Master Check Before Release: What to Review Before You Upload
When the master comes back from the studio, it is tempting to upload it straight away. But a mistake that slips through now stays visible for a long time: a click at the end, a chorus that distorts on a phone, a typo in the title. Some of these are hard or impossible to fix once the release has been delivered. This master check covers what you can review yourself before uploading and explains which parts OGRECORDS™ also checks automatically.
The file: format, export and the edges
You need a lossless file for the upload: WAV, FLAC or AIFF. Export the master straight from the session or use the file your mastering engineer sent you. A file that was saved as an MP3 at some point does not get better by converting it back to WAV. Whatever the MP3 threw away is gone for good.
Then listen carefully to the first and last few seconds. Does the song start late because there is silence at the top? Does it end abruptly or with a click because the fade got cut off? Small things like that are easy to miss in the DAW, but everyone hears them in a playlist. Also make sure you really exported the final version and not an older bounce with a similar file name.
Loudness and true peak
Spotify normalizes the volume of songs and aims for roughly -14 LUFS. A master that is much louder simply gets turned down and often sounds flatter than one with more dynamics. You do not have to hit an exact number, but you should know where your track sits. Our free LUFS checker measures it in your browser, and our glossary explains what LUFS means.
True peak matters just as much. If the peaks sit too close to 0 dB, converting the file into the streaming services' formats can introduce distortion, even if your file sounds clean. That is why many mastering engineers leave about 1 dB of headroom. At OGRECORDS™ an automatic audio check reviews the file, loudness and true peak before every delivery. It does not replace your own ears, though.
The listening test on real devices
Do not judge the master on studio monitors alone. Most people stream through phone speakers, cheap earbuds or a car stereo. Play the track through at least two of those and listen for whether the bass disappears, whether the vocal stays clear and whether anything sounds harsh or distorted.
It helps to compare against a reference track from your genre. Match both to a similar loudness first, otherwise the louder one will always sound better. Then you can hear honestly where your master stands. Write down what you notice and make a deliberate call on whether to go back to mastering. Once delivered, the audio file usually cannot simply be swapped in the stores.
Take another look at artwork and spelling
Your cover needs to be at least 3000 × 3000 pixels as a JPG or PNG. We convert CMYK files to RGB automatically. Covers with URLs, social handles or prices get rejected. Also look at the image at thumbnail size, because that is how most apps show it. You can find all the rules in our article on store cover requirements.
Then read every piece of text letter by letter: song title, artist name, the names of any guests. If the cover shows a title, it should match the one you enter in the metadata. A mismatch between image and metadata is one of the things stores query or reject.
Metadata, credits and codes
Metadata decides where your song shows up and who gets paid for it. Every track needs at least one composer and one lyricist, and Apple Music also requires performance and production credits. Songwriters go in under their legal names, producers may use their artist names. You also state for each track and for the cover whether AI was involved and to what extent.
Every recording gets an ISRC and every release a UPC. At OGRECORDS™ we assign both automatically. If the recording has been released before, enter its existing ISRC, because the same recording keeps its code. We strip out hyphens automatically. Our glossary explains exactly what an ISRC is. Once everything checks out, the release goes to 38 stores in more than 240 territories.
Set aside half an hour for the master check before you upload at OGRECORDS™. It is less work than any fix afterwards.