Welcome to Linkfire! We're excited to help you simplify your music marketing.
This five-step onboarding guide covers all the essentials to get you off to a great start. If you have a question about using Linkfire that’s not answered here, try searching our Help Center—you’ll find in-depth explanations and tutorials for every tool and feature. You can also reach out to us for help anytime!
Why use Linkfire links?
Gone are the days of sharing long, ugly links that route fans to music services they may not even have. With a Linkfire release link, you can easily direct fans to your music in their app of choice.
We’re big believers in wrapping every link you publicly share in a smart link. That way, you’ll be able to maintain brand consistency, measure visits and click-throughs, gain deeper insights about your audience, and keep everything you’re promoting nicely organized in one dashboard.
Create and customize your first link
For your first link, we suggest creating a release link. They can be used for your latest single, album, or anything in your back catalog, and they’re a great way to get familiar with Linkfire. Pre-release links are also a popular choice, but they’re only relevant when you have an upcoming release.
Read on to learn how to set up a release link, or hop over to our pre-release link tutorial if you’d like to set that up instead.
How to create a release link in five easy steps:
- Hit the green “create link” button in the upper right-hand corner, then choose “Release” as your link type.
- Paste in a link to your release on a streaming service (we recommend a Spotify or Apple Music link for the best results). We’ll automatically scan the URL and show you the details and services we’ve pulled in for your landing page.
- Customize the URL so it includes your artist name, release name, campaign name, or any other key branding elements (e.g. artistname.lnk.to/albumtitle).
- Customize your landing page to make it look exactly the way you want by adding more services, updating the text description, uploading artwork, and more.
- Hit “publish,” and your new link will be ready to share!
Want to learn the ins and outs? Here’s a more in-depth tutorial.
Create a release link
To create a release link, you must use a valid music URL. This is typically a link to a track or an album on a music service like Apple Music or Spotify. If you use a link from a service that we don’t have an automated integration with, we won’t find any matches. You can always add services manually later on.
Click the green “Create link” button in the upper right-hand corner of your dashboard, choose “Release” as your link type, and click “Continue.” Then paste in your URL, and you’ll be directed to the setup page.
Customize the URL
Once you’re on the setup page, you can customize the title, add tags for internal use, and customize the URL. We strongly recommend adding a subdomain and replacing the random characters in the shortcode with something meaningful, like the title of your release. That way, your URL will include the artist name, release name, campaign name, or any other key branding elements you wish to highlight as part of your link. This lets your fans know exactly what to expect when they click, which increases the likelihood that they’ll engage with your content.
For example, singer-songwriter Katarzia used her artist name and album title for her release link. Using the structure ArtistName.lnk.to/AlbumTitle, she ended up with this branded link: katarzia.lnk.to/celibat
Once you click “create link,” we’ll start scanning and instantly find matches across other services, so that you don’t have to spend time finding and adding each service manually.
At this point, your new link will be live. But before you share it, we’d recommend customizing your landing page to make it look exactly the way you want and include any additional services.
Customize your landing page
Want to add more services to your landing page, or perhaps change the text displayed below your artwork? Click “edit link” (if you’re on a Personal plan) or “ready for review” (if you’re on a Business plan), and you’ll be taken to the edit page.
Add more service destinations
Under “Service destinations,” you’ll see the default services with matches for your release. If there are any additional services you’d like to include on your landing page, click “Add service” and choose from over 250 automated service integrations. You can also add manual destinations such as your website or merch store. The blue “A” next to the service indicates an Automated integration, and the grey “M” indicates a Manual integration.
If you’re adding several automated services, click “Rescan link” on the left-side menu. Linkfire will find new matches across all automated service integrations.
For manual service destinations, simply copy and paste the direct URL.
Update your artwork, description, and more
Now that you have all the basics down, let’s add some brand elements and final touches to your landing page.
The landing page customizer will show you a preview on the left and customization options on the right.
- Artwork. This is used for both the cover image and the blurred background image. Linkfire finds artwork automatically when you create your link, but you can upload a different image if you’d like. We’d recommend a 640x640 image for best results.
- Appearance. Here you can choose between a light and dark mode of your landing page.
- Description. Edit the title and description text displayed below the artwork. This is usually the artist name and title of the release you’re promoting, but feel free to get creative and write something that fits your style.
- Media sample. Add a play button on top of the artwork that plays a 30-second audio snippet or YouTube video. To enable it, choose one of the scanned services under “Media sample” or paste in a YouTube video link. To disable it, click “No sample.”
- Services. (Some features in this section are reserved for Pro and Teams plan users only.)
Drag services up and down to change the order for "Default" or specific territories. You can also click the button field to change the call-to-action next to each service from “Play” to “Listen,” “Stream,” or anything else you want.
Once you’re happy with your changes, click “Done”.
Congrats — you’re now ready to share your smart link!
NEXT UP: Onboarding Step 2 => Learn how to save time by changing your default board settings. (Skip if you’re on a Starter plan, and dive right into step 3 to learn when and where to share your links.)