What is the best service for distributing your music to streaming services?
I currently use Soundrop which is often left out of the Distributor comparisons. Up to this point, I’ve only used it for my punk project, but I am getting ready to release electronic music under a different name and I’m wondering if it’s worth investigating other options. I don’t love the fact that Soundrop doesn’t distribute to Twitch Soundtrack.
And before you chime in with “streaming services are the devil/just use Bandcamp”, I know I know. I love Bandcamp and upload everything there, but I want my music to be available in as many places as possible.
I searched for a recent-ish post about this topic but couldn’t find anything. These services seem to change their offerings and pricing structures frequently so I figure a 2022 post could be useful.
i went with distrokid recently after deciding to give streaming another go for a while. the basic entry level plan is a bit of a miss. the middle tier is the way to go. slightly more expensive but better upload options that save a lot of time and it’s more flexible for creating releases etc.
I uploaded 16 or so releases in a couple days with all relevant info… existing IRC codes and all that. make sure you don’t make any typos though. if you upload a release with a typo in a song you have to delete and upload the entire release again. there’s no way to simply fix the typo or re-upload the one song you goofed on.
i like that it’s a one time payment and you have unlimited uploads for a year then have to pay the yearly fee again the following year. but they take no cut of your streaming royalties and it’s pretty transparent as far as payment goes… i guess i’ll find out in a few months once there’s some streams of my stuff.
i also finally joined ascap as writer and publisher. i’d neglected that forever. it’s pretty straight forward but there is a $100 one time fee. you have to populate your account w/all your tracks, titles, irc, publisher (me) and writer (also me) so this way you get 100% of any possible royalty of which i expect there will be none… but who knows… figured it was worth doing finally.
so far no complaints about distrokid. it was pretty simple. a little time consuming but only because i had so much to upload.
I’m leaning towards trying Distrokid for my new project. Thank you for the information. I already did the whole ASCAP thing years ago which I encourage anyone to do (even though I haven’t broke even on that yet lol)
I’m going to keep my punk band stuff in Soundrop for now, since there’s no monthly fees there.
My punk band was on streaming via distrokid, but we stopped using it because unless you make a ton of music and never stop it’s not that profitable in the long term ( for a classic release schedule , every two or three years ). Now we are on bandcamp only.
Interesting. This project will mostly be electronic and singles-based so I think the releasing will be a lot more frequent than the traditional schedule. Maybe that’s wishful thinking. But Twitch Studio is such a benefit, especially for instrumental electronic music. And I’m also ok with the fact that I probably won’t turn a profit on music streaming. Just don’t want to waste money unnecessarily.
We made 7 dollars with the all streaming platform, in 4 ish years, with two short albums. We were not touring a lot because it was a hobby on the side, so we never expected a lot of money from streams or music in itself . It cost us 80 dollars. If we had been on CD baby as an example, it would have cost us 100 + fee, for a lifetime presence on these platforms. And to add some fun , one guy bought our album on bandcamp, for 3.5 dollars, half the income of four years of streaming.
After years of procrastination, I have decided to earn my rights on Spotify. Until now, I’ve only been active on Bandcamp.
I have been releasing music since 2001. My 2nd album from 2003 has been uploaded on Spotify by some guy back in 2006 : 170 000 played tracks overall and an average of 389 monthly listeners, just for that one album (by comparaison, my whole catalogue have been streamed 40 000 time from my Bandcamp page since 2011). I have to admit that this specific album had a sound that has been appreciated by many Boards of Canada fan. But since then, most of my recent work has been a little more on the experimental side.
Anyway, I just claimed my artist page on Spotify and now I’m wondering what’s next. There’s DistroKid (heard weird stories about this one), CDBaby (don’t like the name), The Orchard, Landr, Tunecore…
Each of these companies have different plans and I want to chose wisely.
I’m not so sure whether I should upload my new albums on Spotify or not. Maybe I should start with one or two albums/EP’s and see what happens. I would also like to upload some music on Pandora and eMusic. I don’t know if it worths mentionning, but I happen to live in Canada.
as 99.99% of people making music are never going to achieve streaming numbers that warrant viable remuneration hasn’t the distribution business model become a blatant scam in recent years?
not shitting on peoples music, just a reflection on the reality of marketing, algorithms and audience interest seems twisted beyond any care for talent and originality.
you can live in hope that those PRS and distro fees are worthwhile when they’ll catch that tune that gets traction, but aren’t the odds 1 in a big number? use in advertising/media is the only avenue that may make it worthwhile but again that seems to be who you know rather than flukily sticking out in a sea of 1,000,000+ tracks released weekly.
For the moment, I’m indeed wondering if it worths the investment. Having 1000-1200 streaming a month for an album, I don’t know much how much money it brings. Not so sure whether I should go for a yearly payment or going with a distributor that takes commission. Also, LANDR has some distribution/mastering plan that might be interesting.
For sure, I don’t want to be involved in some kind of sophisicated scam that mostly benefits the wealthiests of the wealthiests.
I don’t like it that Distrokid can decide to take your music off platforms if you don’t pay up, so I’ve stayed away from services like Distrokid and just gone with bandcamp
although i paid in advance for a year distrokid took down my music directly after canceling my subscription.
i personally won’t recommend distrokid to anybody in the future