How to release an EP independently

How many songs are on an EP

Each service has its own rule, and the two agree on the common case. Apple’s style guide says an album “must be identified as an EP” if it has “Four to six songs with a total running time of 30 minutes or less”, or “One to three songs with one song at least 10 minutes long and a total running time of 30 minutes or less”. Spotify’s metadata style guide says a product with “4 to 6 tracks” and “a total duration of 30 minutes or less” must be an EP, “unless the artist or label intend to release it as a Single”.

Scrolls sideways

So six songs in 30 minutes is an EP on both services. Three songs under 10 minutes each is a single on Apple, and on Spotify too unless you intend an EP. Seven or ten songs isn’t an EP under Apple’s rule, and TuneCore’s summary is that those releases “will be considered an album on iTunes”. Spotify will still take them as an EP if that’s your wish: its guide’s example reads “Even though it has 7 tracks, the artist/label prefers to present it as EP.”

Distributors restate these rules, and the wording drifts. DistroKid says “30-minutes or less” in one article and “under 30 minutes total” in another; Apple and Spotify both say 30 minutes or less, so a release of exactly 30 minutes is covered. DistroKid also says a release with 7 or more tracks “will be categorized as an Album within services”, which leaves out Spotify’s exception.

Your distributor’s form may not offer “EP” at all. TuneCore says it “does not have a product specified as an EP”, and CD Baby “treats a one-track release as a single and a release with two or more tracks as an album.” DistroKid says the number of songs you pick “will determine if you’re releasing a single, EP, or album to stores.” So Spotify’s intent rule may not reach you as a setting, though we didn’t test each form. To get “EP” on both services without relying on an exception, make it four to six songs in 30 minutes or less.

Finish the mixes before the first date

The dated plan further down only works if the mixes are done, and a late change means a new master for that song, at another $4.99 if you’re paying per track. Preparing a mix for mastering covers the checks for one song, and the free mix check flags clipping, mono phase problems, low-end issues, DC offset and silence in your browser, with no upload. For an EP, add one more: play the mixes in track order and write down any song that sounds out of place next to the others. Fix that in the mix, because the next step treats each song separately.

Master each song, and hear it first

Bounce Sessions masters each song on its own, so an EP is four to six separate masters at $4.99 each, with no subscription: $19.96 for four songs, $24.95 for five and $29.94 for six.

Hear a full master free with no account; a free account plays every song’s master before you pay for any of them. Make the account first: it gets 20 masters a day with no card, and previews without an account stop sooner. Masters you don’t buy stay playable for 30 days. Free previews take tracks up to 12 minutes, and a longer song needs a track credit or Unlimited. You pay when you want the download. Free masters go one song at a time; batches of up to 12 songs are for paid plans.

Choose the same loudness for every song, so they’re all aimed at the same target. That’s as far as it goes. Nothing in the automated service compares one song with another or balances them as a record: the pricing table says “Album mastering: no”. Play the previews back to back in track order and judge that part yourself.

If you need the songs balanced as a record, or they run into each other, that’s work for an engineer. Personal mastering takes EPs and quotes before any work starts.

Unlimited is the other way to pay: $15 a month or $99 once a year, with every master download and Release manager for every release. It costs less than per track from your fourth master in a month, so one month can cover an EP if every song is final and you download them all before the period ends. The pricing page puts the two side by side.

A dated plan for an example EP

This is what Release manager produces for an EP. We ran the plan code that’s live on the site for a made-up five-song EP with a release date of Friday 5 March 2027. The date is only an example. Every task sits a fixed number of days from release day, so use the second column to work out your own dates, or enter your date and let the planner do it.

Scrolls sideways

Those are the required tasks. In total the plan holds 81 tasks for these five songs, 68 of them required, against 24 for a single on the same date. Nearly all of the gap is per-song work: 14 of the plan’s tasks repeat for every song and 11 happen once.

One optional task exists only because this is an EP: a Spotify Countdown Page. Spotify says “Only new and original albums and EPs are eligible for Countdown Pages” and “You need at least 3,000 monthly active listeners.” The table also leaves out the other optional tasks, such as outreach and paid promotion, an Amazon Music pitch and word-synced lyrics.

Make the EP’s cover

The cover belongs to the release, so the plan dates it once, on the same day the masters are due. The album cover size guide has each service’s requirements, and the cover generator comes with Unlimited, up to 8 images per UTC day, when available. Before you call it final, check the artist name and title on the cover against what you’ll type at your distributor.

Confirm details and codes for each song

Credits and shares are a per-song job, dated a week after the masters: every writer, featured artist, producer and engineer, spelled the way each person approved, with the writer and publisher shares confirmed. Settle the track order at the same time, because you’ll need it at upload.

An EP carries a code for the release and one for each recording: the release as a product has a UPC or EAN, and each recording has its own ISRC. Your distributor can assign ISRCs when you upload, and the ISRC guide explains how they work and when a recording needs a new one. The plan’s delivery task has you copy the UPC and each ISRC once they’re assigned, and Release manager has a UPC field for the release and an ISRC field for each track.

If a song already came out as a single, sort out its ISRC before you upload. DistroKid’s advice, given for albums on its Musician Plus and Ultimate plans, is that reusing the single’s ISRC “will help preserve play counts and playlist placements, though it’s not guaranteed”.

Upload to a distributor four weeks ahead

The plan’s date for delivering the EP is four weeks before release, Fri 5 Feb 2027 in the example. That matches DistroKid and sits inside TuneCore’s range. CD Baby’s pages give different figures, and the longest is two weeks earlier than the plan.

Scrolls sideways

If you’re with CD Baby and you follow the six-week figure, the plan’s date is two weeks late. The planner won’t shift that task for you, so add your own task for the earlier date and finish the masters and cover before it.

These DistroKid details can change the plan. Choosing a future date takes Musician Plus or Ultimate; on the Musician plan, “your release will go live as soon as it’s processed”. And if one of the songs is a cover, it says to “Allow up to 14 business days before we can deliver it.”

Pitch your focus song two weeks ahead

Spotify’s pitch is for a song, not a release. “You can only pitch one song at a time. Once your pitched song goes live, you can pitch another.” And “Once a song has gone live, it’s no longer eligible for pitching.” If all five songs go live on the same day, we read that as one pitch for the EP, so pick the focus song before this date.

Spotify’s dates mean different things:

• Two weeks before, Fri 19 Feb 2027 in the example. This is advice, and it’s the date in the plan. Spotify’s New Releases page says to pitch the focus track “at least two weeks before the release date.”
• 7 days before, Fri 26 Feb 2027 in the example. This is the threshold for Release Radar: “If you pitch an unreleased song at least 7 days before release, we’ll add it to your followers’ Release Radar playlists.”

Neither is a promise of an editorial playlist: “Pitching doesn’t guarantee playlist placement.”

Apple Music’s pitch page also gives two deadlines: “at least 10 days in advance of release for full consideration” and “at least seven days in advance of release for late adds”. The plan uses the first, Tue 23 Feb 2027. Apple says the tool needs an Admin or Marketing Manager role in Apple Music Connect. If you don’t see it, our plan’s advice is to ask your distributor to submit the pitch.

On TuneCore, playlist consideration also needs your release “approved by TuneCore and processed in the stores at least two weeks prior to your release date.”

A song released ahead of the EP as a single could have its own pitch. That’s a separate release with its own dates, and we have no figures on whether it’s worth doing.

Check every song on release day

The plan has you check each song on Spotify and on Apple Music, which is ten checks for five songs, then publish the launch posts. Open every track, not only the first, and check the title, artist, cover and audio against what you delivered. On Apple Music, look for “- EP” at the end of the title. If a service is running behind, DistroKid says “Some releases take up to 2 weeks to appear everywhere.”

Keep going after release day

The plan runs for 90 days after release, and all of its dated work after release day repeats for each song: synced lyrics, composition registration, the PRO and SoundExchange follow-ups and a royalty review. For the parts of a release that aren’t specific to an EP, such as promotion and keeping costs against the plan, use the release checklist.

What Release manager doesn’t do

Release manager keeps the plan, the dates and each song’s details together. It doesn’t deliver your EP to any service, and it doesn’t collect royalties. It doesn’t submit pitches or registrations either: you do those at your distributor and the relevant services, then record what happened. Changing a date in the planner doesn’t change it at your distributor.

Your first release is free to plan. Unlimited adds every release, file references and exports, so a single ahead of the EP would be a second release.

Rules and lead times read 1 November 2026. They change, so check your distributor’s current page before you commit to a date.