Which streaming music distributor should you use?

Photo by Joshua Sortino on Unsplash

We no longer buy music. We rent it from services like Apple Music, Spotify and possibly Deezer or Tidal or some of the more fringe services like Triller or Music Choice. The question is really how to get the music placed on those services and which one is the best choice for you.

There are three main streaming distributors in the marketplace: CDBaby, DistroKid and TuneCore.  They will all handle the details of uploading your songs to the major distributors, attaching some metadata in the form of an ISRC code and collecting the bulk of your owed royalties and returning them to you. They basically function like a record company used to, allowing you get your music out to the world and potentially get paid for it.

While I do not want to start out by being a kill joy, it is important to understand that unless you are Taylor Swift or Drake you are not likely to get rich on these royalties. This is because in the last twenty years the entire model of how songwriters and composers gets paid for music has been turned on its head.

A moment of silence for the record store- and some history

In the past there was a fairly easy way to index (although not necessarily collect) the amount of money a songwriter was due on a composition. A mechanical royalty was owed to the composer (not the performer) of a song when it was made. If a CD was made or an iTunes download was initiated the songwriter was due 9.1 cents per copy.

So, a thousand copies would net the songwriter $91.00. You would not get rich on that but it would buy you a nice dinner! If you had written ten songs on that album you would be bringing in $910. The structure was fairly simple because there was a cost to the medium and the listener became the owner of the token that allowed playback of the song.

Streaming is completely different. If you subscribe to a streaming service, you have practically unlimited access to music for approximately the same amount of money as buying twelve CDs out of the bargain bin at a record store a year. The streaming services have to distribute a percentage of the money they bring in to the copyright holders based on cryptic, behind the scenes agreements with all of the major record labels. Income is not really distributed based on the number of streams, it is just creating a percentage applied to the amount they are forced to distribute according to their agreements.  There is little transparency in this process and it is more than likely that with three conglomerates owning the rights to 80% of all popular music copyrights, that they are taking in guarantees before they agree to any royalty distributions.

This is what one thousand streams would generate (on average) on each of the major streaming platforms.

A couple of things to point out here. The $63.24 amount is a total assuming you got a thousand streams on EACH of these platforms. That’s right, a thousand Spotify streams will typically earn around $4.37. Highway robbery, but that is the reality of the situation. Also note that it will only count as a stream if you play at least thirty seconds of the track. Friends do not hit skip on their friend’s songs! The best way to view Spotify is as a marketing vehicle you could make some money on if a track catches fire.

This means that one of the most important things to look at in determining the distribution partner for you is how much the service will cost you. Let’s do some quick comparisons on the major three.

CD BABY

CD Baby is the oldest of the three and its business actually predates streaming. The self-proclaimed “antilabel” got into the business in 1998 selling physical CDs and later downloads before shutting this business model down and focusing on distribution to streaming services. 

Of course, when Disc Makers bought them in 2008 they MAGICALLY got back into the CD distribution business! They can manage physical printing and distribution of CD’s or vinyl if you are into that kind of thing. Or, more apropos, CDBaby can get your music bopping on more than 33 different streaming platforms including the most important: Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Pandora and YouTube. 

CD Baby’s payment model is fairly simple. There is a one-time charge and then CD Baby redistributes 91% of your incoming royalties back to you. There is no annual fee, but there are two tiers of distribution (Standard and Pro) where CDBaby adds international publishing collection and will manage signing you up with a PRO (BMI or ASCAP in the US) at the Pro level. It is worth noting that you can align yourself with PRO (who collects live performance and radio royalties) yourself with a bit of research.

To release a single costs $9.99 or $29.99, or an album (actually any grouping of songs, so EPs fall into this category) are $29 or $69. The higher tiers add publishing, mechanical and international royalty collections. CD Baby will not charge an ongoing fee to keep your song live every year, but they will continue to collect 9% of your revenues.

At even its basic level, CD Baby allows you to set a specific release date, which is critical to managing releases for maximum impact. This allows you to suggest the song to your followers and fans to “pre-save.” Spotify particularly heavily weights the amount of this kind of interaction when it considers listing your song in algorithmic playlists so this is important. Spotify does not offer a way for an artist to do this on their own so it is critical for your distributor of choice to do give you some capabilities to do this. CD Baby does support this through their Show.co marketing service, which will run you another $39 a month.

TuneCore

TuneCore came online in 2005 and they have a slightly different business model. They pass through 100% of the creator’s royalties, but they will charge you a yearly fee to keep that music posted and continue to collect revenues for you.

To release a single will run you $9.95 each and every year that it is live and while you can launch an album on TuneCore for a mere $29.99, each year after that there will be a $49.99 charge levied to continue maintaining it and collecting your royalties. TuneCore does offer a free service, but it only distributes to social media and they keep 20% of your revenue so I am not directly treating this service.

To manage a pre-save campaign on TuneCore will take a few steps. You will have to publish a track or tracks via their normal tools with a release date in the future, which their plan does support. Then you will need to login to your Spotify for Artists account . If you have not claimed your artist account yet there is basic info on this here but all of the distributors have tools to help you process this. TuneCore info is here, CDBaby info is here and DistroKid info for setup is here. This is a critical step in tracking how successful your songs are.

Once you are on your Spotify for Artists page, select the Music tab and go to the “upcoming” page and you can copy the Spotify URI for the track. This can be used to build a pre-save campaign using a free tool like SmartURL or one of the marketing tools in the platforms or something paid like ToneDen. Being able to talk up your music before it launches and build some presave traffic on Spotify will make a difference on your total engagement. 

DIstroKid

DistroKid’s structure is a bit different, with a pricing model based on an “all you can eat” mentality. Their basic level allows you to upload all the music you want to the streaming platforms for a fixed annual price of $19.95 for one artist. 

This is a fabulous deal, but it does come with one caveat. You cannot set a release date, so this makes it harder to promote and chase those presave and follow clicks that make a real difference. You can do it…but your build up to release can only say “coming soon,” not point to a real date.

DistroKid’s step up plan, Musician Plus is $35.99 a year. It adds some new features, but the biggest one is allowing you to upload two artist’s tracks and being able to set up a specific release date. The two artists could be your band and your solo tracks but it is flexible enough for most applications. In my opinion, being able to choose a specific release date is a necessity.

DistroKid also makes presave campaigns on Spotify VERY easy with their HyperFollow tool, which is included with all accounts.  It will give you a simple URL to send out which automates the presave process and collects that person’s email address, which is a powerful marketing tool. It is completely free. Part of this is likely driven by the fact that Spotify owns a portion of DistroKid, making that interchange much easier for them to navigate than the other services.

Conclusions

While TuneCore does have some advantages (notably their one-time fee for monetizing ALL of your catalog on YouTube), the chart below shows the stark realities of the cost of maintaining your catalog on each of the platforms.

The orange numbers in the middle represent how much you will pay TOTAL to host one album and one single on each platform for five years. The red numbers on the far right represent how much it would cost you host five albums and five singles on each platform over five years.

You are reading that correctly. TuneCore would cost you just under $14,000 to publish and collect your revenues. You would need to get roughly three million streams on those tracks on Spotify to break even on that equation.

CDBaby’s “pay once” model has a lot of appeal if you are not going to publish a lot of music. They will never take your music down, but they will continue to assess you a 9% fee out of your royalties. This is probably a fair trade off if you are looking for a “set it and forget it” platform.

DistroKid is the least expensive if you plan to be prolific, but unless you pay a “Legacy fee” ($29 for a single or $49 for an album) your music will come down from the services and you will cease to receive royalties when you stop paying the annual fee. You are most likely paying DistroKid that fee for as long as you have a hope of people streaming your music.

So, I can only really recommend two of these companies. If you plan to be prolific and keep doing this for a long time, I think DistroKid is your best bet. $179.95 for all the music you want to post over five years is a great deal and you will get a bit of a discount (and I will earn a small commission) if you sign up here.

If you are less likely to release a lot of music or are interested in a partner to help you make and distribute physical CDs,  then CDBaby is actually a better option and your music will never come down.  If you were to earn $1000 on a single that hit big for you, the total cost of would be about $100, no matter how long that took. DistroKid will continue to bill you every year and that five-year period would have cost you $179…but there would be no royalty on those releases.

In any case, the streaming music economy is singles driven. It is not unusual to see an artist release all of their material as singles (sometimes even if it is released as an album or and EP) so keep that in mind as you are doing the math. If you were to release twenty singles on CD Baby that is basically $200…plus a royalty on those tracks.

It really points to the fact that releasing music is easy now…but getting people to pay attention is hard. I will be covering some strategies to attract attention to your music in an upcoming article!