Onboarding

What it is

Onboarding in Aden is split into two parts. First, a short setup wizard that runs the first time you sign in. It collects the basics about your team (name, logo, genre, location, members) and creates it for you. The wizard is a split-screen experience: the form is on the left and a live preview of your workspace fills the right side on larger screens, updating in real time as you type your team name, pick a colour, upload a logo, or add genres and members. Second, an in-app checklist that appears in the sidebar after your team is created, walking you through the key actions that make Aden useful: uploading a track, sharing a version, making a track public, and more.

Separately, Aden sends a short sequence of emails during your first days on the platform. These are written by the team and managed by admins. They are not automated system alerts but personal-sounding notes to help you get started.

Using it

Which side of Aden you land on

Aden has two sides on one account, and onboarding now says which one is yours instead of assuming everybody is an artist:

• Your workspace (/app): for making music. A team per artist or project, with its own tracks, versions, releases and public profile.
• The organisation side (/org): for managing an organisation: its artists, members, deals, contracts, approvals and events.

If you were added to an organisation (by invite, or by an admin setting up your organisation for you), that is where your work lives, and you are taken straight there. The first-run team wizard is not part of your setup. The invite screen tells you this before you sign up, the organisation dashboard offers a short tour that names both sides, and an Artist workspace link in the sidebar takes you across if you release music yourself too. You never need to create an artist team just to get started as a manager.

You and your team are two different things

Your account and your team are separate, and the wizard now says so before it asks for a name:

• You: the name you gave when you registered, plus your avatar. This is how your teammates see you, and it is what your own public profile uses.
• Your team: the artist, band or project. It has its own name, its own avatar, its own page at aden.space/<handle>, and its own tracks and members.

The welcome step shows both side by side, with your real name on the account card, so the difference is concrete rather than described. The live preview puts the team in the sidebar switcher at the top and you in the account row at the bottom, exactly where the real app puts them.

If you type your own name as the team name, a note appears under the field pointing out that you already go by that name here, so both will show up. It does not stop you: releasing under your own name is normal, and plenty of artists do. It just makes it a choice instead of a surprise. The review step then lists your account name next to the team so the last screen names both.

Setting up your first team

1. After signing in for the first time, you are taken to /app/onboarding.
2. The wizard walks you through: welcome → import → basics → details → public profile → what it's for → review & create. A progress bar tracks how far along you are, and each step animates in. The step is in the address bar, so refreshing, bookmarking, or coming back later puts you back on the step you were on, and everything you typed is still there.
3. The import step comes first: paste your Spotify artist link, your SoundCloud profile, or a Linktree or website address. Your name, artwork, brand colours and genres come back filled in, so the next step is mostly answered already. Skip if you would rather type it yourself.
4. On the basics step you edit one header: the avatar, logo, banner and brand palette all live on the preview of the header they end up on, with the name, your aden.space/@handle address, the public-page switch and your country and city under it. Setting a country also sets the timezone on your account when that country has one.
5. On the details step, add your genres and your bio, and optionally invite team members by email. Import next to the bio reads your SoundCloud, Spotify or website page and fills it in, along with any links it finds.
6. On the public profile step, fill in your emails: the team's own address, a promo fallback, and any public contacts (a row is ready for you, label it "EU bookings" or "Press"). You can also import your existing links here.
7. On the what it's for step, pick your main purpose. Releasing music, shows & touring, audience & promo, or managing artists. That decides what your sidebar opens with, so you don't start out staring at every feature Aden has. Nothing is removed: anything hidden is one click away in the sidebar's own menu, and you can change it whenever. Pick your mailbox (Gmail or Outlook) and we'll drop you on the connect screen with it ready once your team exists. The social connections are still in platform review, so they live in Integrations rather than here.
8. On the review step, confirm everything and click Create team. The wizard hands over to a setup screen that names each piece of work as it happens, creating the workspace, adding any links you imported, uploading a track you dropped on the landing page, throws confetti the moment the team exists, and then takes you into the team dashboard with a guided tour.
9. That setup screen also shows your new handle and links straight to your public page and your website, both opening in a new tab. The handle is the one your team actually got: new teams get a short suffix on the slug you picked, so this is the address to share. The success toast keeps a View public page link once you land in the workspace.
10. Throughout, the right-hand preview shows your workspace coming to life. The sidebar, public profile banner, genre tags and invited members all reflect your choices instantly. A rotating "Did you know?" card surfaces product tips.
11. If you are not ready to set up a team, click Skip at any point. A cookie records the skip for 30 days so the wizard does not re-appear.

Finishing a setup someone else started

If you were invited into a team that already existed, an admin set it up, your label or agency created it, or it came out of an enquiry, you never saw the setup wizard, so you never got the parts of it that do the most work for you: importing your links, pulling your releases in from Spotify, and shaping your sidebar around what you actually do.

Finish setting up is that same wizard, pointed at your existing team. It opens on a list of what your team still has to gain, logo and colours, your music, genres and bio, socials and links, what you use Aden for, connected accounts, with everything already in place ticked off. Click any item to jump straight to it, or walk through in order. Nothing is re-asked: every field starts filled in with what's already on the team, and your handle stays as it is.

It lives at the same address as the first-run wizard, /app/onboarding. The step you are on is in the address bar here too, so a refresh keeps your place. A team you just created in the wizard goes to its dashboard instead: it answered these questions on its own steps. Add ?setup=1 to open the flow for it anyway. Once you're on a team, that page finishes your setup instead of asking you to create another one, so every "get started" link you already have works. You can also reach it from the Continue setup card at the top of Getting started, or Set this up for me in the sidebar checklist. It always works on the team you're currently in, to finish a different one, switch to it first.

Saving applies everything at once: your profile, any links imported from a Linktree or website (including shows, releases and playlists found on it), your Spotify catalogue, and your sidebar preset. Once a team is fully set up the offer disappears and /app/onboarding takes you to your dashboard again. Add ?setup=1 if you want to run it anyway, for instance to re-import your catalogue.

Starting from Spotify

If you already release music, you do not have to retype anything. At the top of the basics step there are three tiles, Spotify, SoundCloud and Link: click Spotify and a small search dialog opens:

1. Paste your Spotify artist link (in Spotify: Share → Copy link to artist): or just type your artist name and pick yourself from the results. The dialog closes as soon as you pick.

2. Aden fills in your team name and public link, uses your Spotify artist picture as the team avatar, picks a brand colour sampled from that picture, maps your Spotify genres onto Aden genres, and saves your Spotify link to the team.

3. Everything it filled in stays editable. Change the name, swap the image, pick another colour, keep going.

4. If Aden finds releases on your Spotify profile, the row offers three tick boxes:

   • Import my tracks after setup: pulls your whole catalogue from Songstats the moment your workspace exists. Not just the Spotify releases: every track Songstats knows about you, across Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, Tidal, Amazon, SoundCloud and YouTube.
   • Include remixes and bootlegs that only live on SoundCloud or YouTube: the unofficial side of your catalogue: remixes, edits, flips and bootlegs that never got a store release or an ISRC. Ticked by default; untick it for official releases only.
   • Import my albums and EPs, with their tracks linked: creates your albums and attaches the tracks that just came in, so a release lands as a release instead of a pile of singles.

   Leave them ticked and Aden runs the import on the setup screen and drops you on your catalogue when it's done. Untick everything to go to your dashboard and import later from Import in your workspace.

5. Got the wrong artist? Click Change to search again, or Unlink inside the dialog to drop the connection.

Starting from SoundCloud

If your catalogue lives on SoundCloud rather than behind a distributor, click the SoundCloud tile instead. It works the same way:

1. Paste your profile address (soundcloud.com/your-name) or type your artist name and pick yourself from the results.
2. Aden fills in your team name and public link, uses your SoundCloud picture as the team avatar, picks a brand colour sampled from it, and saves your SoundCloud link to the team. SoundCloud tags genres per track and never on the profile, so genres stay yours to pick.
3. If your profile has public tracks, the row offers Import my tracks after setup. Leave it ticked and they land in your workspace the moment it exists.
4. Private and unlisted uploads need your own account: connect SoundCloud from the Import page afterwards and they come across too.

This step is optional. Skip the box and fill the form in yourself if you prefer.

Completing the onboarding checklist

Once your team exists, an onboarding checklist card appears in the app sidebar. It shows six tasks:

Most steps complete automatically when you perform the action. Steps marked with a checkbox can also be ticked off manually. You can dismiss the checklist at any time from the card menu.

The card's header is a Complete setup summary: a circular progress ring with your completion percentage inside, and the name of your next step underneath. It stays visible when you collapse the card, so you can always see how far along you are without expanding the step list.