What Run is, and how distribution works here
Run puts your releases on the stores worldwide, checks them before they ship, and brings streams and earnings back into your workspace.
Run distributes your music worldwide. Build a release in your workspace, submit it for checks and review, then follow its delivery to the stores. The same workspace brings together your catalog, analytics and earnings.
To get started, set up your account and follow the first-release checklist. AI-assisted and fully AI-generated music are welcome with disclosure.
You keep your masters. The agreement you accept is non-exclusive, so you can leave and take your catalog with you. Run charges a subscription and keeps a share of what the stores pay for your recordings: on either paid plan you keep 92% of it, and on Free you keep 70%. Publishing, live, merchandise and sync never pass through Run at all. See Plans and what they include and Your royalty split.
Run is also your single point of contact. Nobody further down the chain deals with you directly, so questions, problems and takedowns all go through your workspace.
Where your music goes
Every release goes to the major stores: Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Deezer, Tidal, TikTok, Instagram and Facebook, SoundCloud, Pandora, Beatport, iHeartRadio, Audiomack, Napster and NetEase Cloud Music, among others.
Two things are worth knowing before your first submission.
- Worldwide only. Run does not collect per-territory availability, so a release goes out everywhere. There is no country picker to fill in and nothing to get wrong.
- Every store is on by default. You can switch individual stores off before you submit. Content ID, the fingerprint networks run by YouTube and Meta, is the exception: it stays off unless you opt in and confirm you own the recording outright. See Stores and Content ID.
How a release travels
- Draft. You create the release and fill it in over as many sittings as you like. Drafts are the only editable state, and nothing leaves Run while a release is a draft. See Create a release.
- Submit. You confirm you own or control everything on the release, and it locks.
- Checks. Automated checks run first: the metadata, the audio file itself, the cover, and content matching that compares each track against music already released. See What review checks.
- Review. Every release that clears the automated checks goes to a person, including any flags. If it comes back, use the reasons to fix it and submit again. See Rejection reasons.
- Delivery. Once approved, the release goes to the stores in under 24 hours. Delivery can happen ahead of a scheduled release date.
- Live. Stores confirm separately. The release page shows their delivery states; store publication can take longer.
That last step is the one Run cannot put a clock on. Delivery is the part Run controls. What each store does with a delivery after that is its own process: some publish within hours, some take days, and none of them tells us in advance. Tracking delivery explains what each state on the page means.
What comes back
Analytics. Streams, listeners, saves, skips, shares and completion rate, broken down by country, age and gender. Platform reporting covers Spotify and Apple.
Earnings. Reported for each reporting period as the platforms report them, and broken down by release, track, store and territory as far as the stores’ own reports go, with a statement for each period and a CSV export. See How earnings work.
Payouts. Your share of those earnings is paid out to you every month through Talentir, our payout provider, in the currency and by the method you choose. See Getting paid.
All three follow the stores’ own reporting, not Run’s. A release that went live this week will not have a statement this week, and your first payout usually arrives around three to four months after your first release goes live, then monthly after that.
What Run expects from you
Disclose AI use in the artwork, recording and songwriting, and credit at least one person whose contribution is not fully AI. If your track uses a real person’s voice with permission, send their written consent in a support request linked to the release. The full rules are in the AI policy and Prohibited content.
The other expectation is rights. You are stating that the recording and the song behind it are yours to release, or that you hold the paperwork that lets you release them. Covers, samples and remixes are all welcome with the right document attached: see Covers, remixes and samples.
Onboarding, step by step covers setting the account up, and Your first release is the shortest correct path from there.