Category: Distribution

If you’ve recorded a song, mixed it, mastered it, and it’s sitting on your laptop, you’re not done. It still needs to get from your hard drive onto Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Boomplay, Audiomack, TikTok, and the dozen other places people actually listen. That path is called distribution, and it’s not as complicated as it sounds. Here’s how it actually works, specifically for Kenyan artists.

You cannot upload directly to Spotify yourself

This trips people up. You can’t just open Spotify, click “upload,” and put your song there. Spotify doesn’t accept uploads from artists directly (there’s a small beta exception in a few countries, but Kenya isn’t one of them yet). Same for Apple Music. Same for most of the big platforms.

You need a middleman called a distributor. The distributor takes your song, formats it correctly, sends it to every streaming service, collects the royalties, and pays you. In return, they either charge a fee or take a percentage.

Distributors you’ll actually consider

There are maybe twenty distributors worth considering. Four or five are the household names.

• RouteNote: free tier keeps 85% of royalties for you; upgrades to 100% for a flat yearly fee. No upload cap. This is what we use at Studio 56.
• DistroKid: flat yearly fee (starts around USD 23 a year), unlimited uploads, 100% royalties. Popular globally.
• TuneCore: pay per song per year. Not great for prolific artists.
• CD Baby: one time fee per song, lifetime distribution. Decent but the UI is dated.
• Amuse: free tier but with delays and fewer features.
• Ditto: subscription, similar to DistroKid.

For a first release, RouteNote’s free tier is the no-risk option. You keep most of your money, pay nothing up front, and if you grow you can upgrade.

The actual steps

Once you’ve signed up through the link above (it connects your account to ours, so we can see your releases and help you troubleshoot uploads, rejected metadata, or Spotify for Artists claiming):

1. Create your artist profile. Name, bio, photo. This profile is what shows up on Spotify, Apple Music, and everywhere else.
2. Prepare your cover art. Square, minimum 3000 by 3000 pixels, RGB JPEG or PNG, no more than 20 MB. No logos of streaming services, no URLs, no explicit watermarks.
3. Upload your track. WAV, 16 bit or 24 bit, 44.1 kHz. MP3 is accepted by some distributors but WAV is the standard and worth the extra storage.
4. Fill in metadata. Song title, version (original, clean, instrumental), primary artist, featured artists, songwriters, genre, language, explicit or clean, release date. Get this right the first time. Editing after release can take weeks.
5. Pick your release date. Most platforms need at least 7 days lead time. If you want to pitch for editorial playlists on Spotify, go 3 to 4 weeks ahead.
6. Submit and wait. Usually 24 to 72 hours for everything to go live, depending on the distributor and the platforms.

Stuff nobody tells you

ISRC codes: every track needs a unique code. Most distributors generate these for you. Don’t pay for them separately unless you know what you’re doing.

Spotify for Artists: after your first song is live, claim your artist profile at artists.spotify.com. This lets you edit your bio, pitch songs to editorial playlists, and see your listener data. Do it the day your song goes live.

Pitching to playlists: Spotify editorial playlists are where streaming money happens. Pitch at least 7 days before release through Spotify for Artists. One pitch per song. Be specific in the description about genre, mood, and influences.

Pre-saves: distributors and tools like Linkfire and Feature.fm let you create pre-save links you can share on Instagram and WhatsApp before release. Spotify’s algorithm notices artists with pre-save activity. Use it.

What it costs, total

Using RouteNote’s free tier and not buying any premium services, your total cost to get one song on every streaming platform globally is zero Kenyan shillings. You give up 15% of royalties, which on a first release is usually a small absolute number. If you cross a certain threshold of monthly listeners, upgrading to premium (pay the flat fee, keep 100%) makes sense. RouteNote walks you through this inside the dashboard.

How we help at Studio 56

We record, mix, and master your song in-house. Once you’re happy with the final file, we’ll walk you through the RouteNote signup in person right there at the studio. Bring your laptop or use one of ours; we’ll help you upload your first release, set your artist profile, fill the metadata correctly, and claim your Spotify for Artists page before you leave. You don’t have to figure it out alone at home.

Use the link above when you sign up. It ties your RouteNote account to our studio’s dashboard, which is what lets us follow up on your releases, help fix metadata issues before they reach Spotify, and step in quickly if a track gets held up in moderation.

Once your song is up, come back for the next one. The artists who release consistently (say, one song every 4 to 6 weeks for a year) are the ones who build actual audiences. One-off releases rarely move the needle.

Ready to record the next one? Book a session.