Status & Action Bar (STAB)

The Status & Action Bar, nicknamed the STAB, is the colored bar that sits at the top of every release page. It tells you the current state of your release at a glance and provides contextual actions you can take.

The STAB changes its background color, status dot, label, and action buttons depending on where your release is in its lifecycle.

Anatomy

The STAB is made up of four parts laid out in a single row (two rows on mobile):

On mobile, the store bubbles and View details button wrap to a second row below the status and actions.

Statuses

The STAB displays one of six statuses. When multiple conditions are true, the highest-priority status wins.

Priority order (highest to lowest): Taken Down → Rejected → Distributed → Attention Needed → Submitted → Draft

Draft

The release has been created but not yet submitted for distribution. This is the default state for new releases.

Submitted

The release has been queued and is being processed for distribution. Stores are receiving your content but have not yet confirmed it is live. Store bubbles appear in this state showing which stores the release was sent to.

Attention Needed

Something went wrong during distribution and requires your attention. This happens when a distribution error occurs, for example, a mastering step failed or timed out, or the metadata contains invalid characters (such as emojis in a label field). Click View details to see what happened.

If ONCE detects that a distribution worker got stuck in a long-running state (for example, a timeout or crash while processing), the release is automatically moved to Attention Needed. View details includes the detected timeout/stuck reason and the recommended retry action.

If our Validation Agent moves a previously distributed release back into inspection, ONCE also uses Attention Needed. In that case, View details shows the inspection note.

When the distributor returns generic store errors, View details now groups the affected stores by shared provider response, shows any Revelator status codes we received, and adds likely-cause hints for common metadata validation failures. This makes it easier to see whether the issue is isolated to one store or affecting multiple destinations in the same way.

Clicking Retry Distribution opens the “Fix and Retry Distribution” editor, the same form used for Edit & Redistribute, so you can review and correct any metadata issues before resubmitting. The editor’s submit button is labelled Save & Retry Distribution to make it clear what will happen. If no metadata changes are needed, you can click Save & Retry Distribution immediately without making any edits.

The View details dialog also shows a Fix and Retry Distribution button when a retry is possible, so you can go straight from the error details into the editor without closing the dialog first.

When ONCE flags a release for a recognizable-artist review (for example, AI-generated tracks mapped to an existing Spotify or Apple artist profile), the release page explains why it is held. Ask ONCE Support to send your ownership details to the ONCE team. A normal retry cannot bypass this identity check; distribution continues only after the team verifies and clears the review.

If the error was caused by Peak mastering (the audio mastering step), two specialized options appear instead:

Distributed

Your music has been sent to stores and at least one store has confirmed receipt. The pulsing green dot indicates your release is actively live. Store bubbles are visible in this state.

A distributed release keeps the bar to four buttons: the three actions you reach for most, plus More Tools, which opens a popup holding everything else (Register Publishing, Splits, and YouTube OAC). See More Tools.

For releases with Content ID coverage, Revelator can add a note that the release is not eligible for YouTube Content ID (for example due to non-exclusive sample/loop matches). The release can remain distributed to stores, including YouTube Music, and this warning appears in View details.

Inside Edit & Redistribute, you can either describe the change in plain English with the Edit Agent or open the full manual editor.

• Use it for metadata fixes (genre, title version, credits, language), new album artwork, and replacement track audio.
• The Album Art section is always visible at the top of the editor, so replacing cover art never requires opening the full field editor. You can also ask the Edit Agent to “replace the cover art” and it opens that section for you.
• If you replace track audio or change a UPC or ISRC, ONCE asks you to confirm a takedown before redistribution.
• Missing songwriter credits don’t block updates to a release that’s already distributed. You can still fix genre, artwork, and other details, and add writer credits later through Publishing.

Delivered (variant)

When stores have received your content but haven’t published it yet, the label reads Delivered instead of “Distributed.” The dot is solid green (no pulse).

Future release date

If your release is distributed but the release date is in the future, the STAB shows a clock icon and “Available [date]” next to the status label, your release is on stores but not yet publicly available.

Rejected

A streaming platform rejected your release. Click View details to see the inspection note. ONCE only shows inspection-related rejection notes here. Internal distributor sandbox/test-store failures do not change an otherwise distributed release to Rejected, and if ONCE cannot load a clear inspection note it will direct you to contact hey@once.app instead of showing a raw system error.

Taken Down

The release has been removed from a majority of stores. The STAB shows a count (e.g. “Taken down on 3 stores, still up on 1 store”) next to the label. Store bubbles only show stores where the release is still live.

No specific action buttons appear for taken-down releases. Use View details to see full takedown information.

View Details

The View details pill button appears for most non-draft statuses. It opens a detail panel relevant to the current state:

Store Bubbles

When a release is Submitted or Distributed, the STAB shows small circular icons for the stores your release was sent to.

• Featured stores (Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube Music, TikTok) appear as individual icons
• Non-featured stores are collapsed into a “+N” bubble (e.g. “+12”), hover to see all store names

For Taken Down releases, only the stores where the release is still live are shown.

More Tools

On a distributed release, the bar shows only Edit & Redistribute, View Performance, and Share Release. Everything else lives one tap away behind More Tools.

Clicking it dims and blurs the page behind a small panel listing each remaining tool as its own button, with a one-line description of what it does and where it currently stands. On a phone the panel slides up from the bottom edge; on a wider screen it opens centred. Click any tool to close the panel and open it, or click outside the panel, the ✕, or press Esc to dismiss.

Tools in the panel:

Notification dots

The tools inside carry the same notification dots they had in the bar, an amber dot for something waiting on you, red for an error, blue for work in progress. Nothing gets buried: if any tool in the panel has a dot, the More Tools button wears it too, showing the most urgent one. A red dot on More Tools means at least one tool inside needs attention.

Register Publishing Action

The Register Publishing button opens ONCE’s track-level publishing workflow for drafting and submitting songwriter/publishing metadata.

If publishing details were collected in chat, tracks appear here as Queued • awaiting ISRC and register automatically once distribution assigns each track’s ISRC. A blue indicator dot on the button shows while tracks are queued.

For a full walkthrough (including chat collection, draft mode, validation rules, and PRO/IPI handling), see Publishing with ONCE.

Splits Action

The Splits button lives in the More Tools panel on distributed releases and opens the royalty split workflow for that release.

Use it when you need to:

• Assign release-wide royalty percentages
• Override the split on individual tracks
• Invite collaborators into ONCE with locked, view-only access to the release

For the full owner and recipient flow, see Royalty Splits.

YouTube OAC Action

New Official Artist Channel requests are a ONCE Insider perk, and are also available to approved ONCE distribution partners. On an eligible account, the YouTube OAC button in the More Tools panel opens the request form for the release’s primary artist. The button also stays active for an existing request so its owner can finish a draft, correct a rejected request, or follow its status, whatever their current membership.

On accounts without access, the tool still appears in the panel but is greyed out. Hovering it explains that OAC requests are an Insider perk right now and that we’re exploring ways to open it up to everyone. Distribution to YouTube Music is unaffected either way.

An OAC is separate from distribution to YouTube Music. Your release does not need an OAC to appear in the YouTube Music app or as an Art Track on an artist Topic channel.

Use it when you need to:

• Submit your YouTube channel URL and channel ID for OAC review
• Provide the artist’s topic channel URL (the full https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC… link)
• Enter the artist’s country using the full country name (e.g., United States, Canada, Mexico)
• Upload screenshots showing your channel details and recent uploads
• Include every distributed release on your account that uses the same primary artist name

If you already submitted OAC details for that artist on another release, ONCE reuses the saved submission automatically. The form shows when it was sent and which releases are linked. You can open the release picker to see every distributed release that shares the artist.

An amber dot on the button means the artist still needs an OAC submission. After submission, the dot disappears and the hover tooltip shows the sent date.

After you submit, the request moves through a review lifecycle: Submitted → In review → Approved or Rejected. The form shows the current status along with any note from the ONCE team, and if a request is rejected you can update the details and resubmit right from the same form.

To follow every OAC request in one place, alongside channel whitelisting and per-release Content ID status, open the YouTube Toolkit at beta.once.app/youtube. The form links to it directly.

Additional Indicators

Audio Match Indicator

If ONCE detects that one or more tracks match audio already available on music services, an indicator appears next to the View details button when the release is in Submitted status. Pex results are only shown above a 10% audio match. When Pex and the post-delivery check identify the same recording, ONCE combines them into one result. Different recordings remain separate within the same audio-match section:

Hovering over or focusing the badge shows the matched recordings and whether both checks agree. If the match is to your own recording, no action is needed. If you do not recognize it, contact hey@once.app.

All Actions (Reference)

A quick reference of every action button that can appear in the STAB.