What to put on a release smart link, and what to measure once it is live

A smart link is one address that takes each listener to the right store. It exists because a release lives in a dozen places and a post can carry one link. Building one takes a minute; building one that works for the listener and tells you something afterwards takes a little thought.

Destinations: fewer than you think

Every store the release is on is a candidate. Not every one belongs on the page.

Include the stores your listeners actually use, in the territories they are in. For most catalogs that is four to six: the two or three big streaming services, a download store, YouTube, and one regional service if the audience has a region. A page with sixteen buttons is a page where the listener scrolls past the one they wanted.

Order them by where your listeners are, not by which service you prefer. If the store breakdown on your statements says most of your streams are on one service, its button goes first.

Territory-specific destinations

A listener in Japan and a listener in Brazil should not see the same list. Some services do not operate in some countries, and some countries have a dominant service the global list ignores. A smart link should let a destination be limited to a territory — shown in Japan, hidden elsewhere — so a Brazilian listener does not tap a button that opens an error page.

The fallback

Every link needs somewhere to go when nothing else applies: a store page, your own site, a video. A release link with no destination and no fallback is a page that goes nowhere, and the editor should refuse to publish it.

Pre-release links

Before the release date, the link's job is different. There is nothing to play yet. A pre-release link carries the date, the artwork and the stores where the release can be saved in advance, and it turns into the release link on the day. What it should not do is promise a feature that requires a store's permission — saving to a listener's library on their behalf needs the listener to authorise your app with the store, which is a step most links do not have.

What a click can tell you

A smart link is also a measurement. Each tap records which service was chosen, the listener's country, the kind of device, and where the link was posted — the referrer. From that you learn:

• Which stores your audience actually uses, which should feed the order of the buttons.
• Where the audience is, which is an argument for a territory-specific destination and for where to promote.
• Which post drove the traffic, from the referrer host.
• Mobile versus desktop, which changes what the page should look like.

What it should not tell you

It should not identify the listener. A link that sets a cookie, stores IP addresses or builds a profile has turned a piece of promotion into surveillance, and the audience did not agree to that. NVR.to records the service, the country, the device class and the referrer host, sets no cookie, stores no IP address, and rotates its visitor hash daily so that it cannot become an identifier. It can say how many clicks a link had from Germany on Android; it cannot say who they were, and it is built so that it never can. That also means it cannot report "unique visitors this month", and it will not pretend to.

Checklist before publishing

• Four to six destinations, ordered by your store breakdown.
• Territory limits on any store that is regional.
• A fallback URL.
• Artwork, title, artist, and the ISRC or UPC so the page matches the release.
• For a pre-release: the date, and only features the link can actually deliver.
• The link tested on a phone.

NVR.to, built into SNVRKOTICS, supports eight kinds of link, recognises forty services by their hostnames, limits destinations by territory, routes by country, platform and referrer, and reports clicks without identifying anyone. On Pro and above, a link can live on your own domain.