025, and 88 per cent of everything on those services took fewer than 1,000 streams all year. Distribution is solved and costs about twenty euros. Being found is the entire job.
Luminate/Music Business Worldwide data: huge catalogue growth and concentrated streams. Actionable checklist to make a release visible in a crowded market.
The rule that costs nothing and is missed most often: pitch at least seven days before release and the song goes into your followers' Release Radar whether or not an editor picks it up.
Three services, three different deadlines, and one of them is closed to artists entirely unless you go through a label or distributor account.
Spotify's only documented pre-save mechanism has an eligibility bar and an album-shaped hole in it. Worth knowing before you build a campaign around one.
The looping visual on a Spotify track has a published spec that takes ten minutes to meet and is routinely got wrong.
No invented best practice. This is a working calendar assembled from the pitch deadlines, eligibility rules and specs that Spotify, Apple and Deezer publish on their own support pages, with the date each was checked.
A Premiere gives a video a public watch page, a countdown, live chat and a chat replay. The trailer that plays beforehand has its own rules, including one that trips people up on a re-release.