Years have passed, but today I’m speaking out on the important subject of selecting the best digital distributor for your music. I’ll actually be doing this in three sections because there is a lot to discuss here.
In this first post, I want to talk about two aspects that almost every distributor identifies as being crucial and that many artists believe to be crucial, or at least a consideration when selecting a digital distributor, but in reality, are completely unimportant.
There are numerous choices.
The digital distribution market is competitive. Numerous businesses are vying for musicians’ business by offering to distribute their music to streaming services. There are a number of businesses, both big and small, fighting for your attention and your music, in addition to the three industry giants: Distrokid, CD Baby, and Tunecore.
I won’t suggest that you “choose Tunecore or CD Baby or Distrokid.” Many people already carry out that. Instead, I’ll outline the most important characteristics to consider and the questions to ask so you can decide with certainty who provides the services that are best for you and your music.
Digital distribution has becoming more commonplace.
Over the past year or so, something intriguing has occurred. The main three distributors used to all have pricing tiers and business methods that were somewhat dissimilar. In addition to a $10 one-time upfront price for each song and an estimated $50 one-time fee for albums, CD Baby also charges a nine percent royalty on streaming revenues. Distrokid would find numerous subtle ways to charge you a few additional dollars a month here and there despite charging $19 a year for unlimited uploads and taking no commissions. While charging $50 a year for each CD, Tunecore did not take a cut of the royalties.
Then, as competition increased and Distrokid began snatching up market share, prices fell and become increasingly identical everywhere. The commoditization of distribution services was significant.
Distrokid now charges $23 for limitless uploads. CD Baby costs $10 for each song or album in addition to their 9% commission. Additionally, Tunecore now offers a variety of somewhat perplexing price plans, with unlimited releases starting at $15 per year.
False #1: Cost is important
Here is the first misconception I want to correct. Artists frequently discuss the price of CD Baby versus Distrokid versus Tunecore with me as if it were important. Yes, it did in the past. Price shouldn’t be a major consideration in your decision-making nowadays because it’s so inexpensive to release your music internationally; the variations between the three major distributors aren’t all that significant.
Pricing may have changed by the time you read this or see the movie, but given how closely the three independent distribution companies monitor one another, I highly doubt that this will happen again. Price is therefore not a crucial consideration.
False #2: It’s important to have a large number of streaming partners.
Many distributors boast about the number of streaming platforms they provide content to, in my experience. 100 or more, or 90. Does it really matter that? No, is the clear-cut response. I’ll present you with some statistics that will detail the reason in detail.
Look into it. I’ve just added up the last three years, from March 2020 to March 2023, and the number of partners it required to reach a payout of 99 percent of my royalties in the CD Baby account where I used to store my older music.
For me, 60 partners made a payment over the previous three years. The top 45 platforms that pay me are listed in this report.
Dissecting the figures
You can see that although though the list extends up to 60, by the time we reach number 36, we have pretty much received our full payout. The remaining websites distributed cents’ worth of payouts. How many sites were necessary to reach a 99 percent royalty payout, then? not even twenty. Ninety nine percent of the royalties I received over the past three years were covered in just 19 streaming services.
To total the final 1% of my income, it took 41 additional streaming services. The real kicker is here. Nine of those 19 platforms were Apple platforms (including iTunes, Apple Music in the US, Europe, and the UK), and five were Amazon platforms (including Music, Premium, Europe, and, get this, Amazon disc-on-demand). In fact, there were 21 Apple sites (yellow), 17 Amazon sites (blue), 2 Google sites (excluding YouTube), and 2 Pandora sites among the 60 platforms that gave me money.
20 will cover everything.
There are only 20 streaming companies in total that paid or reported anything at all when you combine all those Apple, Amazon, Google, and Pandora accounts into one each. What was the number of platforms required to reach 99 percent of sound recording royalties? only six.
Now, for you, the partner rewards and percentages will differ from mine based on a variety of variables, such as your genre and location. However, the key thing is that each distributor ships to at least these top 20 platforms, who are responsible for collecting 100% of your sound recording royalties.
To sum up: When selecting a digital music retailer for your music
Price is irrelevant. The main distributors’ many price plans are all so similar to one another that there is little discernible difference between them.
It doesn’t matter how many streaming websites they distribute to. The roughly two dozen platforms that generate the majority of the money are covered by everyone.
“Digital Distribution Checklist” can be downloaded.
I’ve created a list of 59 questions and possible answers for the goods and services that the market’s digital distributors supply. It explains where your content is sent, how and when you are paid, how simple it is to work with them, and it provides the tools for content creators and promotion/marketing services they provide.
In essence, this is a clear, concise list of all the questions you want to ask a distributor. And I’ve put this up so you can quickly mark the ones you think are most significant. Finding the ideal distributor for your music becomes completely obvious as a result. To get the PDF, click here.
I sincerely hope this was useful. There is much more to come! The various royalty collecting options and routes that various distributors provide will next be covered.