Title Capitalization Rules for Music Releases (Apple Music and Spotify)
Updated 2026-10-21 · 2 sources
Short answer
Use title case for English titles: capitalize every word except a, an, and, as, but, for, from, nor, of, or, so, the, to and yet, and prepositions of four letters or fewer, unless they are the first or last word (also inside parentheses). No all caps, all lowercase or random casing unless that's the artist's established style. Other languages follow their own rules: French, Italian, Swedish and German use sentence case.
English title case
- Lowercase: a, an, and, as, but, for, from, nor, of, or, so, the, to, yet, and prepositions of four letters or fewer (at, by, in, into, off, on, onto, out, over, up, with) unless used as another part of speech [1] [2].
- Always capitalize the first and last word of a title, and the first and last word in parentheses [1] [2].
- Apple capitalizes Are, If, Is, It, Than, That and This, and words before and after a dash, slash or colon [1].
- Titles must not be all caps, all lowercase or random casing; Spotify allows exceptions when the artist specifies the styling [1] [2].
Other languages
Accents count too
Spotify's style guide says accents and casing must be delivered accurately or the release can land on the wrong artist page, e.g. always "Beyoncé", not "Beyonce" [2]. See wrong artist profile.
Examples
| Instead of | Use | Why |
|---|---|---|
| WAITING FOR THE END | Waiting for the End | No all caps; "for" and "the" stay lowercase. |
| some kind of trouble | Some Kind of Trouble | No all lowercase. |
| What They're Looking for | What They're Looking For | Last word is always capitalized (Apple example). |
Metadata Checker →
Paste your release metadata and get every issue with its fix. Free.
Catalog Health Audit →
Score a whole catalog and find duplicate ISRCs and registration gaps.
AI Disclosure Kit →
Work out ContainsAI and credit lines for AI-assisted releases.
FAQ
My artist name is stylized in lowercase. Is that allowed?
These casing rules are written for titles, and Spotify's guide allows exceptions when the artist specifies a style. Keep an artist name's styling identical on every release.
Do these rules apply to deliberately misspelled titles?
Yes. Apple applies the same casing rules to purposely misspelled words, e.g. "In da House".
Related guides
Sources
Platform rules change. Each rule above is attributed to the company or standard that published it, as checked on 2026-10-21. This guide is not legal advice.