As soon as you know what your release plan looks like, so which tracks will be your pre-release singles and when they'll come out, you can go ahead and set this up in Make Waves. If you haven't set up a release before using Make Waves, you can first check out our Manual here.
Let's say the final release will be an EP and you will have two pre-release singles. This means that two tracks from the EP will be set up as separate singles in Make Waves, and they will be released before the final EP comes out. We would first recommend setting up the final EP. So you'll create all the necessary tracks, upload the audio files, and fill in the required metadata. Now you either have the option to assign your own ISRC codes or let the Make Waves platform automatically generate these for your tracks. These options are visible under 'Optionals' at the bottom of the page.
If you have used your own, then you will already have an overview of the ISRCs that are assigned to all your tracks. If you have chosen to have these generated automatically, these will become visible after the release has been delivered. So when all the required fields have been filled in and you have successfully delivered your release, you can go back to your catalogue, click on the release and find the ISRCs for each track.
If you then want to set up your pre-release singles, you simply create a new release, click on ‘Add existing’ and select the track you wish to add to the release.
If your first pre-release single is going to be 'Track two' from the example product that is shown above, the title of the first single will be 'Track two'. It will have the same artist(s), audio file and ISRC code. When the first single comes out, it will start to generate streams, and by reusing your tracks this way, you can make sure the streams are merged when the final EP comes out.
Whenever a recording appears on multiple releases, it will use the metadata from the first release on which it was published. This original version is known as the “source track.”
If you wish to update the metadata of a track, you should make the changes to the source track. Once the release containing the source track has been successfully redelivered with the updated information, you should redeliver the other releases that include the same recording as well.
If you have any questions about this, please contact [email protected].
In case you're interested in setting up your pre-release singles using the 'Waterfall' strategy, we can redirect you to our separate guide on this (see here). For any other questions, please reach out to [email protected].