Answers/Glossary/Store delivery

Glossary · Distribution

Store delivery

By Boboy Watson·Last verified August 31, 2026·Also called Delivery to stores, Ingestion, DSP delivery

Store delivery is the unglamorous step between hitting submit and your song existing on Spotify. The distributor packages your master, cover art, and metadata into each service's required format and transmits it. The service ingests the package, validates it, runs its own checks — audio quality, artwork specification, explicit flags, rights claims, duplicate detection — and schedules the release for the date you set.

Each store is a separate pipeline with its own timing and its own rejection reasons. This is why a release appears on Spotify on Tuesday and on a smaller store the following week, and why a correction you make after delivery does not propagate everywhere at once. Artwork changes and metadata fixes have to be redelivered, and some stores update on their own cadence.

The lead time is the practical consequence. DistroKid, TuneCore and CD Baby all recommend submitting well ahead of your intended release date, and the deadline that actually matters is Spotify's for editorial playlist consideration — pitching through Spotify for Artists requires the release to be delivered and pitched before the date, typically at least a couple of weeks out. Miss the delivery window and you have not just lost a playlist chance; you have lost the pre-save window too.

The misunderstanding: treating a release date as a publish button. Nothing about a digital release is instant. I have watched a release slip a week because artwork failed validation two days before the date and there was no time left to redeliver.

Build in more lead time than you think you need. Artist's experience, not a store's official policy.

Definitions on this site describe the United States system. I am an artist who has been through this, not a lawyer.