Best Practices

1. Digital Set-Up Best Practices

  • Tracks which are set up as IG tracks at iTunes and Amazon should also set up and released as stand-alone products for all other DSPs.
  • Remember to pull stand-alone singles (or EP’s) once the full-length product has gone live. Otherwise, you’re diluting the charts and ranking.
  • Incentive pre-order pricing can be advantageous, but only if you promote it to the fans!
  • If there is a standard and deluxe version of an album, only the deluxe version should be delivered to streaming partners.
  • Pre-release exclusives (i.e. one DSP is getting the record a week early) must be set up as its own product in Workspace.
  • If a product has any album-only tracks not available for streaming, consider delivering a second version of that product without those tracks to the streaming partners.
  • Set up your artists’ VEVO channels as soon as they are signed – don’t wait until you’re setting up their video product. This will avoid delays in getting the video live when it’s ready.
  • Consider delivering a pseudo video (video w/ still image(s)) through to VEVO for new releases or key tracks, especially if you or your fans are already uploading them directly to YouTube. Lyric videos, too! They will monetize much better than just uploading to YouTube.

2. Metadata Updates

Most metadata updates to take up to 2 weeks to become apparent across all services. We only have ability to expedite at iTunes, Amazon and Spotify, each with limitations.

iTunes Tickets

The below types of changes require a physical person at iTunes to address once the ticket is filed. Note that pricing updates do not require tickets.

  • Artist
  • Titles
  • Genre
  • Audio
  • P lines
  • Cover art

Price Updates

  • Tracks prices
  • iTunes only updates track prices on Tuesdays. As a result, track price updates need to be submitted before the requested Tuesday. We cannot make same-day changes on Tuesdays
  • All other download stores will change track price whenever update is received
  • Product (album) prices
  • All download stores will change the album price as soon as the update is received

3. Deadlines and time frames:

For Audio products, we generally want to deliver…

  • At least 2 weeks out for US
  • At least 4-5 weeks out for International titles (int’l marketing deadlines at iTunes are earlier than for US)
  • We ask that all assets are in-house at least 6 weeks out from street date to allow for processing and to ensure any audio quality issues do not jeopardize dates.
  • ITunes can only guarantee live date if product is delivered at least 11 days out from street date
  • Most other services are two weeks. Anything beyond this is considered late and we cannot guarantee will be live on requested street date.

For short form video products…

  • In order to guarantee a specific live date on VEVO, we need metadata set complete in workspace and video uploaded to our ftp at least 3 weeks in advance of that live date
  • Submit the artist VEVO channel request (all artists need their own channels) well in advance…even as soon as you sign them!

4. Other iTunes Rules

Album-only track rules:

  • No more than 12.5% of tracks on an album can be album-only
  • A track can only be designated as album only if…
  • It is exclusive to iTunes
  • There is a licensing reason (i.e. label does not have a la carte rights). Documentation may be necessary
  • Long tracks (>10 minutes) do not count towards the 12.5% threshold

Pre-Orders

  • For Albums with one or more IG Tracks, the retail price must be priced below the sum of tracks. If the retail price is equal to the sum of tracks the product will not launch. The likelihood of this error is highest for products with fewer than 10 tracks priced at $0.99 retail

Instant Grat (IG) Tracks

  • No more than half the total amount of tracks can be set as IG (i.e. a 12 track album cannot have more than 6 IG tracks)
  • With regard to pricing, there must be a price difference of at least $0.99 between the total of all IGs and the album price in order for the pre-order to go live
  • If doing an IG track for iTunes, please also deliver to all other partners at the same time

5. iTunes Style Guide Rules

ITunes will NOT allow…:

  • ALL caps in product title or track title. (All caps artist names are subject to iTunes’ approval on case by case basis)
  • Mix match casing
  • ‘Various’ or ‘Various Artists’ as a track artist name

Lowercase in Product/Track Titles

The following words are always lowercase unless it's the first or last word in the product/track title:

  • a
  • and
  • at
  • for
  • of
  • the
  • to

Uppercase in Product/Track Titles:

The following words are always uppercase in a product or track title

  • As
  • By
  • From
  • In
  • Is
  • On
  • Out
  • Then
  • Up
  • With

Featured Artist in Track Title:

Keep name in main track title field, not in supplemental title field. Example below. (In Workspace, also add the name in the blue boxed participants section)

Song Title (feat. Artist Name)

Track Supplemental Title:

Do not add parenthesis around the supplemental title. It will be automatically applied.

  • Alternate Version
  • Bonus Track
  • Live
  • Radio Edit
  • Remix