How to Release Music with RouteNote Free Distribution in 8 Steps
RouteNote puts a release in stores for nothing upfront and keeps 15% of what it earns. The fee is the easy part. The work is the metadata, the rights behind every store you tick, and a moderation queue that runs in working days, not minutes.
The short version
Open the account, add a payment method that accepts US dollars, and pick a plan for that one release: Free at 85% of net revenue, or Premium from $10 with 100% and a $9.99 renewal each year. Upload with an ISRC and UPC, choose only the stores your rights cover, submit 21 to 23 working days before the date you want, then watch the dashboard for Action Needed. Payments land between the 15th and the 20th once the balance passes $50.
Step 1: Open the account and set the payout before the music
Signing up takes minutes and lands you on the Free plan. The setting worth doing on day one is the payout, because money you earn in the first months cannot leave the platform until two things line up: a payment method attached to the account, and $50 in cleared earnings. The payment cycle starts on the 15th of each month and is usually finished by the 20th, which is a calendar fact you want to know before you plan a release, not after.
PayPal is the practical option, and it has to be able to receive US dollars. That is not a default in every territory, so open PayPal and check the currency setting yourself instead of assuming the account was set up for it. RouteNote covers the rest in the support article on payment dates, including what to do if the 20th passes without a transfer.
Step 2: Choose a plan for this release, not for your career
The Free plan takes $0.00 upfront and pays you 85% of the net revenue RouteNote collects. The other 15% covers storage, delivery and support. Premium swaps the commission for a fee on the release itself: $10 for a single of one track, $20 for an EP of 2 to 6 tracks, $30 for an album of 7 to 18, and $45 above that. Every Premium release carries a $9.99 renewal each year for storage, admin and maintenance. On Premium you keep 100% of the streaming and download revenue.
The decision is per release and it can be revisited. A track can start on Free and be upgraded later, so nothing about the first choice is permanent. RouteNote also lists a third option called All Access at custom pricing for artists who need more than either model gives them.
My own rule, written after watching a lot of catalogue sit still: put the first release on Free, because a new artist is paying for distribution before anyone has heard the music. Once a release has proved it streams, paying $10 to keep every cent of it is cheap. The full arithmetic of that trade is in the post on what the quotes leave out, including where the break-even point actually falls.
Both price lists are on RouteNote's pricing page, and the support article on cost spells out what is not charged for.
Step 3: Build the metadata before you touch the audio upload
An ISRC identifies a recording and a UPC identifies a release. RouteNote issues both for free during upload, and it also accepts codes you already own, which matters when a track has been out before: stores use those numbers to connect a recording to the artist page it already belongs to, and RouteNote's switching guide asks for the same ISRC and UPC when a release moves from another distributor for exactly that reason.
Get the credit lines right, because they are the ones a moderation team sends back. For a cover, the C line carries the original performing artist and the P line carries whoever is playing on this release. Multiple covers in one release take comma separated names in the composition field. The composer field credits the original writer, and if there are lyrics the original lyricist goes there too. RouteNote covers the field-by-field version in the cover formatting article.
Then treat the title as a search field. A cover needs the work it covers, the treatment, and the artist, in that order, because that is how a listener types it into a store. Artist names must match across every release or the catalogue splits into two profiles. Genres and languages are drop-downs with real consequences, since a release filed in the wrong genre can be invisible to the store pages that rely on it.
Step 4: Send only to the stores your rights cover
Stores are chosen per release, which is useful when a release cannot legally reach all of them. RouteNote's site claims coverage of 95% of the market across more than 50 partner services, and a single release does not have to use all 50. Ticking everything is the default most people take, and it is the wrong default for a cover.
Covers are the case to slow down for. Spotify, Deezer, Pandora, iHeartRadio, Saavn, Nuuday, Anghami, Tidal, Lissen and KKBox accept a cover without a mechanical licence. Anything outside that list needs a licence, which RouteNote offers through a partner, and without it the territories of the United States, Canada, Mexico, India and Pakistan have to be excluded in Manage Stores. Korean services (Melon, Bugs!, Flo, Vibe and Genie) need written permission from the original artist, with no workaround.
One more line worth knowing before you spend a weekend on a soundalike: stores with content recognition, along with Amazon, Pandora and iTunes, reject releases built to sound almost identical to an existing one. A cover played in your own style is fine. A cover designed to pass as the original is not.
The release pages on this site show the result of that thinking, since almost everything in the catalogue is a cover of a known theme. Sugar Plum Fairy Music Box Lofi, Harry Potter Theme Music Box and Romantic K-Drama Music Box each carry the store links that were actually cleared.
Step 5: Work backwards from 21 to 23 working days
Moderation is the part of the process nobody plans for. RouteNote's support hub, in an article updated on 26 October 2026, quotes approval within 21 to 23 working days from Monday to Friday, and warns that it is longer than usual because of submission volume. Releases containing AI-generated or AI-assisted content may take longer again.
After approval the same article gives the rest of the chain: the distribution team sends the release to your chosen stores within 24 hours, and full ingestion can take 7 to 14 days after the approval date. A sales start date later than that estimate is respected, so the clean move is to set the date you want and let the queue catch up to it.
A worked example using the article's own numbers. Submit on Sunday 1 November 2026 and 21 to 23 working days lands between Monday 30 November and Wednesday 2 December. Add 7 to 14 days of ingestion and the release is live somewhere between 7 and 16 December. If you want it live before a holiday playlist season, that means submitting in October, not the week you finish the master.
Do not plan the release around the best case. The queue is a queue: an artist who submits on a Friday has lost a weekend before anything else happens, and an artist who submits a release with a licence file missing has lost the same weekend twice.
Step 6: Read the dashboard as a queue, not a progress bar
Action Needed means the release is waiting on you, not on RouteNote. There are two versions of that. Either the upload is unfinished and still needs to go to moderation, or the release has been sent back with a comment explaining what has to change. Both look identical in a list of releases, which is why people wait weeks on a release that was never submitted.
Open the release, read the moderation comments, make the edit, and press the button at the bottom that sends it back. Replies in the comment thread, or an email to moderation@routenote.com, both work when the comment is unclear. The Action Needed article is the plain version of this, and it is worth reading once before the first upload so the rejection email does not arrive as a surprise.
Step 7: Know what an edit after approval restarts
Changes to an approved release go to update moderation automatically. The release stays approved while the changes wait, and RouteNote's current estimate is review by the end of the next working day from Monday to Friday, then around 7 to 14 days for stores to reflect them. That is much faster than the first submission, which is why it is tempting to keep editing.
There is one trap in it: editing within 24 hours of the approval date can temporarily halt distribution while the changes are reviewed again. A release that goes live with the wrong artwork is a bad outcome, but a release that stalls because someone fixed a typo the morning after approval is worse. Check twice before the upload, once before approval, and then leave it alone.
Step 8: Run payments and splits on a monthly rhythm
The balance clears between the 15th and the 20th, and nothing moves below $50. Revenue sharing works on a different clock: RouteNote applies 15% first and then divides what remains, so a 50/50 split between two artists pays 42.5% to each and 15% to RouteNote. Requests have to be in before the 20th to apply to the next cycle, and every collaborator needs their own account for the split to run automatically.
For anyone doing this with a recurring collaborator, the useful habit is a fixed check on the 19th: confirm splits, confirm the payment method, confirm the release list. That short routine is the difference between a first payout in January and a first payout in March.
Questions the eight steps raise
Is RouteNote distribution really free?
Yes, at the point of upload. There is no charge for content ID, for adding a release to new partner stores, or for keeping music online, and the Free plan pays 85% of net revenue instead of asking for a fee. The cost is a 15% commission, which is a different shape of expense rather than no expense at all.
Do I keep the rights to my music?
You do. RouteNote states that artists and labels keep 100% ownership and rights, and that the relationship is non-exclusive, so the same track can go out through a second distributor at the same time. Duplicate releases on two distributors is a different problem, covered in the cost post.
How long until my music is on Spotify?
Start with 21 to 23 working days of moderation, add 24 hours for the send, then 7 to 14 days for stores to ingest. Roughly six to eight weeks from submission to a full store listing, and longer if the release needs a fix during moderation.
Can I move a free release to Premium later?
Yes. The plan belongs to the release, not the account, and upgrades are offered per release. Cancelling a Premium renewal lets the release fall back to the Free plan, which RouteNote presents as a normal choice rather than a downgrade to avoid.
Can I release a cover song with free distribution?
Yes, as long as the territories match the licence you hold. Ten partner services take covers without a mechanical licence, and everything else needs one or a territory exclusion. The release page for Harry Potter Theme Music Box shows what a cleared cover release looks like from the listener's side.
