- Confirm the track qualifies under Suno's terms: created on Pro or Premier and obtained through a permitted download within your monthly allocation. Free, trial, and Remix downloads are non-commercial.
- Export your Suno track as WAV (preferred) or MP3.
- Make square cover art at 3000 × 3000 pixels.
- Upload to ONCE. The agent walks you through metadata and AI disclosure.
- Pay 2 credits - the flat AI release price (the extra credit over the 1-credit human-music price funds the Artist Compensation Fund). Pick a release date.
- Track goes live on Spotify, Apple Music, and every other major streaming platform in 24–72 hours.
If you've generated a song on Suno that you actually want to release, this post is the full workflow. We'll cover what to do before you upload, what metadata to bring, how to handle AI disclosure correctly, and what to expect after submit.
Step 1. Make sure you have commercial rights
This is the part most artists skip, and the rules changed on September 3, 2026. A paid Suno plan alone is not enough. Under Suno's current terms, you may commercially use a track only if you obtained it as a permitted download under your paid plan's monthly download allocation. Pro includes 20 song downloads per month and Premier includes 60, and you can buy extra downloads on either plan. Downloading the same song again, or its stems, does not count twice.
Before you upload anywhere, confirm all of these:
- The track was created on a Pro or Premier plan. Free-tier songs are personal, non-commercial use only, and starting a subscription later does not license a song you made on the free tier.
- You downloaded it through Suno's download channel while on that plan, within your monthly allocation. Trial downloads and free-tier downloads are not eligible for commercial use.
- It is not a Remix. Remixes are non-commercial on every plan, even when downloaded.
- You did not stream-rip or record it, and you did not remove or alter Suno's watermark or metadata. Suno's terms prohibit both.
Once you hold a permitted download, the commercial rights for that track are perpetual under Suno's terms. They survive using up your monthly allocation, later changes to allotments or pricing, and cancelling or downgrading your subscription.
Two more things Suno says plainly: commercial use rights do not guarantee copyright protection (that is decided by your country's copyright office, not by Suno), and any use outside Suno is also subject to the destination platform's own rules.
Skipping this step is the single most common reason AI tracks get removed from Spotify weeks after release.
Last verified: September 14, 2026, against Suno's Terms of Service (effective September 3, 2026) and Suno's help article on download limits. Terms change; check them before you release. This is general information, not legal advice.
Step 2. Export the track properly
In Suno's library:
- Open the track.
- Click Download. Each song counts once against your monthly download allocation (re-downloading the same song or its stems does not count again).
- Pick WAV if your distributor supports it (ONCE does). WAV is the highest-quality format and what DSPs prefer.
- MP3 is acceptable if WAV isn't available, but expect a small quality hit.
A typical Suno track is 2–4 minutes and exports at 44.1 kHz / 24-bit. That's exactly what Spotify and Apple Music want.
Step 3. Cover art
Streaming platforms reject anything smaller than 3000 × 3000 pixels and anything non-square.
Rules that will save you a rejection:
- Square. 3000 × 3000 minimum.
- JPG or PNG. Not WebP, not HEIC.
- No text claiming things you can't back up. "Available on Spotify" / "Streaming everywhere" gets your art rejected.
- No DSP logos. Don't put the Spotify, Apple, or YouTube wordmark on your cover.
- No social handles, no URLs, no QR codes. Same reason.
Tools artists actually use:
- Canva - free templates, "Album Cover" preset gives you the right canvas
- Midjourney / Stable Diffusion - if you're generating art for an AI track, the medium matches the message
- Photoshop / Affinity / GIMP - if you have actual artwork
Step 4. Bring the metadata
The fields every distributor needs:
- Track title - the actual song name
- Artist name - the project name listeners will see
- Genre - primary genre, sometimes secondary
- Language - what the lyrics are in (or "instrumental")
- Release date - pick at least 7–14 days out so DSPs can pitch
- Explicit flag - yes/no
- Composer / lyricist - for PRO and mechanical reporting (usually you)
- Featured artists - if any
If you're releasing on ONCE, the distribution agent walks you through every field. You don't need to memorize a metadata spec.
If you're releasing on a distributor that hands you a blank form: triple-check the artist name. It's permanent on most platforms.
Step 5. AI disclosure
In 2026, every major DSP either requires or strongly prefers AI disclosure metadata. Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, and YouTube Music have all rolled out tightened policies through the year.
What that means in practice:
- AI-generated audio must be flagged.
- AI-assisted audio (human vocals over an AI beat, AI mastering on a live track, etc.) usually needs to be flagged differently.
- Failure to flag can get the track removed, sometimes the entire account.
On ONCE, every upload is checked automatically (ONCE uses industry-standard detection algorithms to flag songs containing AI) and AI disclosure is delivered to the DSPs without you having to remember anything. On most other distributors, there's a checkbox you have to find and check yourself.
Step 6. Upload and release
The ONCE flow:
- Sign in at beta.once.app.
- Click New Release.
- Drag in your WAV + cover art.
- The agent asks you the metadata questions in plain English.
- Pick stores (defaults to all major streaming platforms).
- Pick a release date.
- Pay 2 credits - the flat AI release price. The extra credit over the 1-credit human-music price routes to the Artist Compensation Fund.
- Submit.
That's it. The track enters the delivery pipeline.
Step 7. What to expect after submit
| Timeline | What's happening |
|---|---|
| 0–1 hour | Internal QA: file specs, metadata sanity, AI detection |
| 1–24 hours | Delivery to Spotify and Apple Music's ingest pipelines |
| 24–72 hours | Most platforms show the track live |
| 3–7 days | Smaller platforms and global edge cases catch up |
If you picked a release date in the future, the track will be in DSPs' systems but not visible to listeners until that date. This is what you want for any track you plan to pitch to Spotify editorial - they need at least 7 days advance to consider it.
Common mistakes that get AI tracks removed
We've seen all of these. In rough order of frequency:
- No AI disclosure metadata. DSPs flag, remove the track.
- Track that is not a permitted download. Free-tier songs, trial downloads, Remixes, stream-ripped audio, and anything downloaded outside your paid plan's allocation are non-commercial under Suno's terms. Subscribing after the fact does not fix a free-tier song. Distribute one anyway and a takedown can follow.
- Cover art with "Streaming on Spotify" text. Rejection at ingest.
- Duplicate ISRCs. Don't reuse an ISRC across uploads.
- Artist name collision. Picking a name another artist already uses leads to splits in royalties and Spotify's verification headaches.
- Uploaded with wrong audio file. Always preview your upload before submit.
Why 2 credits forever beats $24.99 every year (and why it's ethical)
When you generate music with Suno, the marginal cost per song is low. If you're releasing 10, 20, 100 AI tracks a year, an annual-subscription distributor compounds against you. $24.99/year × 10 years × 5 artists = $1,150 just to keep distribution active.
ONCE charges 2 credits per AI release. Once. The track stays live forever. There's no annual renewal, no per-artist fees, no "your subscription has expired, your music has been taken down" email.
The other thing those 2 credits buy you: a clear conscience. The extra credit over the 1-credit human-music price isn't a profit margin - it goes into the Artist Compensation Fund. Roughly 92% of every AI credit routes to working musicians through established music non-profits, with quarterly transparency reports. AI music was trained on real musicians' work, and ONCE is the only distributor that routes money back to those musicians for every AI release. Same flat 2 credits whether the track came from Suno or any other AI tool whose terms allow commercial release.
That's the ethical way to distribute AI music. No one else is doing it.
If you want the full comparison, see our ranking of every major distributor for AI music.
Get started
Sign up free. The first release walks you through everything above with the ONCE distribution agent. Pay 2 credits when you're ready to submit - the flat AI release price, with the extra credit funding the Artist Compensation Fund.
If you get stuck at any step, email us. We're three people in Nashville and we read every message.