A cover song submission that’s properly prepared typically clears moderation in 24-72 hours; one with a metadata error, missing songwriter credit, or licensing mismatch can sit in review limbo for a week or longer, or get rejected outright. This checklist walks through the specific fields and files distributors and their partner platforms actually check, in the order they check them, so you can catch problems before they cost you release time.
Most delays are not caused by the audio itself. They’re caused by a mismatch between what the metadata claims and what the licensing system expects. Understanding that distinction is the core of this checklist.
What should you check before submitting a cover song?
Before submitting, verify five things: correct original songwriter credit, accurate title formatting, a properly tagged ‘cover’ release type, audio that meets platform loudness and format standards, and cover art that doesn’t reuse the original release’s imagery. Each of these maps to a specific rejection or delay reason, which is why they’re worth checking individually rather than glancing at the release as a whole.
1. Songwriter and composer credit accuracy
This is the single most common cause of cover song delays. Mechanical licensing for a cover is issued based on matching your track to the correct underlying composition, which means the original songwriter’s name has to be entered correctly, not the performing artist’s name. Confusing «performed by» with «written by» is the number one metadata error on cover submissions.
Check: does your submission form list the actual songwriter(s) of the original composition, spelled correctly, matching how the work is registered? If you’re not sure who wrote the song, a quick search of the title plus «songwriter» or checking the composition credits on an official release usually resolves it in under a minute.
2. Title and version tagging
Your release title should reflect that this is a cover, typically formatted as «Song Title (Cover)» or with the original artist noted in the version field, depending on the distributor’s form. Platforms use this tagging to differentiate your recording from the original in search and in rights-holder matching systems. A cover submitted under a bare, untagged title is more likely to trigger a manual review flag, since the moderation system can’t immediately confirm it’s a licensed cover rather than a mislabeled original.
3. Correct release type selection
Most distributor submission forms ask you to specify whether a track is an original composition or a cover. Selecting the wrong option is a fast path to rejection, because it routes your submission through the wrong licensing workflow entirely. If your form doesn’t have an explicit cover designation, look for a composer/songwriter field and confirm it’s asking for the original writer, not you.
4. Audio file specifications
Check your file against these standard baseline requirements before upload: WAV format, 16-bit or higher, 44.1kHz sample rate minimum, no clipping at the peaks, and no embedded metadata tags that conflict with what you’re entering in the submission form. A file that technically plays fine but clips on loud choruses can still get flagged during automated quality scans, adding review time even if the licensing side is clean.
5. Cover art originality
You cannot reuse the original single’s cover art, official artist photos, or album imagery for your cover song release. This is a copyright issue separate from the mechanical license that covers the audio. Your artwork needs to be either your own photography, licensed stock imagery, or original design work — using someone else’s copyrighted image will get your release rejected regardless of how clean your audio and metadata are.
6. ISRC and pre-existing identifiers
If you’re re-releasing a cover you’ve distributed before, generating a new ISRC rather than reusing an old one prevents your new release from being treated as a duplicate upload by streaming platforms, which can cause tracks to be merged incorrectly or rejected as already-existing content.
7. Featured artist and performer credits
If you recorded the cover with a band, duet partner, or session musicians, make sure every contributing performer is listed correctly in the artist and featuring fields. This doesn’t affect licensing, but it does affect how royalty splits get calculated and paid out later, and it’s much harder to fix after a release has already gone live on 200+ platforms than before submission.
How does this checklist affect moderation speed?
Each of the seven items above corresponds to a specific automated or manual check in the moderation pipeline, so an error in any one of them adds review time rather than just being a cosmetic issue. A submission that passes all seven checks cleanly typically moves through automatic licensing verification and quality review without a manual hold, landing in the 24-72 hour range. A submission with even one mismatch — commonly the songwriter credit field — gets kicked to manual review, where turnaround depends on queue volume and can run several days longer.
Why this matters more for covers than originals
Original songs only need to pass content and quality moderation. Cover songs need to pass that same review plus a licensing match against the underlying composition, which means there are simply more fields that have to be correct simultaneously. This is also why automatic mechanical licensing built into the submission flow matters: it removes the step where an artist would otherwise need to separately request and pay for a compulsory license before uploading, a process that traditionally added weeks, not days, to a cover release timeline.
A quick cost gut-check before you submit
Since you’re already reviewing the release before submission, it’s worth confirming the economics too. At $1 per release with royalty payouts starting from $10, a single cover song has a low enough break-even point that even modest streaming activity covers the cost. Compare that to TuneCore’s base annual fee of $24.99 plus per-cover licensing fees, or DistroKid’s $44.99 annual subscription — both of which cost you money whether or not the release ever earns a cent, and both renew every year whether you’re still active or not. CD Baby’s $9.95 per single plus a 9% royalty commission taken forever on that release adds a different kind of long-term cost, since fixed and ongoing fees don’t shrink over time even if a cover song’s streaming activity does. Checking your submission carefully before you upload isn’t just about avoiding delays — with a per-release model, it’s also about making sure the $1 you spend converts into a live release on the first attempt rather than a resubmission.
The five-minute version of this checklist
If you’re in a hurry, prioritize these in order: songwriter credit correct, release type set to cover, audio file clean and correctly formatted, artwork original, artist credits complete. These five checks catch the overwhelming majority of preventable delays, and running through them takes less time than the moderation delay caused by skipping them.
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