Yes, Music Gateway does support the distribution of Waterfall releases and it’s currently a trending release format for artists, particularly on Spotify!
The waterfall strategy allows for an EP or album to be released gradually, adding a new song at a time alongside all previously released songs until the final release is made available.
In a waterfall release, each release will be its own product, having separate URIs and UPC codes. This method of distributing your music allows you to include previously released songs, encouraging repeat listens of your catalogue as you release new music.
The best way to do this in our platform is:
- Create and distribute release “A” as Single 1 – this will be whatever track you wish to go live first in the strategy.
- Create and distribute release “B” as an Album/EP in your account - with Single 2 as the first track and adding Single 1 as track number 2 in the tracklist.
- Please make sure track metadata + ISRC for “Single 1” is an exact match to previously delivered releases. This should be easy as you can attach the previously created and released single to your album.
- When the play-counts have transferred over from Release “A” to Release “B” for Single 1, you can either choose to take down Release “A” from DSPs, or leave it there, it is entirely up to you.
- Repeat this process from step 2 each time you want to release a new single in this method.
In the example above, you should synchronise the end date/time of release A with the start date/time of release B. As the track linking process could take at least 72 hours, you must deliver B far in advance of its start date/time.