Shooting a video for an artist and delivering a video for a label backed release are two different jobs. The shoot looks the same. Everything around it doesn't.
I'm writing down what gets expected in practice. Not because it's secret, but because hardly anyone writes it down, and artists end up walking into their first label project without knowing any of it.
The deadline isn't release day
That's the first and biggest mistake. The video has to be finished well before the release, because there's a whole chain behind it. Marketing needs assets for the announcement, distribution needs lead time, press gets material in advance.
Then there's streaming timing. Spotify wants songs submitted at least seven days before release, and in practice people pitch much earlier than that. If your video is finished on release day, you've already missed half your promo. That's why I plan label projects backwards from the release, not forwards from the shoot day.
It's never just one video
A label thinks in assets, not in a film. What's usually expected is a 16:9 master, plus several vertical cuts for Reels, TikTok and Shorts, one or two short teasers for the announcement, a Spotify Canvas, and stills pulled from the footage for press and social.
Canvas has hard requirements. According to Spotify's own guidelines it's three to eight seconds, vertical at 9:16, between 720 and 1080 pixels tall, as MP4 or JPG. None of that is open to interpretation. If it doesn't fit, it gets rejected.
Vertical assets aren't a bonus anymore, they're part of the job. If you only think about them after the shoot, you end up cropping footage that was never framed for it, and it shows.
Approvals go through several desks
With an artist there's one opinion. With a label it's usually four: artist, management, A&R, marketing. Every round costs two to three days, and the notes regularly contradict each other.
What helps is one fixed rule: one consolidated round of feedback, one person who compiles it. On every label project I ask at the start who makes the final call. That single question has saved me more time than any software.
Technical delivery
The master gets checked against criteria that never come up with a direct client. Rec.709 for SDR, clean resolution and frame rate without any messy conversion, the final mastered audio rather than a demo mix, no watermark and no timecode burned in. YouTube's technical specs are the minimum here, not the target.
Then there's clearance. Brand logos in frame, people who never agreed to be filmed, locations without a shooting permit. That stuff surfaces, and then you're back in the edit.
Why I put this out publicly
Because it isn't secret knowledge, it's craft. And because an artist who knows these requirements is easier for any team to book.
For how a project runs on a timeline, read this post. For which formats you actually need, read this one.
Planning a release with a label or management behind you? Let's talk.