Releases
- Pete Callaghan
A Release, also referred to as an Album, is a product in your catalogue that you want to publish to a 3rd party retail or streaming site.
Release Types
A release can be one of the following types: Single, EP, Album, or Compilation.
Release Type | Number of tracks |
|---|---|
Single | typically 1-2, possibly more |
EP | typically 4+, but varies |
Album | typically 10+ * all tracks from the same main artist |
Compilation | typically 10+, but varies * tracks are from many different main artists |
The above release classifications are only guidelines based on how today's DSP's classify digital audio products.
Prerequisites
Make sure that you have checked out the meta-data style guide in our docs to ensure you understand the proper formatting of your release title, mix title, artist names, etc before creating your release. This will help you avoid issues with your content later.
Creating a release
Managing your release content is simple. To create a new release click the plus sign found above the releases table in the dashboard, or click "Create new release" on the main top dropdown menu under "Catalogue Management".
Album Composer
A form will come up allowing you to add artists, title information, description, release date, promo period, cat number and various other information required for your release.
Adding artists: If the artist is not already listed in the drop down list, simply create a new one by typing the artist name into the field. A confirmation will appear confirming that you want to add a new artist to your library.
Be sure to check the meta-data style guide to learn more about what each field in the release edit form means.
Editing a release
Simply click the edit button found on the top bar menu or located on each row of the releases table, just under the release title for each release.
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Saving
The "Save" button will remain disabled until you make a change to at least 1 field or item on the release composer. After you click save, the release and tracks meta-data is saved to the database.
Post-processing
Auto-generated audio clips and image thumbnails
Anytime you save a release, if new audio files have been added or replaced, we will automatically generate clips, write ID3 tags, and artwork thumbnails, and clear cache so that the new files are reflected immediately.
Label presets and defaults
In the case of editing releases, we will pre-fill a few fields based on your label presets. Those fields include the copyrightName and publisherName for all releases and tracks. If you want to pre-fill these fields with a specific value, open your label profile and change it there.
Additionally, you can also set label.primaryGenre, label.defaultClipStartTime, and label.defaultClipLength to control the default primary genre that is selected when you create a new release as well as the default start time and duration of the auto-generated clips that are used throughout the system.
To read more about label presets, see Labels.
UPC's or EAN's
You can either leave this field blank to use one of our UPC's, or enter your own. We can also store a list of your UPC's to be used for all your releases and we will automatically use one of your UPC's each time you setup a new release for delivery.
To read more about UPC's, see Barcodes explained.
Meta-data style guide
As we've mentioned throughout the documentation, please read over the Meta-data style guide for in depth information about each field in the releases and tracks forms.