2025 Winter Holiday Preparation Checklist – AWAL

The winter holiday season is here, and while you may be busy preparing cover songs for fans to sing along to from home, surprising audiences with end-of-year performances, or looking ahead to your 2026 music comeback, AWAL wishes you a happy holidays by gifting independent artists and labels like yourself with our Winter Holiday Preparation Checklist so you can effortlessly release and promote your music on schedule.

AWAL offices are closed after 19 December 2025, which means the countdown begins to have your release assets uploaded if you wish to meet your desired release date!

We would suggest having all requests submitted by December 10th, 2025. We can not guarantee requests made after this date will be completed due to internal processing time.

First, it’s imperative that you read through our special end-of-year music delivery due dates here to avoid delayed reply times from our Support team during the AWAL office closure. Once you know the final date to submit your release, keep scrolling down to see if you can check off every item on AWAL’s Winter Holiday Preparation Checklist:

New Artist Profiles - When creating your release in Workstation, please select 'This artist is not on Spotify/Apple.' This will prompt a new artist page. If you'd like to claim your artist page, reach out to the Artist Support Team to request your Spotify URI and Apple Artist ID.

Mapping Requests - When creating your release in Workstation, please ensure you're selecting the correct artist page for Spotify/Apple when adding your artist name. If you'd like to preemptively ensure the mapping is correct before the release comes out, please reach out to the Artist Support Team.

Allowlisting Artist SoundCloud Channel - Send a request through the ‘Help’ Support Tool in your Workstation if you would like to have your SoundCloud channel cleared to upload content that contains your recordings without issue.

YouTube Copyright Issues - Send a request through the ‘Help’ Support Tool in your Workstation and the Artist Support team will get back to you as soon as we’re able to. Please provide the ISRC and link to the YouTube Video.

TikTok Preview Start Time Changes - When creating your release in Workstation, please ensure you utilize the TikTok timestamp field in the 'Track' edit. If this needs to be changed, it will need to be done manually by the Artist Support Team.

Video Blocks on TikTok - Remember that Business accounts on TikTok are no longer permitted to use commercial music in their content. Audio used must come from the TikTok Sound Library and user-generated content must not be longer than 60 seconds to avoid blocks on TikTok.

Lyrics - Add lyrics to your releases during the initial track upload using the Digital Product Builder. Review the instructions in this Help Center article: Adding in Lyrics

Workstation Login Error - If you find yourself locked out of your Workstation between 15 December - 31 December, please submit a request through the ‘Help’ Support Tool in Workstation and the Artist Support team will get back to you soon as we’re able to.

I submitted my release for delivery - now what? We’ve put together some really useful articles on the Help Center that can help you ensure your campaign is fully optimized and more:

Digital Services

Optimize Your Spotify Artist Page

Apple Music for Artists

TikTok Fan Engagement Strategies

SoundCloud Best Practices

Amazon Music for Artists

Instagram Reels

Optimize Your YouTube Channel

Discover Audiomack

Update Your Artist Image on Pandora

Marketing Tools

Spotify Pre-saves