Instant-Gratification Tracks are individual tracks that are immediately available as part of a pre-order for an album. If you pre-order an album, you may find that some of the tracks are available immediately to download or stream, before the full album is available.

Artists can request to make tracks from an upcoming album available as instant-gratification tracks by asking their label or distributor. Currently this can be done for iTunes/Apple Music, Amazon & Deezer.

Want to really give your fans an incentive to pre-order your album? You can set up to 49% of the total number of tracks as Instant Gratification Tracks (for example, a maximum of 5 out of a 12 tracks album).

In the above example you can see that two tracks from the upcoming album are available to purchase and download immediately. These tracks can be purchased individually. If someone pre-orders the album they will be able to download those three tracks instantly.

Additionally, when making tracks available for instant-gratification in iTunes, they will also be available to stream in Apple Music. This allows fans to pre-add the upcoming album to their library and listen to some songs from the album immediately.

One big benefit for fans is that by pre-adding an album to their collection they will get a notification as soon as the full album is available to stream.

Here’s a video where I break this down even further.

Have you tried this? Did it help to boost pre-orders for your album? If you have any feedback or questions please feel free to leave a comment.