Release Operations
How to Plan a Music Release: An 8-Week Timeline for Independent Artists
A week-by-week release timeline for independent artists, with owners, dependencies, and status fields you can copy and use for the next release.
An eight-week release timeline works when you map the master, artwork, metadata, distribution, and promotion dependencies backward from release day and assign each one an owner and a due date. A shorter runway can work for a simple single, but it leaves less room for corrections, playlist consideration, or press lead time.
Who this timeline is for
This is for an independent artist — with or without a manager — planning a single, EP, or album release and trying to avoid the usual failure mode: a plan that lives across three group chats, a notes app, and a distributor dashboard, discovered to be out of date the week of release. The timeline below assumes you already know the release date and format. If you don't, start there before assigning a single task.
Before you set the date
Before anything goes on a calendar, write down four things where the whole team can see them:
- The release goal. More listeners, a specific playlist, a show announcement tie-in, or building toward an EP — pick the one thing that would make this release a success.
- The format. A single, EP, or album changes the amount of production and coordination the plan needs.
- The budget. Mixing, mastering, artwork, and any paid promotion, decided before you commit to a date you can't afford to support.
- The owner. One person accountable for the release even if several people help run it.
The 8-week release timeline
Work backward from release day. Each row below is a real task, not a vague phase — copy the table, assign names, and track status as the release moves.
| Timing | Milestone | Owner | Dependency | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Week 8 | Confirm release date, goal, format, and budget | You | — | ☐ |
| Week 8 | Assign one owner per workstream: masters, artwork, distribution, press | You | Release date confirmed | ☐ |
| Week 7 | Lock final masters and get contributor sign-off | Artist / mix engineer | Mix approved | ☐ |
| Week 7 | Lock metadata: title, credits, songwriter splits, lyrics, and ISRC if assigned | You | Masters locked | ☐ |
| Week 6 | Send the artwork brief and reference material | Designer | Release concept set | ☐ |
| Week 6 | Upload the release to your distributor with a locked release date | You | Masters and metadata ready | ☐ |
| Week 5 | Confirm distributor delivery status and platform ingestion date | You | Distributor upload complete | ☐ |
| Week 5 | Build the press and partner pitch list | Manager | — | ☐ |
| Week 4 | Approve and deliver final artwork | Designer | Artwork brief sent | ☐ |
| Week 4 | Submit playlist pitches once the distributor confirms the release will be live in time | You | Distributor delivery confirmed | ☐ |
| Week 3 | Send press and partner pitches; log responses | Manager | Pitch list built | ☐ |
| Week 3 | Align any shows or content drops with the release date | Manager | Calendar reviewed | ☐ |
| Week 2 | Quality control: verify links, spelling, and metadata display across stores | You | Distributor delivery confirmed | ☐ |
| Week 2 | Confirm payment splits and platform access before release | You | — | ☐ |
| Week 1 | Send final reminders to collaborators and partners | Manager | — | ☐ |
| Week 1 | Confirm the day-of plan: who posts what, and when | You | — | ☐ |
| Release day | Monitor go-live across platforms and confirm links resolve | You | — | ☐ |
| Release day | Log issues as they come up instead of changing the plan mid-release | You | — | ☐ |
| Days 1–7 | Thank press and partners who covered the release | Manager | — | ☐ |
| Days 1–7 | Track early engagement against the release goal you set in week 8 | You | — | ☐ |
| Days 8–30 | Run a budget-versus-actual review | You | Expenses logged | ☐ |
| Days 8–30 | Log relationship notes and follow-ups from the campaign | Manager | — | ☐ |
| Days 8–30 | Hold a short retrospective and capture lessons for the next release | You | — | ☐ |
A few of those dates aren't arbitrary. If playlist placement matters to you, Spotify's own guidance is to deliver your music and submit your Spotify for Artists pitch at least seven days before release day, since editors need that time to listen before deciding. Distribution itself isn't instant either. For releases delivered through DistroKid, its current estimates range from one to seven days for Apple Music, two to five days for Spotify, and one to two weeks for Facebook and Instagram after DistroKid's own review. A small share of Apple releases need an additional one to two weeks of manual review, while cover-song licensing can take up to fourteen business days. That's why the timeline above asks you to upload with a locked release date by week 6, not week 1: it leaves room for review, ingestion, and a correction if something comes back rejected.
Download the release timeline checklist as a CSV to assign owners, dependencies, and statuses in your own working file.
Where release timelines actually break
Most release plans don't fail because nobody made a list. They fail in a handful of predictable places:
- No single owner per task. When a task is "the team's" job, it's nobody's job. Every row needs one name.
- Distribution uploaded too late. Waiting until week 2 to upload leaves no buffer for a rejected file, a metadata correction, or a slow manual review.
- Artwork treated as decoration instead of a dependency. Playlist pitches, press assets, and social content all wait on final artwork — a late approval delays everything downstream of it.
- No plan for release day itself. Without a short list of who checks what and when, small issues (a broken link, a missing credit) go unnoticed for hours.
- No follow-up after day one. The 30-day window is where you learn whether the release actually worked — skipping it means repeating the same mistakes next time.
How MNGR fits into this timeline
A shared doc or spreadsheet can hold this table for one release. It gets harder to keep current once a date shifts, a task depends on another, or you're tracking this release alongside shows and money. In MNGR, a release record carries its pipeline stage, release date, distributor, and a launch checklist where each task has an owner and a status, and those same release dates sit on the same operational calendar as show holds and task deadlines — so a slipped mix date is visible on the same view as everything else due that week, not buried in a separate document. The independent-artist workflow turns the dependencies above into a short, owned task queue you review weekly alongside shows, contacts, and finance, so a release doesn't take over the rest of the operation while it's active.
Copy the table above for your next release, assign real owners and dates, and keep it in one place you'll actually check every week.