The Independent Artist Release Toolkit

Hands On Music Release Guide Package

Practical PDF guides, templates and checklists for independent artists

Releasing music independently gives you freedom, but it also means making many decisions yourself. This package brings the key information and practical tools together in one place, organised around the release process, so you can plan, release and promote your music with greater clarity, confidence and structure.

Whether you are preparing your first release or already have an established catalogue, use it as a flexible framework: choose the parts that are relevant to you and adapt them to your own circumstances.

What’s inside

• Plan your release: an 8-week release plan, a simple guide to music rights with split sheets, goal and budget setting, and distribution, metadata, ISRC and UPC.
• Prepare your materials: developing the story behind your release, private listening links, smart links and pre-saves, press releases, pitch emails and EPKs, a social media content plan and how to write a strong Spotify pitch.
• Reach your listeners: media, radio and blog outreach, safe and relevant playlist pitching, digital advertising and an advertising plan, release-week and pre-launch checklists, caption examples and a simple listening campaign.
• Learn and build: understanding your Spotify for Artists statistics, following up with contacts, measuring and improving your campaign, post-release evaluation and how to build from one release to the next.

Made to use

• Guides, templates, worksheets and checklists, with personal comments and tips from the creators throughout
• Fillable tick boxes and text fields, so you can work directly in the PDFs
• Clickable contents, bookmarks and links between sections, and a separate PDF for each section, so you can open or print just what you need
• Written for a light, airy reading experience

Who it’s for

Independent artists at any stage who want professional music-industry knowledge explained clearly, at an affordable price, without having to hire a full team. You do not need a huge budget or a perfect plan to get started.

How to use

- Keep all the PDF files together in the same folder. The links between sections open the other files by name.

- Start with 00_Start_Here_Cover_Contents.pdf: its contents page links to every section.

- Every file has a "Back to contents" link in the footer, bookmarks in the navigation pane, and fillable tick boxes and text fields.

- "FULL_Hands On Music Release Toolkit.pdf" is the complete toolkit in one file.

Tip: links between files work best in Adobe Acrobat / Acrobat Reader. Many browsers and phone viewers do not follow links to other files; in that case use the full PDF, or open the section file you want directly.