How to put music on Spotify for free

“Free” means two things here. You can put music on Spotify with no fee: RouteNote Free and ONErpm deliver your song and charge nothing upfront or yearly. You can’t do it at no cost: both keep 15% of your store royalties for as long as the song stays on their free plan. Spotify itself doesn’t take uploads, so a distributor is always part of it. Claiming your artist profile and pitching songs in Spotify for Artists are free on Spotify’s side. This covers Spotify for Artists support pages and each distributor’s own help pages, checked Sep 24, 2026.

The first thing to clear up is why you can’t skip the distributor.

Can you upload music to Spotify yourself?

No. Spotify doesn’t take uploads from artists, so every free route onto Spotify runs through a distributor. Spotify’s help page on getting music on Spotify tells artists to work with a distributor, which delivers the music and pays out streaming royalties, and it notes that most distributors charge a fee or commission. Your artist profile doesn’t exist until then: Spotify creates it automatically when your music is first delivered, and you can’t create one yourself. The source is Spotify for Artists’ own support pages, checked Sep 24, 2026.

That line on Spotify’s getting-music page is short: “Work with a distributor to get your music on Spotify.” Its page on creating an artist profile adds the second half. So there’s no hidden upload button, and anyone selling “direct Spotify upload” is either a distributor with a new name or someone you shouldn’t hand your songs to.

A lot of people assume SoundCloud is a free side door. It isn’t. SoundCloud’s free Basic plan uploads to SoundCloud only, and its plans page lists distribution to Spotify and other platforms on the paid Artist tiers.

So the real question is which distributors still charge nothing.

Free distributors that still deliver to Spotify

Two distributors still put music on Spotify with no fee as of Sep 24, 2026: RouteNote Free and ONErpm. Both charge nothing to sign up or upload, and both keep 15% of your store royalties, paying you 85%. RouteNote Free sends music to the same stores as RouteNote Premium, with Spotify first on its store list, but holds your money until you’re owed $50. ONErpm has no registration, annual or upload fees and names Spotify among its store partners. It keeps more of video income than of streams. These terms come from each company’s own support and FAQ pages.

RouteNote calls its free plan “completely free” with no hidden fees, says there are no store restrictions on either plan, and puts Spotify first on its store list. The part people miss is the $50 payout minimum. A first single with a few hundred streams can sit under that line for a long time. The money is still yours. You just can’t touch it yet.

ONErpm’s FAQ says it pays 85% for stores, 70% for YouTube and 50% for other video, and that most platforms pay it 30 to 60 days after the end of each month. Its how it works page confirms the zero fees, and Spotify is on its partner list.

Older guides still list services that stopped being free for new releases:

• TuneCore ended its free plan on June 18, 2025, per its update.
• Amuse needs a subscription for new releases, per its help page.
• UnitedMasters has no free release plan. Its free DEBUT tier stopped distributing on Oct 29, 2025, and now only receives splits.

Our guide to free music distribution compares RouteNote Free and ONErpm in full, including YouTube Content ID and moving a release to RouteNote Premium.

A 15% cut sounds small. Whether it stays small depends on your songs.

When free costs more than a paid plan

TheDebutRoom’s view: free distribution is the right call for a first song you’re testing, and the wrong one once you release on a schedule. A free plan’s 15% cut comes out of every stream for as long as the song stays there, while a paid plan’s yearly fee stays flat no matter how well the song does. The two cost the same when your yearly royalties reach about 6.7 times the fee. Below that, free is cheaper. Above it, you’re paying more for “free” than you would for a subscription, and the gap grows with every release.

Put numbers on it. Ditto, the cheapest unlimited plan among the distributors we track, costs $19.00/yr. DistroKid costs $24.99/yr. Both keep 0% of store royalties on those plans. Take 15% of what you think your songs will earn this year and compare it with the fee:

• One song, mostly friends and family listening. Your 15% is a few dollars. Stay free.
• A song every month or two, with a small but real audience. The 15% starts to overtake the fee within a year. Pay.
• Nobody knows yet. Start free. You can move later.

Moving later is normal, and you don’t lose your streams if you do it right. You re-upload with the same ISRC codes (which carry stream counts over) and take the old release down. The order depends on where you’re going: DistroKid says upload there first and remove the old release the next day, while Ditto says take the old one down first. Our DistroKid alternatives guide has the steps.

Whichever way you go on the distributor, the Spotify side costs nothing.

The free Spotify tools you get after release

Spotify for Artists is free to join with a personal Spotify account, and it’s where you claim your artist profile, see your stats and pitch unreleased songs to Spotify’s editors. You request access once a distributor has delivered your music, and Spotify reviews requests by hand, usually within a few days. A claimed profile shows the Registered Artist label, the name Spotify has used since Jan 28, 2026. Pitching is free too: you pitch one unreleased song at a time, at least 7 days before release, which also puts it in your followers’ Release Radar. The source is Spotify for Artists’ own help pages.

Spotify’s get started page says it plainly: free to join, and all you need is a Spotify account. The claim process is on its access page, including a route for getting in before your first release goes live. The label change is on Spotify’s Verified to Registered note.

The pitch is the free step people skip most, usually because they set the release date for tomorrow. Spotify’s pitching page says a song can’t be pitched once it’s live. So when your distributor asks for a date, pick one a few weeks out. Our guide to free Spotify playlist submission covers the pitch form and the free curator routes after release.

Here’s the honest worry at this stage: your song is out, nobody’s playing it, and a site offers 10,000 streams for $20. Don’t. Spotify’s page on services that guarantee streams says artificial streams can cost you the royalties, the playlist spots and, in repeated cases, the release itself. Your distributor can suspend your account too. That’s a lot to risk on a free plan.

That’s everything you need. Here it is in order.

Put your music on Spotify for free, step by step

Putting music on Spotify for free takes five steps: pick a free distributor such as RouteNote Free or ONErpm, get the release ready, upload it with Spotify selected and a release date a few weeks out, claim your profile in Spotify for Artists, and pitch the song before release day. You need a finished audio file, square cover art, your artist name spelled the way you want it everywhere, and a personal Spotify account for the last two steps. Nothing in these steps costs money. The distributor’s 15% cut only applies once the song starts earning.

The steps below are the short version. Our full guide on how to post music on Spotify walks through the upload form field by field, and the Platforms hub covers the other stores.