DIY: publish yourself — a game on Google Play, a track on streaming, a video on a channel — without a publisher, a label or an agency

You made the thing — the game from the weekend recipe, the track from the music recipe, the video from the promo recipe. Now it needs to be out. The reflex is a publisher, a label, an agency — someone who “has the contacts”. None of the three gates below has a contact. They have a form, a fee and a checklist, and this is the checklist.

You end up with

Your game live on Google Play, your track live on the major streaming platforms, your video live on a channel set up to be trusted — all under your own name or company, with the money flowing to you

What it costs

Play: a one-time developer registration fee. Streaming: an annual distributor subscription. Channel: free. Plus the assets each gate demands, made for cents with the other recipes

How long

A day of forms per gate the first time; then minutes per release. Plus the waiting: review queues, a mandatory test period for new Play accounts, distribution lag to streaming

Runs on

Google Play Console · a music distributor · a channel on YouTube · a privacy page you host · a company or at least a plan for one

Step 0 — decide who owns it, once

Write down the chain before the first upload: owner → public name → works. Mine is a company (owns the rights, receives the money, signs the terms) → an imprint (the label and studio name the public sees; an imprint needs no registration) → the personas and titles. The accounts at every gate are opened by the owner, with the public name in the display field. If you’re a private person today, that’s fine for uploading — but read the FAQ above before the first payout.

Keep the proof of authorship in a folder per work: drafts, prompts, lyrics, source, exports, dates. Every gate has a dispute process and every dispute is won with dates.

Gate 1 — a game on Google Play

1. Open the developer account under the owner. One-time fee. Identity verification takes days — start it before the game is finished.
2. Run the closed test. At the time of writing, a new personal developer account must run a closed test with a minimum number of testers for a fixed period before it can publish to production. It is the gate that surprises everyone; plan two to three weeks for it and recruit the testers early. Check the current rule in the Console — it has changed before.
3. The listing assets: icon, feature graphic, phone screenshots at the required sizes, a short and a long description, a content rating questionnaire answered honestly, a privacy policy URL you host (even for a game with no accounts — the ad SDK alone makes it mandatory), and the data-safety form that must match what the SDKs actually collect.
4. Monetisation: ads via the ad network’s SDK plus a one-time “remove ads” unlock is the simplest honest model for a small game; both of my published titles use it. Declare the ads in the rating questionnaire — a mismatch is the most common rejection.
5. The build: signed release bundle, version code incremented every upload, the record mode from the game recipe used for the screenshots so the store shows the real game.

Gate 2 — a track on streaming

1. Pick a distributor and read one paragraph carefully: whether the subscription is annual and what happens when it lapses. On the one I use, lapse = the catalog comes down; royalties already earned stay yours. That means the subscription is the price of presence, and a catalog that isn’t earning its renewal is a decision to make once a year.
2. The release form: artist name (the persona), release title, track titles, genre, language, explicit flag, release date, ISRC and UPC (the distributor issues them), artwork square at the required size with no marks you don’t own, and the label field — your imprint.
3. The AI question. Distributors and platforms now ask. Answer it truthfully and consistently across platforms; the platforms’ rules distinguish between AI-assisted production with human creative input and bulk generated uploads. Keep the human layer — your lyrics, your concept, your edits — in the proof folder.
4. Two money pipes, one switched on by default. The distributor pays master royalties for your recordings — that works from day one. Publishing royalties (the songwriter’s share, radio, covers) only reach you if you register with a collecting society or a publishing administrator; without that registration the money accrues to nobody. Do it once, in your own name.
5. Don’t drip one track. A persona with one release has nothing for the platforms’ algorithms to recommend. I learned this with a persona that sat on a single track for weeks: release the catalog close together, then keep a rhythm.

Gate 3 — a video on a channel

1. Finish the channel before the first upload. Avatar, banner, description, a trailer, playlists and sections created empty, the channel verified to unlock the features you’ll need. The first uploads are how the platform decides what you are; a bare channel introduces itself badly.
2. One category, one language, one visual style per channel. Sub-series are told apart by title, playlist and tags — never by switching the category.
3. The upload: the hook in the first three seconds, captions burned in or uploaded as a subtitle file, a description that reads like a table of contents (what it’s about, the story, the scenes in order — the videos with that got picked up faster in my log), chapters for anything long, the altered-content declaration answered by reading the actual rule.
4. Then don’t touch it for 48 hours. No title change, no thumbnail swap, no re-upload. Measure on day three and day seven, not hour one.
5. Rhythm, not batches. A schedule with two or three finished episodes in reserve. My education channel got picked up on nine consecutive uploads and then went silent the day I dumped eight files at once. Regularity is a cadence, not a pile.

What it gives your business

Three distribution channels you own outright, with the money routed to you and no percentage to anyone whose only asset was “knowing the forms”. The forms are above. What a publisher, a label and an agency actually sell beyond the forms is promotion — and that is a separate question with its own honest economics, not a reason to give away ownership.

Where it breaks

• You uploaded before the ownership was decided, and now the account, the payouts and the rights are in three different names. Step 0 exists for this.
• The closed test. Not planned for; adds three weeks to a launch.
• The lapse. The distributor renewal was missed and the catalog vanished on a Tuesday.
• The batch. Eight uploads in an hour on a young channel.
• The disclosure. Ticked by reflex, or not ticked when it applied. Read the rule each time; it moves.

Related: the game-studio case · the label log · the channels log · declaring creator income in the EU · all recipes in Do it yourself.