Creating a smart link

There are two ways to make a smart link. The quick one is to hand a release's Spotify address to your AI assistant and let it do the looking up. The other is to fill in the form yourself, which takes a few minutes and gives you the same page.

Either way you end up in the same place: a release page at a short address on your own website, with a button per streaming service.

Before you start

Smart links are served from your website, so your website has to be published and carrying the smart link page. Open My Website then Smart Links and look at the top of the screen.

• If you see a note saying you do not have a website published yet, build and publish one first. See Publishing your website.
• If you see a note saying your website has not published the smart link page yet, update your theme and publish once. See Updating your theme. You only have to do this once, and every link you make afterwards is live straight away.

You can still create and edit links while either note is showing. They simply will not open for a fan until the website side is sorted.

The quick way: hand over a Spotify address

Ask your connected AI assistant for a smart link and give it the release's address on Spotify. Apple Music works as a starting point too.

Your assistant will look the release up, find the addresses on the other services, take the cover art, grab a 30-second preview clip, and create the link for you. It should show you the full list of services it found before it writes anything, so you can add one it missed or drop one you do not want on the page.

If you have not connected an assistant yet, see Connect to your own AI.

Whatever your assistant creates is a normal smart link. It shows up in your library, and you can open it and change anything.

The manual way: fill in the form

1. Go to My Website then Smart Links.
2. Click New smart link in the top right.
3. Fill in the form, covered below.
4. Click Save.

You land back on your links list with the new link at the top.

The Release section

Title

The release title as it should appear on the page. The song or album name, not a sentence. Typing here fills in the address for you until you edit the address yourself.

Address

The short ending of the page's web address. Set it to summer-nights and the page opens at /l/summer-nights on your domain.

A few rules:

• Lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens only, up to 80 characters.
• It cannot start or end with a hyphen.
• index, new, and edit are not available.
• It has to be unused across your links, including any older links you still have.

Artist

The artist as billed on this release, including features if they are part of the billing. It shows under the title on the page.

Cover art URL

The address of the artwork image. When your assistant builds the link it fills this in from the streaming service. If you are doing it yourself, paste the artwork address.

This is also the image people see when your link is shared in a message or a post, which for a lot of your audience is the first thing and sometimes the only thing they will see. It is worth checking that it looks right.

Preview clip URL

The address of a 30-second sample. When there is one, a play button appears in the middle of your cover art and a fan can hear the track without leaving the page.

Leave it blank if you do not have one. A cover with no play button is much better than a play button that plays nothing.

Meta Pixel ID for this page

Optional. Runs instead of your site-wide pixel on this page only, so one release's ad campaign reports on its own. Covered in Tracking and pixels.

The Look section

This is where you pick the layout and the colours for this one release. Both have their own pages:

• Page layouts for the five page compositions.
• Theming your link page for light or dark, your own colours, the button shape, and the blurred cover backdrop.

You can skip the whole section. Left alone, the page uses the Classic layout and follows your website's theme, which is usually exactly right.

The Streaming services section

This is the list of buttons a fan sees. Each row is one service and its address.

To add one:

1. Click Add a service.
2. Pick the service from the dropdown.
3. Paste the release's address on that service.

Use the up and down arrows to reorder the rows. The order here is the order on the page, so put the services your audience actually uses at the top rather than leaving them alphabetical. Use the bin icon to remove a row.

Each address has to point at that service's own site. If you paste something that does not, the save is rejected rather than shipping a broken button to fans under your own domain.

Saving

Click Save. You get a confirmation and land back on your links list.

Two things you might see instead of a plain confirmation:

• "Saved, but there is no Apple Music link on this page yet."
• "Saved, but there is no YouTube link on this page yet."

Both are advice, not failures. The link saved fine. These two are the biggest destinations after Spotify, and they are the two most often missed when a release is looked up, so it is worth going back and adding them.

What happens next

Your new link appears at the top of the list with its cover art, its title, its address, and a count of how many services it carries. From that row you can open its numbers, edit it, take it down, or open the live page in a new tab.

See Editing and managing your links for what each of those does.