Important: Your audio must meet the format specifications below to go live in the digital stores. Content holders are responsible for properly formatting their content.
Follow these instructions to convert your audio to the recommended 16 bit (sample size), 44.1 kHz (sample rate), 1411 kbps (bit rate) stereo WAV files in iTunes before you upload to TuneCore:
- Open the iTunes application on your computer.
- Search for your song(s) in your iTunes Music Library and highlight it (do this by clicking once on the song).
- Go to Preferences (On a Mac, this is under the iTunes drop down menu. On a PC, iTunes Version 10 or older, this is under the Edit drop down menu. On a PC, iTunes Version 11, this is under the square icon on the top left of your iTunes window).
- Once you've clicked Preferences ,make sure you are on the General tab. Go down to where it says Import Settings (if you have an older version of iTunes, you may have to click where it says Advanced and then click on Import Settings ).
- Change Import Using to WAV Encoder . Then click to change Setting to Custom and a new window will open.
- In the Custom window, change the Sample Rate to 44.1 kHz and Sample Size to 16 bit . Make sure Channels says Stereo and Stereo Mode says Normal . Then continue clicking OK until you are back to your iTunes library.
- With your song title(s) still highlighted right click and select Create WAV version. Your song(s) will immediately begin converting. If you have a newer version of iTunes you may need to go to File , click Convert and "Create WAV Version"
- Once the song has finished converting, you will see that the highlighted song(s) is the old version. We recommend you drag the newly converted file(s) (not highlighted) to a folder on your desktop directly from the iTunes library so you will be able to find it later.
You can upload your new audio file(s) to TuneCore.
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If you are exporting from a recording program or importing the audio from a CD (also called "ripping"), you can change the settings/preferences of your export to be 16 bit (sample size), 44.1 kHz (sample rate), 1411 kbps (bit rate) stereo WAV files.
NOTE: If you're using an audio converting website that is not professional software or iTunes, we strongly recommend that you convert your audio again in iTunes afterwards to the required format. Other programs can often embed hidden coding within your audio files, which will likely make the files unrecognizable by the digital stores and cause your release to be rejected.
View Related Blog Posts
How To Get Your Audio Files Ready for Distribution
How Not to Get Blocked by Stores For Formatting Error