is that the only reason or is there anything else?
Music distribution has never been about making money - not when it was plastic pushing on CD’s and not now it’s streaming - it’s a way to have people listen to and enjoy your music, be able to find it and to help you promote it.
If you want to get rich then release Poopy Pants Party Time music on Amazon 
It’s more about audience growth and visibility.
Album sales on iTunes account for the bulk of my royalties (which are very modest). I have the basic Distrokid plan - I didn’t see any point in upgrading to the higher tiers unless you have more than one artist to upload against, personally.
Yea that kind of content is so oversaturated on Spotify that I think it actually has a negative impact on Distrokid to be handling it somehow - maybe they look spamy? - they certainly don’t do it to be mean. There are some other restrictions on naming and content but they’re mostly edge-cases. I had to work with support to get one of my albums up as it has the acronym ‘OST’ in the title.
Incidentally the field recording issue is present with all distributors I believe - I looked into it once.
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not for artists… but if a company is receiving xx£$€ annual/monthly fee and never having to pay out cos no one listens/purchases 99 out of 100 releases than who’s laughing?
Ok so to address this a bit more directly they’re providing a service that people want, and provide it well. They don’t promise you riches and have no control over generating you income. They don’t even take a cut from your earnings.
It’s not a scam.
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In terms of cost/benefit, I’ve made a profit on my Distrokid account and I’m a total nobody. They’ve earnt their $20 as far as I’m concerned - my time is worth more than what they’ve done for it.
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ok i concede that was an extreme word to use. i’d love to know what these companies income is versus what they pay out to help rationalise my point. i suspect it’s huge sums that only pay out a percentage to 0.01% of their artists. happy to be proven wrong. (glad to hear you profited, is the $20 annual or one off?)
but like you say if people are in it for growth and visibility then that’s their choice.
I get where you’re coming from but I don’t think this really matters. It’s hinged on a premise that the service exists to make people rich, when its primary purpose is to make releasing music easier.
They’re not a promoter.
$20 per year - hopefully I sell another album next year or I’ll be in the red 
But importantly the service they provide is worth that amount - it shouldn’t be about whetehr I get $20 back - that $20 was spent on the service I used.
If you want to make money I think Bandcamp and Patreon are the places to be unless you’re hitting it big time.
I’ve made 10x more from Patreon in the same period.
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Incidentally I think this is a good point - it doesn’t change my attitude towards the services, but I’m sure there are some folk that have unrealistic expectations.
To be honest I don’t even know what my expectations are. I wonder this sometimes. Unless something big happens it’s not realistic that my earnings will increase to a point where I can rely on them for anything, it almost feels like it complicates things by making it commercial. I never feel I give my patrons enough value and I have lost a few recently.
There’s something to be said for just making music and enjoying the process and not getting caught up in this whole ‘having other people listen to it’ business
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It’s weird and enlightening reading this thread, it seems like the median amounts people make from streaming is minimal.
It got me thinking that most people will see a bigger return from going out and doing one gig with your music physically ready to sell than you will from a year of streaming.
I do get that streaming is promo, but I still find it heart-warming to think the indie approach of selling your music at shows is still valid, and providing the better life experience for people.
100% - I think that’s always been the case too right? It’s all about the merch!
Would be good to hear from folks making proper money from this stuff too - there are some folks in this community with serious streaming numbers.
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i like a music publishing service which publishes my music or other audio related stuff without beeing a gatekeeper. while bandcamp is great for this, the “normal” listener doesn’t know bandcamp. The first thing people ask is whether you’re on spotify
Is there some ways to earn the money your music made in the pas +10 years that has been already uploaded on Spotify and Youtube by anonymous listeners ?
Did that happen to you? Depends on what course of action you want to take, but you’re legally entitled to those royalties so anything ranging from asking them politely to hiring a lawyer.
On YouTube you can claim ownership over the content and it’s up to you whether it is removed or allowed to stay, with you earning ad revenue.
There’s no doubt a process for you to claim ownership of content on Spotify but I would assume that would result in it being removed. If you have a Spotify for Artists account you could contact support.
Distrokid is a complete rip (for likely most of us)
I had to go through my bank to remove their “token” so they wouldn’t keep charging me even after closing out my debit card and getting a new one…(a token is a good thing if you lose or have your card stolen; You’re issued a new card and number but don’t have to renew every place you use it for monthly payments n such)
Anyway, Distrokid fought tooth n nail to keep charging me even though I knew one day I would cancel so I paid the extra “leave a legacy” fee for each album put out.
So far I have stopped them from charging annual fees and my music is still up yet I have lost all connections to my account and access to the pennies earned for plays…Not worried about that as I earned less than I paid for uploads but am truly just enjoying getting my music out there.
-We Suck As Humans
I agree. That’s why I’ve used CD Baby in the past, you pay once, and that’s it.
Too bad Amuse isn’t free anmore.
But on the other hand … f____ all those streaming services who managed to turn music into worthless dirt between the grout lines.
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I’m going to be thinking about that analogy for a while.
Tunecore is pretty awesome. easy to cancel. they’re cheaper than they used to be. real customer service reps, etc.
(Full disclosure, I work there (I’m a software engineer who works in the Streaming Fraud dept.), so take my recommendation with knowing that.
)
gotta ask, how does streaming fraud work and when you say streaming fraud are you referring to people stealing other peoples music and streaming it as their own or something else?
What I’m asking is how can youtube flag so many people for things, even flagging people for playing their own music sometimes but other streaming services like spotify etc… can have people streaming other peoples music as their own and go unnoticed until someone happens upon it and alerts the composer?
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Streaming fraud is a bit complicated, but the most common type happens when someone uploads music and then pays bots to stream it, inflating both revenue and play counts.
As for stealing music, 99% of the time, it’s a music rights and publishing issue. Most music distribution companies don’t communicate with each other, so it’s entirely possible to release the same track under two different ISRCs with two different distributors. When that song plays in the background of a YouTube video, who gets the royalties? That’s the issue in about 90% of cases. The other 10% involves people actively stealing music and registering it as their own.
There are also bots that crawl YouTube for music, analyze whether it has publishing rights, and fraudsters then register that music as their own.
It gets even weirder when public-domain music (like Mozart) is involved. If someone records their own unique rendition, it might be similar enough to confuse YouTube’s fingerprinting algorithm, leading to a copyright strike.
(Warning: Be careful with 808 drum machines! I’ve seen copyright strikes happen just because someone played a famous 808 pattern live on their channel.)
One reason I like TuneCore is that when I release a track through them, it’s also uploaded to YouTube. That way, my official YouTube artist account is linked to my release data, and YouTube knows I’m streaming my own copyrighted material.
As far as I know, DistroKid doesn’t do this, but SoundCloud music does.
I hope this is helpful. If you have any other questions about how the Streaming royalties business works, I’m happy to help.
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Interesting. Is [Tunecore] a corporation listed on the stock excange market with obligations for continuous economical growth ?