With 100K+ releases being uploaded onto digital platforms daily; it can be hard to keep track of your catalogue and make sure it displays onto the correct artist profiles. To ensure your artist’s releases are available on their existing profile for their fans to easily locate their new music, DSPs and music providers use Artist IDs to map releases to the correct profiles.
What is an artist ID?
An Artist ID is a unique identifier assigned to an artist to easily locate them across digital platforms. They are exceptionally important for keeping track of where releases have been delivered. They are also useful when identifying different artists who may share the same or have a similar name. For example, “Rainbow” is the name of a K-pop girl group and a Hard rock band from the UK. Without their own unique IDs, DSPs wouldn’t know which Rainbow profile is the correct page to add new releases to.
Each platform has its own format for Artist IDs. They also have different methods for displaying these. On Apple Music, artist IDs are a string of digits found at the end of an artist’s URL. Spotify Artist IDs are strings of numbers and letters found within an artist’s URI and URL. For Audiomack, the ID is a string of digits found in the artist’s profile. We’ll talk you through how to get these later.
Why your artists need to know their ID:
Artist’s knowing their ID is vital information particularly for liaising with a distributor. When uploading new releases to their accounts under your My Client Zone distributor profile, artists have the option to input their artist IDs for certain DSPs. When we deliver the release, we can use the ID to map your artist’s release to the correct profile. This means all their music will display on the right page. Without it, there’s a chance the release could be sent to a new profile, or to another artist’s page. If this does happen, your client could miss out on streams and crucial fan engagement. It’s important to take the necessary steps to prevent this from happening during the submission process.
It’s important to note that if you’re working with a new artist with no released music, they won’t have been assigned an artist ID yet. These are only created for the artist once the first release is delivered to DSPs. If you require an artist ID before your submitted release goes live, you can reach out to your My Client Zone account manager for assistance.
How to locate an artist ID on digital platforms:
Locating artist IDs across different platforms varies across DSPs. Below we have outlined how to locate IDs across Spotify, Apple music and Audiomack.
Apple Music:
For Apple Music, you can find an artist ID at the end of the artist page URL. To get the URL, head to an artist page and click the 3 dots “…” at the bottom right of the artist image. From there, click “share”, then “copy link”. This copies the artist’s apple URL to your clipboard. The artist ID is the group of numbers after the last forward slash shown below in bold:
https://music.apple.com/gb/artist/rihanna/63346553
Spotify:
For Spotify, use the search bar to search for an artist. On the artist page select the 3 dots “…” > Share > Copy Link. If you paste this link, you’ll see that the URL contains a long code after “artist/”. This combination of letters and numbers up to “?” is the unique artist ID and can be copied directly from the URL.
URL: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5pKCCKE2ajJHZ9KAiaK11H?si=bea394e19f134332
On the desktop version of Spotify, before selecting “Copy Link to Artist”, press the option key and then you’ll see “Copy Artist URI. From the URI, the artist ID will be more clear:
URI: spotify:artist:5pKCCKE2ajJHZ9KAiaK11H
Audiomack:
To locate artist IDs on Audiomack, the artist will need to log into their Audiomack account and click the dropdown arrow at the top right next to the name and profile photo. Then click on Creator Dashboard. From there, in the top left corner the artist will be able to see their Artist ID below the profile photo. They can click on it and then select “Copy Artist ID”.
How the artist ID is added to new releases on My Client Zone:
Now you know where to find your client’s artist IDs, here’s how they input them on our system to ensure their releases match to the correct profiles:
- Client logs into their account under your distributor profile.
- Client starts the submission of a new release: Select “Releases” then “New Audio Release” from the left-hand menu (artist IDs are not needed for video releases).
- Enter release details in the first page: For each performer added, click the green “Add Artist Store IDs” button and enter the ID in the corresponding box. Then click “OK” to save. At this point our system will do a quick check to make sure the input name aligns with the ID that has been added.
- Once finished on page one, click “Save & Continue” at the bottom to move to the next page.
- Upload audio files and add metadata for each track: Fill out the remaining artist roles (i.e. producer, arranger etc.). Click the green “Add Artist Store IDs” button again and input the artist IDs.
- Finally, click OK to save and finish uploading your audio. You’ll need to do this for each artist role added every time you upload a release.
In rare cases, a mapping issue can occur even if you’ve provided your artist ID. If this does happen, simply reach out to the My Client Zone team with details (i.e. release title, release UPC/barcode, a link to the profile the release is currently on, correct artist ID) and we will have reached out to the DSP directly within 24 hours to fix ASAP.