What our review checks
The automated checks every release runs at submit, the difference between a hard failure and a flag, and why a person approves every release before it ships.
After you submit, Run checks the metadata, audio, artwork and matches against released music. Every release that clears these checks still needs a person’s approval before delivery.
- Hard failure: the release returns to you with reasons. Reopen it, correct them and submit again.
- Flag: the finding goes to the reviewer, who decides whether anything needs to change.
Read the current findings on your release page. Common rejection reasons explains how to fix each one.
The metadata check
This one reads every piece of text that travels with your music: titles, artist credits, genre, language, track order, dates, the barcode and ISRCs, the people you credited, the publishing splits and the AI disclosures.
It checks the following:
- Wording stores refuse. Search bait in a title (“type beat”, “official audio”), karaoke and “originally performed by” versions, “in the style of” phrasing, and “AI cover” or “AI voice” versions of somebody else’s work.
- Credit lines that will land wrong. At least one main artist, at most 4, nobody credited twice, and any artist who told us they already have store pages must have one connected. Without that, a release lands on a stranger’s page or mints a duplicate one.
- Codes. The barcode and the ISRCs have to be the right shape, and neither may already belong to another release or recording in our catalogue.
- Complete credits. Every track needs roles covering performance, songwriting and production, and at least one person whose contribution is not fully AI. Publishing splits, if present, must total exactly 100.
- Consistent answers. The checks flag contradictions such as an explicit setting that disagrees with a title, AI-involved credits beside two None disclosures, nearly identical artist names or a release title already used by the same artist.
The full rules are in metadata rules and credits and splits.
The audio and artwork check
Each master is decoded and measured. Some of it is a hard gate, taken from what the stores themselves accept: a lossless file (WAV at 16, 24 or 32-bit, or 16-bit FLAC), 44.1 kHz to 192 kHz, stereo, at least one second long, no larger than 2 GB. A file that misses one of those comes straight back.
The rest is measured and flagged rather than blocked: true peak above -1 dBTP, loudness far above the level stores normalise to (around -14 LUFS), more than two seconds of silence at the start or end, two identical channels (a mono recording inside a stereo file), and a spectrum that looks like it was made from an MP3 or AAC. That last one is a net, not a proof, which is exactly why it flags instead of failing.
Cover art is a hard gate: square, at least 3000 by 3000 pixels, no transparency, and readable as an image. See audio requirements and artwork requirements.
The content match
Every track is fingerprinted from a short excerpt and compared against a large catalogue of released recordings. Two kinds of match come back, and they mean different things:
- The same recording. Your file matches a master that is already out. That needs explaining, and a reviewer looks at it.
- The same composition, performed differently. This is what a legitimate cover looks like from the outside, and it is the expected result when you have declared one.
A match never rejects a release on its own. It is a flag, and a person decides between “a cover with the paperwork attached” and “somebody else’s recording”. If the scan cannot run at all, we record that it did not run rather than treating the track as cleared, so the human rights check still happens.
What you declare on the track is what makes this quick. See covers, remixes and samples.
What each outcome does
| Outcome | Your release reads | What happens next |
|---|---|---|
| At least one hard failure | Checks failed | It comes back to you with every reason listed. Reopen, fix, submit again |
| Flags only | In review | It goes to a person with the flags attached |
| Nothing found | In review | It still goes to a person: approval is what starts delivery |
| Approved | Approved | Delivery begins, and you can follow it store by store |
You receive an email when the release changes state. The release page keeps the current state and findings together, so you do not need to keep the form open. See common rejection reasons for the action each finding needs.
What the checks do not do
They do not judge your music, your genre or your artwork taste. They cannot see rights you have not declared, which is why the track questions about covers, public domain and samples matter more than they look. And they are not the stores’ own review: a store can still come back with feedback after we have delivered, which shows up on the release. See tracking delivery.