How To Upload Music To Spotify
Uploading your music to Spotify has become very popular in the last few years. In this blog post, we will show you exactly how to upload music to Spotify. At the end of the post, we will also briefly touch on how you can upload your podcast to Spotify.
Whether you are a musician, singer songwriter, producer, rapper, or just an avid music listener we will show you the different approaches on how to upload your music to Spotify so you can sell it. For instance, if get your music on a Spotify playlist, you'll have the opportunity to make some money. Or how you can upload music to Spotify just for the pleasure of listening to it.
Let's begin.
Technically speaking, there are two different approaches we can discuss when we're talking about how to upload music to Spotify. There is:
1. The artists perspective
2. The listeners perspective
The process on getting your music uploaded to Spotify will depend if you are an artist or if you are a listener. For example, if you are an artist you're probably looking to upload music to Spotify in order for you to sell it by making money off streams.
On the other hand, if you are a listener, then you're probably looking to upload songs directly to Spotify so you can listen to them on your own devices.
So what are you? An artist? Or listen or a listener? Skip to the section that is most appropriate for you in order to find out how you can upload your music to Spotify.
There is also a great video by Charles Cleyn where he explains step-by-step on how you can upload your music on Spotify by walking you through these two perspectives.
Now, let's break these down each of these perspectives and show you exactly how to upload your music to Spotify.
The Artists Perspective
It does not matter what type of music you're making the process is the same for everyone to get their music up on Spotify. And to our knowledge, there is no discrimination on Spotify to what type of music they allow on their platform. So, you should be good to go already.
Step 1 - Have your Music Spotify Ready
Before even thinking about uploading to Spotify you are going to wanna make sure that your song is properly and professionally mixed and mastered.
What does this mean exactly?
It means it will sound professional. Mixing in mastering is the process a song will go through in order to get all the instrumentation in place so you have a song that actually sounds good. But not only does it sound better through this process, it meets the requirements that people expect when they listen to music.
Since I assume you want your music on Spotify so you can sell it, right?
Well in order for you to sell your music on Spotify you must compete with all the hundreds of thousands of other artists on the platform.
You are competing with these artists to get on Spotify playlists and to attract people to follow you on Spotify. In general, you're competing for people's attention.
Needless to say, as an artist, your music must be good!
Step 2 - Find a music distributor
I wish it was just as easy to go to Spotify and find an upload button and then boom your music is ready to go live on Spotify. However, they don't make it that easy.
Maybe in another few years…
For now, we are stuck to find a music distributor to help us upload our music to Spotify. A music distributor is essentially a middleman between you and Spotify. Traditionally, music distributors are music labels like Universal or Warner. They help distribute your music. A few decades ago that man getting your music in all the physical stores that sold CDs.
With the rise of the Internet, and people no longer buying to CDs, we have streaming as the primary source of music distribution. This created a new market of music distributors that help independent artists get their music uploaded and distributed to music streaming services. Like Spotify. Some of these music distributors are CD Baby, Tunecore, and DistroKid.
At this step, you will need to decide what music distributor you will sign up with. There are a lot of different types of music distributors and they all will charge you different rates in order for them to distribute and upload your music.
The music distributor that is best for you will depend on your music goals as an artist.
For example, CD Baby will charge you a fee to upload a song but then they will also take a percentage of your streaming royalties. Tune core on the other hand will only charge you an annual fee to upload your music. DistrKid will also only charge you an annual fee letting you keep 100% of your music streaming royalties.
If you are struggling on which type of music distributor you should go with then we suggest watching these two comparison videos between CD Baby, TuneCore and DistroKid.
Step 3 - Upload your music to your distributor
No matter what music distributor you choose they will ask for the same requirements in order to get your music uploaded to Spotify. The only difference between the music distributors will be how much they charge you and the look and feel of their websites.
The things we need to upload our song to Spotify are:
1. Artist and or Band Name
2. The desired release date for your music
3. If the artist has a record label or not