Digital Distribution Setup FAQ

New releases can be created in the Kartel Digital Portal. You can login to the Digital Portal here: https://login.kartelmusicgroup.com/login/. Begin the process by clicking the button marked +CREATE in the top right of your Kartel Digital Portal dashboard.

You can use the Kartel Digital Portal to create individual tracks, singles with multiple tracks (b-sides, Spotify waterfall singles), EPs, albums, digital boxsets, and any other type of digital release.

We recommend uploading all assets a minimum of five (5) weeks ahead of release.

Yes, absolutely. However, to have access to all pitching services and to have your release make all global pitching deadlines across DSPs, we need the full 5 weeks ahead of release and recommend uploading as far in advance as you can. Short lead submissions are possible for our DSP team to facilitate, but you may not benefit from the full pitching lead time, and this may impact playlisting opportunities at DSPs.

It is possible to release tracks with about a week’s lead time to make sure everything has mapped across all DSPs. However, we prefer to have at least two weeks at the very minimum to make sure the track is included in Release Radar playlists on Spotify.

Upon logging into your Kartel Digital Portal, click the +CREATE button in the top right. We recommend creating and completing the Artist profile first.

Next, create the individual tracks for your release by selecting the Asset option from the +CREATE options.

Finally, create your release Product from the same drop-down menu.

An Asset contains all the track level information for each song on a release. This can be any and all of the audio file, the track title, the ISRC, the writers and performers for the song, and so on.

A Product defines the format of the release (single, EP, album, etc). The information here relates to the actual release and can include the title, the barcode, the catalogue number, and more.

You may wonder why you need to create an Asset and a Product for a one track single. All the DSPs receive and process information about releases and the individual tracks within them in the same manner and so this is industry standard. An Asset cannot contain the same information as a Product, so they need to be created differently, even if your release is just one track.

Creating your end product (likely your Album or EP) first, then building Singles from the existing assets is our preferred best practice. It means you’ve set up and delivered the final product as well as the track assets which form it, and you can then simply ‘add existing assets’ when creating your singles as/when you need to.

Note: Creating your Album first helps with Apple Music / iTunes setup and allocation of immediate and future Instant Grat downloads. This is why it is our preferred best practice.

UPC stands for Universal Product Code. It’s exactly the same as the barcode on the back of your CD or vinyl and serves the same purpose - identifying your release to any retailer/DSP in order for them to track and report back the sale or stream.

Please note: to avoid confusion with differing territory specific terms and the feedback we’ve had from clients, Kartel uses the word ‘barcode’ over UPC across all communication.

ISRC stands for International Standard Recording Code and is a unique digital fingerprint for a track, allowing it to be recognised when streamed, sold, or played on radio.

Tracks can be submitted through the Kartel Digital Portal without either a barcode or ISRCs, and Support will add those on product set-up and delivery. However, if you have your own of either of these, please input them when creating a Product.

The Kartel Digital Portal automatically timezone adjusts for each product, so leave at the default setting and it will release at midnight in each respective timezone. If you require a specifically timed release, please email support@kartelmusicgroup.com to discuss this.

Please note, some of the Dance platforms (eg. Beatport) are manually updated from their HQ timezone, so won’t automatically go live in your timezone at midnight. We usually see these updated from 3pm GMT onwards on day of release.

Once you’ve hit submit on your completed Product, it gets sent to our Support team who then check it over before either approving or rejecting the submission. If approved, the release will enter our pipeline for delivery to the DSPs.

If our Support team rejects the submission, you will receive notification of this and be provided reasons why and how to rectify the issue. If you have follow-up questions on the rejection, please contact support@kartelmusicgroup.com

Yes, but once a release has been approved, changes can only be implemented by our Support team.

The following changes can be made after submission:

• Contributor and publisher information
• Release date
• Primary and featuring artist changes
• Versions and spelling amends to metadata

Once an Asset is published and delivered, we cannot amend its Title or ISRC so make sure it is absolutely correct before submitting for review.

Letter cases need to be submitted as they are to appear on DSPs. If your track is submitted in lower case, it will be delivered that way.

If the following changes are requested, we recommend creating a brand new product (this will require any pitching already undertaken to be re-pitched and may affect performance at DSPs):

• Artwork change
• Audio file change

Note: Any changes within 14 days of release can increase the possibility of certain DSPs not updating correctly. We have found this to be the case with YouTube in particular. Please notify support@kartelmusicgroup.com as far in advance as possible if you would like to make any changes to your release.

Once your product has successfully been ingested you can request a smart link from our support team. For more information and best practices on how to use smart links please reach out to support@kartelmsuicgroup.com. 

Waterfall Strategy is an increasingly utilised best practice with Spotify singles. As new singles are released as part of an album campaign, they can, and should, include the previous singles as part of the product. Think of it as you’re including them as B-Sides to your digital single release.

Every time a new single is released, it now can serve a secondary function of giving a streaming boost to the other tracks released before it. This helps trigger Spotify's algorithms and can mean your releases stand more chance of inclusion into radio and personalised playlists such as Discover Weekly.

Yes. This means you need to create two different Products for each single release. One Waterfall single for Spotify, with all the previous album campaign single Assets included, and one standard individual single for all the remaining DSPs. You will need to indicate when submitting the Products which is the Spotify only single and which is the all other DSPs single.

No, you can use the same artwork file across all DSPs. The new track is still the focus, and so single artwork doesn’t need to differentiate across DSPs.

Yes. Any more than 6 tracks will automatically be counted as an album product and sit in that section on your Spotify profile.

If the cumulative run time of your Waterfall single is more than 30 minutes, Spotify will automatically count it as an album product and it will sit in the album section of your Spotify profile.

Yes. As your Waterfall single is a different Product to your standard single, it will require its own barcode and catalogue number.

To add lyrics to release on Spotify, you will need to do this via Musixmatch. If you have any other questions, please reach out to support@kartelmusicgroup.com.

Yes they are. How your album product is set up for the iTunes Store continues to affect your album and single appearance on the Apple Music streaming platform?

An iTunes album download and an Apple Music album streaming product are essentially the same ‘product root’, but spread across two different platforms owned by the same company.

When you set up an album for pre-order on iTunes, any singles released in advance of the album can be selected to be Instant Grat tracks, which means they are free to download for any customer who has pre-ordered the album.

Because the product roots are linked, it means your single download on iTunes and your streaming single on Apple Music will pull through and use the album artwork from iTunes rather than its own artwork.

You can choose to do this, but for a lot of complicated reasons relating to reporting of sales/streams of the tracks, creating the Instant Grats for album pre-order customers, and also customer confusion with having too many different items available, we strongly advise to follow our best practice suggestion. It looks neater to have only one version of your track on platforms during a pre-order period, and ultimately it’s better that traffic gets directed towards your album or EP product.

Instant Grat tracks are limited to 50% of an album. If you want to release more than 50% of the album as singles in advance of the release, you will need to nominate which tracks are utilised as Instant Grats.

We are able to take care of this for you. Please email support@kartelmusicgroup.com and supply the following:

• .mov video file in 1920x1080 format
• 1920x1080px format thumbnail with no black borders
• 3000x3000px relevant single artwork

We will also need a completed video specific metadata template (inc .unique video ISRC and barcode) filled in, which we will be happy to send to you in advance.

Please note, there is a £25 encoding cost related to each Apple Music video upload, which will be recouped from royalties. We will ask you to confirm this amount before proceeding.

Please allow a minimum lead time of 7 working days for the video to encode and go live.

Pre-order singles for iTunes are not often requested, but we are able to set them up for you. Please request this when setting up your release on our backend.

Yes, we can submit your motion art assets to Apple Music. Please reach out to support@kartelmusicgroup.com for more information on how to upload Apple Motion and Artist Page assets. 

Yes you can. However, this delivery doesn’t happen automatically given that our pipeline to the DSPs covers every genre. As such, we need to deliver to Dance platforms manually.

To do this, we first need to ensure your record label is created and listed with the Dance platforms. We can do this hand-in-hand with setting up the release, but it means there are different setup lead times depending on the status of your label.

If your label is already setup with Kartel and the Dance platforms, we just need the standard minimum setup and delivery time of 5 weeks before release.

If your label is brand new to Kartel and this is your first release with the Dance platforms, we will require a minimum of 6 weeks to create the label profile and setup your release.

If your label is already listed on the Dance platforms and we need to move your catalogue over to be Kartel distributed, then we will require a minimum of 8 weeks before your first release.

Please email support@kartelmusicgroup.com for all Dance platform label listing queries ASAP after signing with us or before your first Dance genre specific release.

The Dance platforms can only list labels with releases coming from one distributor. If your catalogue is remaining with a previous distributor, we will need to either have them re-list your catalogue label profile as Your Label (Back Catalogue) or a variation of that or we will have to list your new label profile as Your Label (New) or a variation of that. Please email support@kartelmusicgroup.com ASAP so we can begin this process.

We'll need the following information from you to set up a label for you:

• Label Name:
• Genres:
• About (few sentences):
• Label Logo (2000x2000px):

Genres are very important with the Dance platforms. The onus is upon you to provide us with the correct specific genres your label operates within.

This needs to be done manually by our team. Please email support@kartelmusicgroup.com with the following, before submitting your video, to allow us to create your channel:

Profile picture (5000x5000px) Banner image (2560x1440px, with minimum safe area for text and logos of 1546x423px) About section description Facebook / Instagram / Twitter links

Please first request a metadata spreadsheet from support@kartelmusicgroup.com. Then email us with the below a minimum of 2 weeks before you would like your video live:

• 1920x1080px video in .mp4 or .mov
• 1920x1080px thumbnail image
• Metadata form submitted with unique video ISRC and barcode (you can request our team to generate these for you)
• Audio ISRC
• Video credits
• VEVO Slate pitch. Please see our FAQ DSP pitching section for further details

YouTube is the video platform which we all know and love, encompassing all manner of video uploads, not just music related ones. YouTube Music is a DSP in its own right and so takes delivery of audio via our DSP distribution pipeline.

Yes, your music will be placed on system generated Topic Channels on YouTube after being distributed to YouTube Music. The videos will display the Product front cover over the top of the delivered audio.

Unfortunately not. Topic videos stemming from YouTube Music are the backbone of YouTube’s Content ID system, which is what allows YouTube to track and monetise all usage (official and/or user generated) across the platform. We can’t not deliver Topic videos, as without it, we are unable to monetise your content and report YouTube royalties to you.

Unfortunately, there is no way to move the Topic video over to your user channel. However, you are able to make playlists with those videos so they appear on your user channel.

A video product is regarded as separate to the audio within it. Our role is to claim revenue against the audio in the video via the Content ID. Therefore, you will need to upload your video yourself.

Only tracks that have been ingested via our portal can be whitelisted on YouTube. In order to whitelist audio from a video, please supply us with the exact YouTube video URL as well as the audio ISRC to whitelist from that video URL to support@kartelmusicgroup.com.

Yes. All tracks uploaded via the portal will be ingested to Soundcloud. Please note, tracks will upload to the Soundcloud page of the first artist set up on the product in the portal. If you would like to upload to a different artist page or label page, you will have to do this manually. Please make sure you have requested for additional accounts to be whitelisted.

If you're using Soundcloud to send out tracks ahead of release, premiering a Soundcloud link on a media platform or uploading tracks to your own label page please email support@kartelmusicgroup.com with the Soundcloud account URL and ISRCs which you require whitelisting.

Please email support@kartelmusicgroup.com with a URL to the track on Soundcloud and a URL to the account you would like it uploaded to.

The best way to set up a pre-release on TikTok and Youtube Shorts is to set up a stand alone product for those platforms only with an early release date. You can use the same original track if the desired pre-release sound to appear on Tik Tok and YouTube Shorts is 60 seconds. If you would like to learn more about how to pre-release your music please email support@kartelmusicgroup.com.