Welcome to Freecords' Music Distribution Guidelines! Please follow these guidelines to ensure your music meets our standards and those of our partner platforms for a successful release.
Make sure your music is original and complies with intellectual property rights!
Your music must be original or you must have the proper rights and licenses. Distributors and streaming platforms require legal ownership before they accept your release.
Avoid any services or practices that inflate stream counts artificially. This can lead to removal of your music and harm your profile.
Fully AI-generated tracks are no longer accepted due to fraud risk. Please note that we will ban this content retroactively even if it passes the initial automatic AI check-up.
• Featuring Artists: Use “(feat. Artist Name)” or “(with Artist Name)” in lowercase inside brackets.
• Remixes: Include clear remix info (like “Extended Mix”). Provide the original license for remixes.
• Covers: Title must show it’s a cover (e.g., “Song Name (Original Artist Cover)”) and submit mechanical rights.
• Classical Works: Format with work name, key, catalogue/opus, and movement info.
Accurate and consistent metadata (titles, artist names, credits) helps platforms like Apple Music present your music correctly. (info.xposuremusic.com)
• Use square, high-quality artwork free of watermarks, logos, URLs, and misleading elements.
• For singles, include the song title or artist name on the artwork.
• Albums may also show the release title.
• Minimum resolution: 1000x1000 pixels (3000x3000 pixels recommended for Apple Music and other DSPs).
• Use high-quality formats with a minimum of 320 kbps bitrate (WAV or FLAC recommended).
• Avoid long silence before or after the track – tracks with over 15 seconds of silence on either end are not eligible for distribution.
• Tracks must be at least 60 seconds long and not exceed typical platform limits.
• Audio should be clean and mastered for streaming quality.
• Music must be appropriate and comply with platform content policies. Hate speech, explicit harmful content, or pornographic material is not accepted.
• Non-musical content (podcasts, audiobooks) and pure ambient/soundscape/noise recordings without musical structure are not eligible.
• Karaoke tracks are not eligible.
Apple Music technical requirements are slightly stricter than those of other DSPs. To meet these requirements and ensure fast approval, you must:
• Provide accurate metadata (track titles, artists, album titles, release date, ISRC codes).
• Follow formatting standards so your release appears correctly across Apple Music and the iTunes Store.
• Apple’s QA may reject releases with poor metadata, low-quality audio, or incorrect artwork. (itunespartner.apple.com)
Following these guidelines, along with Apple-aligned standards, helps your music get approved faster and appear correctly on all streaming platforms.