So if I paid $2,000 for recording costs and want to split 20% with my collaborators, I can designate that I get paid $2,000 FIRST and after I recoup my costs, THEN my collaborators get the 20%. Soundrop is meant for artists who primarily play cover songs. Symphonic has created a niche in the Latin music market and are actively positioning themselves as the best music distribution service for urban, electronic and Latin artists (Nick used to specialize in hip hop and electronic music when he worked at Caroline Distribution). A Spotify stream from a user in the US, paying a $9.99 subscription, will earn more than a stream from a user in the US on a family plan or using the free, ad-supported version. So instead of nearly 800 rates, CD Baby decided to pay about 40 rates. I had been tipped off by a couple Aris Take Academy students (thank you!) QUESTION: What does DSP stand for in music? +READ: Tunecore is Coming for DistroKid: Full Review, Comparing TuneCore vs CD Baby on the other hand TuneCore takes the cake with CD Baby missing out by taking commission, not giving proper credits and lyrics distribution, among a few others. ONErpm is free to distribute your music with, but they take a 15% commission on your royalties. 19/year for unlimited releases and 1 artist; 29/year for unlimited releases and 2 artists. ONErpm is a good digital music distributor. One of the founders used to study data analytics at Universal Music Group (Sweden), another came from Warner Music Group (Sweden), and their head of design used to work at Spotify. They have a lot of mechanisms in place to help with marketing and promotion (for a fee). Non flattering qualities include that they take commission from their artists, they have upfront fees, and they dont split payments or distribute lyrics. UM is another investment backed company which got around $70 million from investors like Alphabet Inc and 21st Century Fox. It has gotten much more corporate, thats for sure. LANDRs distribution costs range from $9 to $89 per year for distribution. Because of this, they have to deal with currency conversion. If you get accepted into that you will get much more favorable monetization rates and direct ad deals and can earn quite a bit from your YouTube. Stem is investment backed meaning that their business model hasnt been profitable until recently. Its completely data driven and artists have received $250 $300,000 in advances from this program. They have struck partnerships with seemingly every company in the music industry with their one-click mastering service. Tunecore just made the biggest update to their service since they launched 16 years ago: Unlimited releases for an annual subscription. Artists who perform well consistently and have a strong track record will benefit from working with AWAL. And word on the street is, it royally pissed off some of their distribution partners which severed some of those relationships. Its not just about where am I going to tour. Sure, thats a factor. Who is the best digital distributor for your music? No. This all is not a huge deal as most of the other digital music distributors dont offer any kind of hands on service. United Masters are big in the hip hop space. But with offices all over the world and nearly 300 employees, they seem to be doing alright. DistroKid was built and is run by Philip Kaplan. TuneCore now is far cheaper than DistroKid across the board., Tunecores royalty reports are AMAZING DistroKid has a lot to work on in that department.. DistroKid is still a totally independent music distribution company. And yes, for most of 2019 2020, CD Baby paid artists the same amount for a US stream as an India stream no matter the listeners plan level. Philip has setup DistroKid to be as automated as possible. No. Milana Rabkin is the co-founder and CEO of Stem. Stem is invite-only (submission based) which allows the team to give personal attention to their clients. RouteNote also has artists living off of their income from China alone. Yes. AWAL is a digital distributor collecting master (sound recording) royalties for artists. Just in You can, however, SWITCH distributors if you need to. A lot has changed since I posted my first digital distribution comparison article 7 years ago. Clearly music lovers. And recently they became the first to offer recoupment along with their payment splitting. Similar to Stem and Amuse, Im slightly wary of any investor-funded company because if they lose their investor(s) the company goes under. Whats really interesting with how Stem runs payment splitting is: all parties must approve splits before music royalties are distributed. And to offer not just distribution, but label services for their top-line artists. Now, DistroKid will say its the DSPs style format and that they will block it, but thats not true with other music distribution companies. Some of these companies are closer than others to this reality, but no one is completely there yet. RouteNote was one of the first music distribution companies to partner with SoundCloud. While RouteNotes main business is distribution of masters, RouteNote does offer in-house admin publishing services as an opt-in service. Artists dont typically know that they are being pushed, Steve told me. There is no best or worst distributor. They do not give hands-on attention like this to the majority of their artists. This has been a long time coming and much appreciated. They are funded by investors and the company makes money with upsells like LANDR mastering, artwork design and marketing (Facebook ads). They basically just give you an excel sheet and say good luck!. Ditto Music is one of the companies that threatened to sue me. It depends on what youre looking for. UnitedMasters was founded by industry big wig Steve Stoute. Songtradr is one of the newest music distribution companies. All in all, even though Ditto has a great marketing department (for the company not their artists) and even though they have rapidly expanded to two countries with multiple offices and even though there are very good people who work there, I cannot recommend them in this Ditto Music review. The best in the biz. Symphonic Distribution is free, but they take a 15% (flexible) commission. 4. So theres that. Spinnup is under Universal Music Group. Its driving the youth who might be in very rural areas who before would not have the opportunity to find, consume (and pay for) music. For the first time in history, people in. Some RouteNote artists are earning a living from music distribution to China alone. So if your collaborator isnt making at least $20/yr in royalties from your release (and they arent collaborators on any other DistroKid release), it may be a hard sell to get them to pay this annual fee. Tunecores royalty reports are AMAZING DistroKid has a lot to work on in that department. You keep 100% of your royalties. I do have to give a shoutout for their revenue advances feature which IS super innovative where if your past releases have generated consistent revenue, TuneCore will advance you the money for future releases so you can have more of a budget up front for production and marketing. Remember what I said about the culture and ethos of a company? And if you start to catch, the A&R team at ONErpm may offer you a record deal with an advance, marketing budget and the weight of the company behind you. They carry similar upfront and hidden fees, but DistroKid is outshined by TuneCore in the revenue reports department. Instead, they combined them into their own bundled rates and paid $.003 for both. DistroKid TuneCore doesnt offer payment splitting, but their revenue reports are much better than DistroKids. Symphonic Distribution 15. Symphonic has positioned itself as one of the strong indie music distribution services. Known to their artists as one of the best music distribution companies, and business is booming. 16. Symphonic Distribution is free to use, but they take a 15% (flexible) commission. Like AWAL, Symphonic and Amuse, UM will throw gasoline on the fire if something starts to bubble up. Stems services are free to use, but they take a 10% commission on your royalties. I have since distributed 3 songs with AWAL to test them out and see under the hood. (where they will pay your collaborators directly so you dont have to deal with that headache). They dont take any commission, are open to all, and they distribute to China and TikTok. Songtradr started as a sync licensing service. They distribute the most music in the world by far. In the most recent update of this CD Baby review (10/15/2020), I revealed that their analytics and payment reports were inaccurate. Each one offers different and specific features that may or may not appeal to certain musicians.. But if I know I can spend $500 in Facebook ads targeting listeners in India and get $1,000 back from streaming revenue, you better believe Im going to do that. DistroKid has since become one of the top 10 digital music distributors worldwide for total units sold/streamed. They have very thin skin and cannot take criticism well. Amuse music distribution was co-founded and owned by Diego Farias, a former employee of Universal Music Group in Sweden and will.i.am. Symphonic now has a lot more services other than just straight digital distribution. They have a small record label and management services. Artists that use CD Baby include Ingrid Michaelson, Aloe Blacc, Scott Orr, and Luminara. Look out for upfront fees, hidden fees, and zero credit distribution. We recommend uploading your music to RouteNote at least 4 weeks prior to your release, but they can get your music onto Spotify and Apple Music within 1-5 days. Tunecore is Coming for DistroKid: 2022 Review, Best Music Distribution Companies Full Comparison Chart, How To Get Your Music on Netflix and other TV shows, How To Crack TikTok for Musicians (From the Major Label Experts), How This Band Made $250K Livestreaming From Home, How a Major Label Markets an Artist Without TikTok, What Music Can Learn From The Comedy Industry, How Fans Can Invest in Songs and Get a Return, Music Supervisors Arent Treated Fairly, Heres Whats Going On, How He Made $250K on his NFT Song After He Was Dropped From Sony. Our guest this week is Alex Ciccimarro, the Vice President of Marketing at RCA Records. No real A&R, just data analysts. who they helped get a top 40 hit. As a company built on a tech-first (digital) philosophy, Kobalt boasts that it pays twice as fast (and finds more money sometimes 30% more) than the major publishing companies. Oh, and will.i.am is a co-founder. And many are starting to offer payment splitting (where they will pay your collaborators directly so you dont have to deal with that headache). To support artists during the nightmare that was 2020, they offered free distribution with 0% commission through the end of 2020. +Songtrust vs. Sentric vs. CD Baby Publishing vs. TuneCore Publishing. If at all. HOWEVER, every collaborator is required to create a DistroKid account (at $20/yr minimum with a 50% off coupon for the first year sent by the original Artist). Now, lets dive in: Ok, deep breath. Soundrop is technically located in the CD Baby building, but the services are completely separate and Pony mentioned that he doesnt really talk to the CD Baby people very much. 7. By far. I have heard great things about LANDRs music distribution services. Worth noting that through our own efforts our music has nearly 1 million streams. I got a look at some music royalties distribution reports from August of 2019 and their Spotify payments were nearly half what other distributors receive. But again, this was because he was buzzing and they jumped on it. DistroKid also refused to re-distribute a song that was distributed (incorrectly) by an artist who accidentally listed the artists incorrectly (put their collaborator as feat. without listing them as a fellow artist which would link to their profile on Spotify and would show up on both artists profiles). Read our report for a more detailed breakdown., +How Much Each Distributor Pays For Spotify and Apple Music, It depends. We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. Aside from a few extra fees, Horus Music is known for revenue reports that are clear and intelligible. Amuse offers payment splitting (but no recoupment yet). I like that they are a community driven company and have programs where they work with disadvantaged kids, giving them studio time, teaming them up with mentors and helping them get their music distributed. These are not label deals. I had no illusions about our songs getting on any pop playlists or even New Music Friday. Stem is a big music distribution services contender. By uploading your music to Ditto Music youll be able to distribute your music to digital service providers like Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Deezer, Tidal, and more. Songtradrs services, like music distribution and sync licensing, are legit. This is why you should work with split sheets from the get-go! For transparency, everyone I have worked with at AWAL has been awesome. Also, AWAL, Bandzoogle (CD Baby powered distribution), CD Baby, DistroKid, Songtradr, and Symphonic have advertised, currently advertise or have agreed to advertise in the future with Aris Take. DistroKid notoriously charges lots of add-on fees which quickly add up. There are many great features with Horus. When I wrote my first digital distribution comparison just about 7 years ago, DistroKid was the new kid (pun intended) on the block. It has better transparency than any of the major publishing companies. After the long-time CEO Scott Ackerman stepped down in May of 2020, the vibe and energy of the company dramatically shifted from the detached, cold, corporate environment where everything needed to be run through a PR firm, to where it is now where it has returned to its artist-friendly, indie focused ethos. Our guest this week is music supervisor and Vice President of the Guild of Music Supervisors, Madonna Wade-Reed. With the live music industry shut down, it seems most artists decided to release more music. Our songs got included on exactly zero official Spotify playlists. I study the sync licensing realm (getting songs placed in film, tv, commercials, video games - Netflix and the Ari Herstand is a Los Angeles based musician, the founder and CEO of Aris Take and the author of, DistroKid vs. TuneCore vs. CD Baby vs. UnitedMasters vs. Amuse | Best Digital Distributor for Music. 6. Make sense? Our guest this week on the New Music Business is singer/songwriter Sammy Arriaga. I have distributed 30 releases to date using a few of these music distribution services. As of this CD Baby review, Joel assured me that they are working on this issue. LANDR Soundrop isnt meant to compete with the other services (like their sister CD Baby). In 2019 when they realized that more artists did not mean better business (just more money spent with customer support and tech), they pivoted. They have also since launched a samples library and a marketplace to hire recording professionals called Network. Also, the next decade will be heavily focused around Asia. Thats why I added it to the comparison chart. TuneCore was acquired by Believe Digital a couple years back. You know nothing is getting distributed until everyone agrees on splits, but at the same time, if this hasnt been agreed upon well in advance some people could hold out demanding a higher cut. CD Baby has been around the longest. Songtradr offers a free tier for their music distribution services with a 10% commission. Quietly. Yes. They boast that they cover 95% of the worlds music market and are constantly partnering with extra stores. Steve predicted that in 5-10 years (the Asian market) is going to be crazy. They have gotten in on the front end of it all. Yes. We are moving into an era of transparency. Just one page to distribute your song or album. Artists like Lauv, Kim Petras, deadmau5, Vrit, Aly & AJ, Moby, Lil Peep, and FINNEAS (Billie Eilishs brother and producer), R3HAB have signed with (distribute with) AWAL. Amuse music distribution was co-founded and owned by Diego Farias, a former employee of Universal Music Group in Sweden and, Kobalt acquired AWAL in 2012 to be able to integrate their tech-first, transparent reporting, disruption philosophy in the digital distribution space. Although both TuneCore and CD Baby dont offer payment splitting. TuneCore does not own your music if youre using their music distribution services. Check out the end of our DistroKid review below for the short WORST list of this digital distribution company. Steve told me that mobile phones changed everything in India and China. Capiche? They (well, at the time it was just 1 dude, Philip Kaplan) had just launched and had already received praise from Derek Sivers (founder of CD Baby) and Jeff Price (founder of TuneCore and Audiam). Now, I know this is not typical. +Lauvs 4 Billion Streams, Top 40 Hit, Without a Label. If you dont mind the 15% commission, you can distribute unlimited songs for free (without having to go through an acceptance process). Metadata errors and mislabeling/misordering of songs on the album with it taking months to get it fixed. If your leaders are petty, thin-skinned, vindictive pricks (Im not naming names here) that ethos seeps into every aspect of the company and royally f*cks everything (and everyone) up. Meaning, like the other open to all music distributors, any artist can distribute their music with ONErpm, but they also have a full-fledged record label. But check out the chart for a more detailed breakdown. So, if youve heard of LANDR Distribution before, you probably know them as an automated mastering service. They also offer advances based on previous streaming royalties. Upstream means that, because UMG can see all the Spinnup data they can jump on an artist that starts to catch and sign them. RouteNote is one of the first distributors to reach all of the Chinese outlets in addition to India, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Australia (with 193 total countries). Ive used CD Baby in the past (but dont anymore for new releases) and still dig some of the people who work there. For clarity, you need a distributor to get your music into Apple Music, Spotify, Amazon, TikTok, Instagram Stories, Deezer, Tidal, etc. It depends. However, Amuse has a free version and DistroKid does not. And hes a kickass drummer. Its meant to simplify distribution for a very specific kind of creator. Ditto Music doesnt have the greatest reputation more of my readers have complained about Ditto than any of the other digital music distributors. They dont seem to have a sustainable business model. They also dont provide payment splitting, lyrics distribution, or songwriter/producer credits distribution. Not to say they wont work with others, they are just specializing in these genres. Their long-term play was to swoop up the artists that start to catch and sign them to a 50/50 label deal by simply analyzing data. By the sheer number of releases they distribute it is virtually impossible. I had received more complaints about CD Babys customer support in the past 7 months than I had in the past 7 years. Like Stem, it had payment splitting from the very start and is focused around getting everyone paid their appropriate music royalties (so you dont have to deal with handling paying your collaborators). But in the end this artist was able to get the song distributed how they wanted it with LANDR. TuneCore has been around since 2005 and are one of the most well-known distributors in the space. Spinnup is a distributor that was started in Sweden and now has offices in London, Germany and France. And I explain how to do that. Soundrop is a legit music distribution service provider. And I explain how to do that here., +How To Switch Distributors Without Losing Stream Counts or Playlists. 3. The Orchard is owned by Sony and INgrooves is owned by Universal. Like how ONErpm has cornered the Latin American market (which is covered below in the ONErpm review), UK based Horus is starting to corner the Asian market. It depends. 14. In 2019, CD Baby (well, their parent company AVL Digital including Soundrop, Show.co, AdRev, DashGo), got acquired by Downtown Music (which runs Songtrust and Downtown Publishing). With its remaining clients, Stem has a good reputation so this was probably a good move in the end (even though it left many artists out in the cold). They just surpassed 500,000 artists and have become a major player in the space. Even though Emmanuel is American, ONErpm is very globally focused namely in emerging markets. AWAL Welp! DistroKid is very data focused with no bells and whistles. UnitedMasters provides music distribution services for independent artists while retaining 0% ownership.. There is no one way to make it in the New Music Business. Beyond goofy. Some work directly with artists and they take around a 20% commission for it. Soundrop Anyone can distribute music through their platform and take advantage of their distribution to China and TikTok. Very, very simple. Its sleek and simple interface is praised by artists. Without telling any of their partners. He sold the company in 2008 to Disc Makers, but many of the original employees still remain. By far. Where, if there is some traction on your songs, theyll notice and, as many of them put it, throw gasoline on the fire, where they can put some marketing money behind it, plug it at playlists, push synch opportunities and other ways to help jumpstart your career. So, I published the update. INgrooves, The Orchard and Believe are all distributors in the space that primarily work with labels. UM regularly run contests for artists to submit music. Stem has the best payment splitting infrastructure built right into their reports. On Instagram stories? Of course nothing is guaranteed with any of the major music distribution companies, but I made a list of 20 official Spotify playlists that our songs would fit well on like All Funked Up, Bedroom Jams, Disco Forever, Easy on Sunday, Feel Good Dinner smaller niche playlists of under 1M followers and sent it over. They now dont offer a standard terms and conditions like the majority of the other distributors on this comparison, but negotiate every deal separately. Songtradr also specializes in sync licensing and many artists have had success getting their music placed with Songtradr.. If Spotify indicated that a song earned $.007 for a stream in the US from a premium subscriber, and $.0008 for a stream in India from an ad-supported account, CD Baby, didnt pay these rates out to their artists. Horus Music This is one of the only music distribution companies that doesnt take a commission OR a fee (like Amuse).