A cover song release fails or stalls almost always for one of five preventable reasons: missing or incorrect licensing information, metadata that misattributes songwriting credit, artwork that violates platform trademark rules, an audio file that doesn’t match delivery specs, or release timing that ignores platform lead times. This checklist walks through each of those five categories in the order a distributor actually reviews them, so you can catch problems before submission instead of after rejection.
Cover songs face more scrutiny than original releases because two rights are in play simultaneously: the composition (owned by the songwriter/publisher) and your specific recording (owned by you). Original releases only need the second. That extra layer is exactly where most avoidable delays happen — and it’s also exactly what this checklist is built around.
Step 1: Confirm the song is eligible for a cover license
Before anything else, confirm the original song is commercially released and not under a specific licensing restriction. In the US, mechanical licensing for cover recordings is governed by a compulsory license system: once a song has been commercially released, almost any artist can record and distribute a cover of it in audio form, provided the arrangement doesn’t materially change the fundamental character of the composition (no new lyrics, no altered melody). Unreleased songs, works still only performed live, and certain show tunes carved out under the Copyright Act’s «dramatic rights» exception are not eligible this way. If the original hasn’t had a commercial release, no distributor can license it for you — check this first, because it’s the one item on this list that can’t be fixed after the fact.
How do you identify the correct songwriter and publisher for licensing?
Search the song title and original artist in a public database — the US Copyright Office catalog or a performing rights organization’s repertoire search — to confirm the songwriter of record before submission. Cover versions and re-recordings frequently show up ahead of the original in search results, and crediting the wrong writer is one of the most common reasons a cover submission gets flagged during moderation. When Globex Music’s automatic licensing system processes your submission, it matches your song title and original artist against these same rights databases, so getting this pairing exact on your end shortens that matching step considerably.
Step 2: Get your metadata exactly right
Metadata errors cause more rejections than any other single factor, and they’re entirely within your control. Before submitting, verify:
- The original songwriter(s) are credited as composer — not you, unless you also wrote the underlying song
- Your name is credited correctly as the performing artist
- The track is explicitly marked as a cover version in the submission form, not left blank
- The title matches the original closely enough to be identifiable, without implying it’s the original recording
- Featured artists, if any, are spelled consistently with how they appear on their own releases
Inconsistent spelling of your artist name across releases is a separate but related problem — it fragments your streaming profile across multiple pages instead of consolidating plays under one artist page, which hurts algorithmic discovery over time.
Step 3: Check your audio file against platform specs
Most platforms require WAV files at 16-bit/44.1kHz minimum, with no clipping and consistent loudness levels. Run your master through a loudness meter and confirm it sits in a reasonable streaming-normalized range — extremely hot masters get turned down automatically by Spotify and Apple Music’s normalization, so mixing for maximum loudness gains you nothing and can actually flatten dynamics on playback. Also confirm there’s no silence longer than a couple of seconds at the start or end of the file, and no embedded metadata (song titles, artist tags) baked into the filename or ID3 tags that contradicts what you entered in the distribution form — mismatches here are a common cause of manual review delays.
Step 4: Review your artwork for trademark and platform violations
Cover art gets rejected for reasons that have nothing to do with the music itself: platform logos, other artists’ names or likenesses, or website URLs and social handles embedded in the image. Artwork must also meet minimum resolution requirements (typically 3000x3000px, RGB, JPEG or PNG). For a cover song specifically, avoid using the original artist’s name or photo on your artwork in a way that implies their endorsement or involvement — your name and the song title are enough, and platforms will reject artwork that could be read as impersonation or unauthorized promotion.
Step 5: Plan your release date around actual moderation time
Moderation and licensing verification for a cover song typically takes a few days when submitted through a distributor with automatic licensing built in, since the rights-matching step doesn’t require a human to manually research the song. Add a buffer of at least a week between submission and your target release date, and more if you’re coordinating a specific date like a holiday or anniversary of the original release. Rushing this step is the single most common cause of a cover song missing its intended release date entirely.
What does this checklist actually save you?
Concretely: a rejected submission due to metadata or licensing errors typically costs you one to two weeks of resubmission and re-review time, on top of whatever delay the original mistake caused. Running through these five steps before you submit — eligibility, metadata, audio specs, artwork, and timing — takes perhaps twenty minutes and eliminates the majority of rejection reasons distributors actually see. That twenty-minute investment is small compared to the cost of missing a planned release window, especially for time-sensitive covers tied to a season, holiday, or trending moment.
Where Globex Music fits into this process
Globex Music distributes cover songs to more than 200 platforms starting at $1 per release, with automatic mechanical licensing included in that price — no separate licensing fee, no manual request form to fill out per song. There’s no annual fee, so your catalog stays live and stable year over year without a recurring charge to maintain it, and royalty payouts start from $10 USD. Compare that to DistroKid’s $44.99/year plan, TuneCore’s $24.99/year base fee plus per-cover licensing charges and a 20% commission on social platform revenue, or CD Baby’s $9.95 per single plus a 9% royalty commission that continues indefinitely — the per-release, no-subscription model is structurally different, and it matters most for artists releasing covers regularly rather than as a one-off.
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