Release-week setup on Spotify: Countdown Pages, pre-saves and Canvas, with a four-week checklist

Most release plans treat release day as the finish line. On Spotify, the work that moves numbers is done a week or more before it. Countdown Pages, pre-saves, editorial pitches and Canvas all have deadlines or eligibility rules that close early, and a few of them quietly vanish the moment the music goes live. This guide pulls the rules from Spotify's own help pages, as they read in October 2026, into one plan.

What is a Countdown Page, and what do fans see?

A Countdown Page is a pre-release page for an album or EP. Spotify says fans can pre-save the release, preview the tracklist, watch countdown videos and shop merch. The page surfaces on your artist profile, in Search, on Home, in the Now Playing view and in the Upcoming Releases hub.

In the mobile app, a fan reaches the hub by tapping Search, then the Upcoming Releases tile. It has two shelves: For You, up to 10 personalised picks ordered by release date, and Top 10 Countdowns, a global ranking of the most pre-saved pages that refreshes daily at 12 PM UTC.

On release day, Spotify sends a push notification to everyone who pre-saved and adds the release to their library. Spotify's own average is that nearly 60% of people who pre-save an album stream it in the first week. That is Spotify's figure, not an independent one.

Who is eligible?

Two gates, both on the help page:

1. You need at least 3,000 monthly active listeners. Check it in Spotify for Artists under Audience, then Segments. Spotify warns you to look at monthly active listeners, not the headline monthly listeners number.
2. The release must be a new, original album or EP. Singles are out. So are deluxe, anniversary, reissue, remaster and compilation versions, even with new material. Your distributor must deliver it the standard way, via DDEX.

Two rules catch collaborators. Only the first-named main artist can create the page, and it appears only on that artist's profile. And split-rights releases are supported only in limited numbers for now. If you are co-releasing an EP, agree the artist order before your distributor delivers it.

The bar has come down. Spotify's May 2025 newsroom post put eligibility at 5,000 active listeners in the last 28 days. The current help page says 3,000. We don't know the date of the change, but it opens the feature to more working independent artists.

How early can you build it?

Timing runs off delivery, not off your release date:

• Music shows in the Upcoming tab around 48 hours after your distributor sends it.
• The Countdown Page option appears within 72 hours of the release metadata arriving, and you can edit the page any time before release.
• Spotify's newsroom says pages published at least seven days before release see nearly twice as many pre-saves on average as those published later.

To build it: log in at artists.spotify.com, go to Music, then Upcoming, pick the release and click Get started. Add countdown videos, tag merch, then review and publish. You need Admin or Editor access.

One detail that trips people up: the date in the Upcoming tab is the earliest date the release goes live anywhere. A worldwide midnight-UTC release can show the day before. Plan your countdown against that date.

What about singles?

Singles can't have a Countdown Page. The Upcoming tab still lets you copy the release URI, which Spotify says you can use for pre-save and marketing campaigns. That means a third-party pre-save link for singles, and an album or EP if you want Spotify's native page.

What are the specs for countdown videos and Canvas?

They look similar but behave differently.

Countdown videos must be vertical with audio, longer than 3 seconds, shorter than 30 seconds and at least 1280 x 720 pixels. Spotify bans watermarks from other platforms, links to external sites or ticket vendors, and asks to follow you elsewhere. They play in the mobile app in a listed set of over 70 markets, including India and the US. Most importantly, once the release is live, the page and its videos are no longer available.

Canvas is the 3 to 8 second vertical loop that replaces your artwork in the mobile Now Playing view. You can add it to any track, including upcoming ones, from Music in Spotify for Artists (Add Canvas) or the mobile app. It has to be 9:16, 720 to 1,080 pixels tall, and an MP4 or JPG, per the guidelines. Spotify advises against footage of singing or rapping, since a short loop won't sync with lyrics, and against rapid cuts or flashing.

Two Canvas caveats. It plays only in the mobile app, and only for listeners in a listed set of countries. India is not on that list as we read it, though countdown videos are. Artists with a mostly Indian audience should weigh that before paying for a Canvas shoot. Second, Canvas views are counted separately from streams: one view per stream at most, logged whenever someone opens Now Playing, so views can outnumber 30-second streams. Don't read a big Canvas number as a big stream number.

The four-week checklist

Four weeks out

• Check monthly active listeners (Audience, then Segments) against the 3,000 bar.
• Confirm the release counts as a new album or EP, not a single or reissue.
• Lock the main-artist order with collaborators.
• Deliver the finished release to your distributor so it reaches Spotify well over a week before release day.

Three weeks out

• Confirm it appears in Music, then Upcoming. Chase your distributor if it hasn't appeared after about 48 hours.
• Check the date shown there against the one you intended.
• Cut two or three countdown videos (vertical, with audio, 3 to 30 seconds, no other platforms' watermarks).

Two weeks out

• Build and publish the Countdown Page.
• Set it as your Artist Pick (image at least 690 x 500 px, stays live up to 180 days).
• Pitch one song to editors. Seven days out is the latest that also lands it in your followers' Release Radar. Our guide to the 500-character pitch covers the form.
• Add a Canvas to each focus track.

Release week

• Share the page on socials daily. Watch counts under Upcoming, then View Analytics.
• Save your countdown videos elsewhere. They disappear from Spotify on release day.
• On release day, switch the Artist Pick from the countdown to the live release.

Paid promotion is a separate decision; see our comparison of Marquee, Showcase and Discovery Mode.

What we think

Countdown Pages are worth setting up for any eligible album or EP. They cost nothing but time, they put the release in front of fans inside the app for weeks, and the release-day push notification comes from Spotify itself. Lowering the bar from 5,000 to 3,000 listeners was the right move.

But read the design closely and it favours a particular kind of artist. Excluding singles leaves out the single-by-single release strategy that many independents rely on. The Top 10 shelf is a global ranking by total pre-saves, so in our view it will mostly show artists who already have big audiences. For a smaller artist, the realistic surfaces are For You and your own profile.

Then there is ownership. The help page describes pre-save counts in your analytics. It says nothing about passing you fans' contact details, so a fan who pre-saves on Spotify does not become a fan you can reach elsewhere. Treat the Countdown Page as a release-day amplifier, not a mailing list, and keep collecting fans' details on your own channels.

Finally, budget for the fact that countdown videos are temporary and Canvas is region-limited. Make your release-week visuals once and plan to reuse them on other platforms, rather than paying for them as Spotify-only assets.