Let’s say you upload a new single to DistroKid, and you set the release date to one week from today. Then on your release date you tell everyone: “My new single just dropped, listen now on Spotify!“
But wait, there’s a problem: streaming services release new music in each country according to its timezone. So if your single goes live at midnight in London, it won’t be available to listeners in New York City for another 5 hours.
This made sense in the days of physical record stores. You wanted your digital release to hit at the same time as your CD. So if your album dropped on Tuesday, people in Japan naturally got their hands on it before people in Austria. That’s because record stores open shop in the morning. And Tuesday morning in Tokyo happens seven hours earlier than Tuesday morning in Vienna.
But this makes no sense in today’s streaming world.
When you post a photo to Instagram, it’s available to everyone worldwide immediately. It would be dumb if people in later timezones had to wait seven hours before they could see it.
For the first time, it’s now possible for artists and record labels to schedule a synchronized global release using DistroKid—with music going live in every country at the exact same time.
Behind the scenes, the timezone offset of every country is calculated. And then a specific release-time is set for each country, based on that country’s easternmost timezone. An example would be France at 10:00am, UK at 9:00am, US at 4:00am, etc.
Sounds tricky, but it’s not. We made it super easy. When you upload, just specify:
- Your desired release date
- What time you want it to go live in New York, USA (we’ll do all our calculations based on US Eastern Time)
You can pick any time, not just midnight. So 10am is okay. So is 5:30pm. Or whenever.
Scheduling a synchronized global release is exclusive to DistroKid and available today, for free, to all DistroKid members with Musician Plus or Ultimate plans. It only works for Spotify currently, but we plan on bringing it to more streaming services in the future.
Hope you enjoy!
Please check out DistroKid’s other firsts, including HyperFollow, Splits, credits and liner notes, lyrics delivery, and more.
