CITY JAM’s INDUSTRY.AIFF Takes On Signed Artists With No Finished Song or Date

Labels invested US$8.1bn in A&R and marketing in 2024, according to IFPI, and INDUSTRY.AIFF finishes and dates the songs of signed artists who are not yet out

LONDON, LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM, October 8, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — A record label starts paying for an artist on the day of signing, and the songs that would earn that money back often have no finished master and no release date. CITY JAM today set out how INDUSTRY.AIFF, its programme for record labels and artist services companies, takes on that delivery gap: signed artists whose songs are unfinished, or finished and still waiting for a date.

According to IFPI’s Global Music Report 2026, record labels invested a total of US$8.1bn worldwide in A&R and marketing in 2024. The same report puts global recorded music revenue at US$31.7bn in 2025, up 6.4% on the year before. A signed artist whose songs are not out returns none of that investment, while the costs of the deal keep running.

The bar for a working career is also measured in releases. Spotify’s Loud & Clear FAQ, updated on 11 March 2026, says about 13 million people have uploaded at least one song to Spotify, and nearly 8 million of them have released fewer than ten songs in total. Spotify estimates that around 250,000 artists are pursuing music professionally, a figure it builds from about 288,000 artists who have released ten or more songs and average 10,000 or more monthly listeners. The same FAQ says over 81,000 artists earned at least US$10,000 from Spotify alone in 2025. On that measure, an artist signed with four songs out is six releases short, and at one release every six weeks those six songs take 36 weeks, about eight months.

Platform rules then add a fixed lead time to every release. Spotify’s guidance for artists says pitching to its playlist editors is for upcoming, unreleased songs, and that a song pitched at least seven days before release is added to followers’ Release Radar playlists. Deezer’s Pitching Tool, which is open to label and distributor accounts rather than to artists, asks for both the pitch and the music seven days before release and allows no edits in the final 24 hours. A finished song with no date cannot begin that week at all. In a worked example in one of Villaceran’s letters, a file finished on Friday 30 October 2026 and delivered on Thursday 5 November cannot go out properly on Friday 6 November. The first Friday that meets Deezer’s seven-day timing is 13 November.

The release also joins a long queue. Luminate’s chief executive told Billboard in September 2026 that close to 150,000 tracks a day are now being uploaded to streaming platforms. Billboard adds that since about 2022 the figure quoted across the industry had been over 100,000 a day.

“The day you sign an artist, you start paying for them,” said Pat Villaceran, founder of CITY JAM. “Nobody decides to drop an artist. The week simply runs out first.”

In Villaceran’s published letters to label heads, the pattern inside a label is set out step by step. There is a plan on the day of signing. The next quarter’s signings land on top of it, the priority artist gets the team’s time, and an artist further down the roster is left with finished audio and nobody who owns the release date. Hiring rarely closes that gap in time, because headcount follows next year’s plan and the artist is late now.

INDUSTRY.AIFF starts at the point where each artist’s work has stalled. A label agrees which pieces of work it wants taken on, whether that is finishing songs, dating a finished master or planning a launch. Songwriting, production, finishing and launch are run as one senior programme rather than as a chain of separate suppliers. Release dates are set forward from the delivery day, the pitch week is counted back from each date, and every song is delivered with its registrations done and a named owner for its first month. For a master that is already finished and undated, the date is agreed with the label’s A&R team on the day the master is signed off, so the artwork and credits land together and the pitch goes in at least seven days ahead.

CITY JAM’s delivery promise is signed to released in three months, applied in the same way to one artist or a full roster, including a hundred artists at once. The commitment a label can check is that each artist on the agreed roster finishes a releasable song by a date the label has agreed.

“You keep the rights, and your people keep the decisions,” said Villaceran. CITY JAM takes no rights in the artist, and creative calls, including the choice of songs and the setting of release dates, stay with the label’s A&R team.

Villaceran also writes the INDUSTRY.AIFF weekday letter for music label CEOs, addressed to the chief executive or chair of a music label. Each edition takes one delivery problem, from undated masters to platform pitch windows, and sets it against published figures from sources such as IFPI and Spotify.

Label chief executives, chairs and artist services leaders can book a call with CITY JAM about one signed artist whose next release has no date. Submitting a request is not a purchase and does not confirm a meeting, and CITY JAM reviews each request for fit.

About CITY JAM

CITY JAM builds INDUSTRY.AIFF and CREATOR LABS, supported by a global community of experts and producers, including CITY JAM New York. Founded and led by Pat Villaceran, who also founded the innovation agency The MooVe, CITY JAM brings her record of building innovation programmes for companies and founders across Asia Pacific, the United States, the United Kingdom and Europe to music. INDUSTRY.AIFF is CITY JAM’s programme for record labels and artist services companies, and the name of its weekday letter for music label CEOs. CREATOR LABS is a separate offering and is not part of INDUSTRY.AIFF.

Pat, Founder, CITY JAM

PAT VILLACERAN
CITY JAM
Visit us on social media:
LinkedIn

Media gallery