If your music is already on Apple Music, claiming your Apple Music for Artists account should be one of your next steps.
Apple Music for Artists is Apple’s dashboard for artists and their teams. It lets you see listener data, manage parts of your artist profile, submit lyrics, create promotional assets and track how people are discovering your music across Apple Music and Shazam.
The claim process is fairly simple. However, your music needs to be live first.
Step 1: Make sure your music is live on Apple Music
Your music distributor is the company that delivers your recordings and release information to services such as Apple Music, Spotify and Amazon Music.
Apple currently requires your content to be live on Apple Music for at least five business days before you can claim the artist page.
If Syntax Creative distributes your music, Apple Music is part of our distribution network.
Step 2: Sign in with your Apple Account
You can claim your artist page through the Apple Music for Artists website or the Apple Music for Artists app for iPhone.
Sign in with your Apple Account, formerly called an Apple ID.
Use an account connected to an email address you regularly check. Apple will send information about your application there.
Also protect that account properly. Our guide to two-factor authentication for musicians explains why account security matters when several parts of your career connect to one login.
Step 3: Find your Apple Music artist page
In Apple Music, search for your artist name or one of your releases.
Then:
- Open the correct artist page or release.
- Select the More button.
- Choose Share.
- Select Copy Link.
Keep that link handy. You will use it during the claim process.
Step 4: Request artist access
Inside Apple Music for Artists, select Request Artist Access.
Paste the Apple Music or iTunes Store artist-page link into the Find an Artist field.
Then select one of your albums to confirm that you are claiming the correct artist.
You must be listed as a primary artist on that album. A featured-artist credit by itself does not qualify you to claim the page.
This is worth checking carefully when multiple artists have the same or similar names.
Step 5: Tell Apple who you are
Apple needs to verify your identity and relationship to the artist.
An artist or artist manager should handle the initial claim.
Provide as much useful verification information as possible. Apple may use connections to your distributor, official website and social accounts to help verify the request.
The more clearly those pieces connect you to the artist, the easier the application is for Apple to review.
Step 6: Wait for approval
After submitting the request, Apple Music for Artists will show the application as Pending while Apple reviews it.
Apple sends application updates by email.
The original version of this article recommended allowing at least 10 business days. Apple no longer publishes that specific approval timeline, so watch the application status and your email instead.
Step 7: Add the rest of your team
Once the artist or manager has access, do not share one Apple Account across the entire team.
Apple Music for Artists lets an administrator invite individual users and assign different roles.
Apple currently offers three:
- Admin: Can view analytics, promote content, update the artist profile and manage other users.
- Analyst: Can view analytics and use promotional tools.
- Profile Editor: Can manage artist images, lyrics and artist-profile details.
More than one person can have Admin access.
Labels, managers and other team members should receive their own access rather than using the artist’s login.
Also remove people when they are no longer part of the team.
What can you do with Apple Music for Artists?
Claiming the account gives you considerably more than a verified login.
Understand your audience
The Measure section contains Apple Music’s artist analytics.
Depending on the music and activity available, you can review information such as:
- plays
- average daily listeners
- purchases
- Shazam activity
- radio spins
- music video views
- editorial playlist activity
- listener locations
- age and gender information
Apple also offers Listening Now, which shows how many people are currently streaming your music.
Use those numbers for context rather than collecting screenshots of impressive-looking totals. Our guide to using music data analytics explains how to turn platform information into better decisions.
See your Shazam activity
Shazam is Apple’s music-recognition service that identifies songs playing around the listener.
Apple Music for Artists brings Shazam information into the same dashboard.
You can see where people are identifying your songs, follow Shazam Counts and view chart activity in countries, regions and cities.
That can be especially interesting when a song begins moving somewhere you were not expecting.
Manage your artist profile
Apple Music for Artists lets authorized users manage parts of the artist’s public presence.
You can update the artist image and submit profile details such as where the artist is from, influences, collaborations and answers to Apple’s artist Q&A.
If music metadata itself is wrong, however, contact your distributor. Apple Music for Artists is not a replacement for correcting the metadata delivered with the release.
Add and correct lyrics
Apple also lets authorized teams submit lyrics directly through Apple Music for Artists.
Under Artist Content, select a song and add the properly formatted lyrics. You can also request corrections when existing lyrics are wrong.
Apple therefore has its own direct lyric-management route even though services such as Musixmatch can distribute lyrics to other platforms.
Promote your music
The Promote section lets artists create customized marketing assets for songs, albums, music videos, pre-adds and milestones.
You can use those assets across social media, email and other parts of a release campaign.
Apple also encourages listeners to favorite artist pages. Favorites can help fans find new releases and receive updates about artists they care about.
Track live opportunities
Apple expanded its artist tools again in 2026 by adding concerts to Apple Music artist pages.
That gives fans another way to see when an artist is playing nearby or heading out on tour.
It is another reason to claim the account instead of treating Apple Music as somewhere your distributor simply sends audio files.
Claim it and use it
Apple Music for Artists is free.
Once your music has been live for five business days, claim the page, verify the right artist, give the right people access and look through the tools Apple provides.
Then keep using it.
Update the profile. Check the data. Fix lyrics. Promote releases. Watch Shazam activity. Keep the team access current.
Your distributor can get your music onto Apple Music.
Apple Music for Artists gives you more control over what happens once it gets there.
