bandhand.io
Before you upload your first single
Which file is the master, why backing vocals must not go in the title as a feature, and what happens when you promise a release date before checking your plan. The list of things to settle before you open the form.
The release form looks like half an hour of work. It took us several hours, and not because it is complicated. Because at eight different fields it turned out we did not have an answer ready, and a few of those answers had to be fetched from outside.
Below is the list of things worth settling before you even open the form. Written down while it was fresh, in the order they ambushed us.
Work out which file is the master, and ask a human
This sounds like the obvious one and it is the least obvious on the list.
The mastering studio sent us a set of WAV files and a set of mp3s. The WAVs had 48 kHz in the filename, the mp3s had 44.1. Logic said take the WAVs, because they are lossless and the services ask for the material exactly as it was mastered.
It turned out the master was the 44.1, and the 48 kHz files had been rendered separately, for video. The folder name said as much, only nobody read it literally. We found out when somebody finally wrote to the engineer and asked.
The lesson is simple: do not guess from filenames and sample rates. Send one sentence to the person who did your mastering and ask which file is the one for distribution. It costs them ten seconds and saves you from sending out a version that was never meant to leave the studio.
An mp3 is not a master, however good it sounds
The same story produced a second problem. Once you know the master is 44.1 and all you have at 44.1 is an mp3, you have nothing to send.
Distributors accept WAV or FLAC and they are right to. A lossy file gets transcoded again at their end, because every service makes its own format. Converting an mp3 to WAV fixes nothing, it just freezes the loss inside a bigger file.
While we are here: an mp3 can have a higher peak than the file it came from, because the codec adds overshoot. We measured both and the difference was clear. One more reason never to treat an mp3 as a source.
Artwork at three thousand pixels, and not upscaled
Services want a 3000 by 3000 square. If your designer handed you 2048 it is not a disaster, but upscaling at the last minute is asking for soft lettering. Request the right size when you commission the artwork, together with a web version.
One more detail from the same field: emoji are not allowed in the artist name or the title. Services reject them, and the form can let them through and fail later at the store.
Backing vocals go in the credits, not in the title
There is one more voice on our single. The instinct is to add that person to the title as a featured artist. That is a mistake, and an expensive one.
A featured artist in the title tells the services there is a co-performer, which means a separate artist page that takes a share of the plays and then lives its own life. For backing vocals on one song that is not what you want.
The right place is the performer credits section, the same one where you say who played what and who produced. It is worth filling in properly anyway, because one of the services requires at least one credit per track, and that information is shown next to the recording. Your engineer and your mastering studio go in there too, and it is the only place their names will appear at all.
With one track, the release title is the track title
A detail, but it caused some rework for us. Our release pages had been built around a different release name, because we had assumed the single would be called the same thing as the EP.
The form does not allow for that. With a single recording the release takes its title from the track, and that is how it shows up in the services afterwards. We had to fix the pages, the captions and one banner.
Check this before you print anything with a name on it.
A chosen release date can be a paid feature
The most surprising field in the whole form.
Picking a specific release date is not included in the cheapest plan at every distributor. At the one we use it sits in a higher tier. If you have promised someone a date, printed it on a poster and sent it out in messages, and then discover that your plan only lets you release as soon as possible, you have a problem that money is the only way out of.
Check the plan comparison table before you agree a date with anyone outside the band.
Profile URLs can be fussy
The form asks for your social profile addresses so it can group your releases. It sounds harmless and it can block you for a quarter of an hour.
Our validator rejected, in turn, the numeric address, the username address and the address without a prefix. The format matched their own help article exactly.
Do not fight that field. Almost everywhere there is an option saying the artist does not have a profile yet, and you can fill it in later, after the release has been sent. It does not block anything.
Your artist profile does not exist yet
The last thing, and the one to hang your schedule on.
Your artist page on a streaming service does not exist until the distributor delivers your first recording. You cannot create it earlier, you cannot claim it earlier and you cannot submit anything from it earlier.
That has a concrete effect on the calendar. The material has to reach the service, then you claim the profile, and only then can you pitch the track to the editors. And the pitch has its own deadline, counted in days before release. Count it backwards and you will see that the date you think of as the release is actually the third deadline in the sequence, not the first.
One last thing
Everything above can be sorted out in a week, provided you know about it a week in advance. None of it is hard. Every single one of them can stop a release on the day you expected to just press a button.
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