What we're building.
When. Why.

This is the spine. A release isn't just a date and a tracklist; it's a stack of typed deliverables (master, artwork, metadata, social assets), each with its own done-criteria. Labelflow's release workflow knows what shape a release is and tells you, at any moment, exactly how ready it is. The Friday-night metadata rewrites and the late-arriving masters become visible long before they become emergencies.

The chase emails that used to eat Friday nights are now generated and queued. Labelflow drafts each message in the right voice for the artist, in the language they prefer, and you approve before it sends, or schedule it to fire automatically. The conversation that kept stalling now keeps moving.

The reason releases stall isn't usually a missing file. It's a missing version of a file, or a file delivered to the wrong place. Labelflow tracks every deliverable for every release with explicit done-criteria, so the gap between "almost ready" and "ready" stops being a guess.

Most release problems are metadata problems: wrong artist name, wrong genre tag, wrong featured-artist credit. Labelflow holds your metadata once, in one place, and renders the right format for whatever distributor you ship through. Edit in one place, ship the same truth everywhere.

The contacts most labels need are scattered across WhatsApp threads, Notion pages, and the back of email signatures. Labelflow consolidates them into a structured directory tied to releases, so you can pull the right list for the right press push without digging through DMs at midnight.

Most labels accept demos through a Linktree or a Google Form, and then the demos pile up in a folder and nothing happens. The A&R module turns demo intake into a structured pipeline: artists submit through your branded form, demos are typed (genre, length, style tags), the team triages with a yes / no / maybe workflow, and decisions are tracked. The good demos stop getting lost in the pile.

Most label analytics tools show you last 7 days of streams and call it a day. Chartmetric integration brings catalog-wide data (chart positions, audience demographics, playlist additions) into the release view, so post-launch evaluation is grounded in real data instead of vibes.

Most indie labels either pay €100–300 per release for design, or DIY in Canva. The Design Module replaces both: feed it your release metadata and brand kit, get back static artwork (cover, social tiles, press kit images) and dynamic Spotify Canvas video, brand-coherent across releases, without the per-release designer fee. Spotify Canvas in particular is rare-and-painful enough that most tools skip it; we don't.

PR firms charge €500–1500 per release for what's mostly templated work: campaign brief, captions, press release draft, contact list, scheduling. The Promotion Module produces the same artifacts from your release metadata, label voice, and genre context. The 5% of releases that need bespoke PR will still hire firms; everyone else gets professional-quality output without the freelance budget.

Where the money actually went, on one page. Splits configured per release, payments tracked through to artist receipt, distributor statements imported as line items so you can answer "did I pay X for that release?" in one query instead of three spreadsheets.

For labels that run events alongside their catalog, the calendar usually lives in a separate spreadsheet that nobody updates. Event Planner ties events to releases. The album launch party moves with the release date, the tour route lines up with the album cycle, nothing gets double-booked.

The press contacts most labels send to are out of date or inherited from a former label manager. Press Outreach maintains a curated directory (we keep it fresh) and tracks who you pitched, who replied, and what landed. The next campaign starts smarter than the last.

The standard Labelflow templates work for most labels. But if your label has a particular voice or a specific cadence (the way you address artists, the rhythm of your release-week emails), you should be able to define it. Custom templates let you save your variations, test them, and use them as defaults.

Webhook outputs that fire on key events (release shipped, artist info updated, deliverable completed). Connect them to whatever else your label runs on — Zapier, Make, n8n, all native. The handful of labels with engineers can build directly against the webhooks; everyone else gets the integrations without the engineering.