The release-week calendar, built only from deadlines the platforms publish
No invented best practice. This is a working calendar assembled from the pitch deadlines, eligibility rules and specs that Spotify, Apple and Deezer publish on their own support pages, with the date each was checked.
Most release calendars circulating online are someone's habit dressed up as a rule. This one contains only dates that a platform publishes and enforces. Everything else is left out.
Day −21 to −14: delivery
Deliver audio and artwork to your distributor. You need it to reach the services more than seven days before release, and distributors are not instant, so two to three weeks is the safe window. Decide your focus track now, because Spotify only lets you pitch one song at a time.
Day −12: the Apple pitch
Apple asks for a pitch at least ten days before release for full consideration, and only takes pitches at seven days as "late adds". Setting your internal deadline at twelve days covers Apple and leaves room for the others. You need an Admin or Marketing Manager role on the Apple Music Connect account.
Day −7: Spotify and Deezer
Spotify: pitch the one song, at least seven days out. This is also what puts the track into your followers' Release Radar, regardless of whether an editor acts on it.
Deezer: pitch and music both seven days out. Note that Deezer's tool is available to label and provider accounts only, so this is a question for your distributor rather than something you can do yourself.
Day −3: Canvas and the assets that have a spec
Upload the Canvas: three to eight seconds, 9:16, 720 to 1080 pixels tall, MP4 or JPG, no singing, no rapid cuts. If the release is a new album or EP and you are above 3,000 monthly listeners, the Countdown Page can be created any time before release; it becomes available within 72 hours of metadata delivery.
Day 0 and after
Release day itself has no platform deadline attached to it, which is worth sitting with. The one documented thing that happens automatically: Spotify pushes a notification to everyone who pre-saved through a Countdown Page and adds the release to their library.
The single documented post-release deadline belongs to Deezer, which accepts pitches up to 14 days after the release date. If the record is already out and nothing was pitched, that is the one door still open.
What is deliberately not here
Posting schedules, optimal upload times, follower targets and content calendars. None of those come from a platform's published rules, and where we cannot source a number we would rather leave the row empty.
Source
support.spotify.comA number here out of date? Tell us and we will re-check it against the source.
