Ad feature with DistroKid
The rise of music streaming has brought an incredible opportunity for musicians, producers and beatmakers around the globe. Freed from the conventional model of physical distribution, you no longer need to hire a lengthy chain of expensive middlemen to get your music out to the world. But, in truth, that’s only the first part of the music revolution. More than ever, a producer also needs to manage other aspects of their creative business; releasing music on the ever-expanding network of online platforms, scheduling releases, promoting and marketing and, of course, coordinating the collection of their royalties.
What you really need is one place to do all of this. That’s where DistroKid comes in. A one-stop shop for distributing your music digitally and much more, it has a variety of plans starting at just $2.08 a month or $24.99 a year. Designed to fit into today’s hyper-connected world, it has a mobile app and a web-based interface for managing and monitoring all your releases and building your audience. So, how can it help you do this?
Why should I use DistroKid?
We’re all familiar with the process of making tracks and albums — a satisfying pursuit, but one that can take a lot of time and effort. Once you’ve put the finishing touches to your masters, a whole new chapter begins, and, historically, this meant shopping your material around to labels. This decidedly hit-and-miss endeavour that could involve an awful lot of legwork.
When streamers and online stores like iTunes and Spotify first appeared, it was possible to get your music onto them, but it wasn’t easy. Then, even more services started to appear, making the whole thing more complicated. Coordinating releases and payments could be a nightmare.
DistroKid solves these problems by providing a single portal to do it all. Crucially, you receive 100% of the money you make, with DistroKid’s set monthly or annual fee covering their services. This means that the better you do, the more you make, without a third party taking a cut of each sale, or a percentage of monthly takings, as can be the case with some other services. So your costs as far as distribution go are set and a known quantity.
Which platforms can my music be streamed on with DistroKid?
DistroKid lets you upload to a wide range of services — you get to choose any or all of them, but the most popular are Spotify, Apple Music, iTunes, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube Music, Amazon, Pandora, Deezer, Tidal and iHeartRadio. Plus, many smaller services are also available, and more are being regularly added.
All the accounting is handled centrally in your account, removing the hassle of collecting royalties. The developers have even thought about the different kinds of releases that artists might need to do. It’s possible, for example, to upload a collaboration between multiple artists, both at a track and album level, so that everyone is credited and paid correctly.
Which DistroKid package is best for me?
The entry Musician package covers a tremendous set of tools for a small artist or band. It includes unlimited song and lyric uploads — many others would limit the amount you can upload but not here — as well as a Spotify verified checkmark, the ability to create royalty splits if there’s more than one person to be paid, 21 extra tools (more on these shortly) and access to the mobile app. That’s all just $24.99 per year.
The Musician Plus package, which allows two artists or bands, is the most popular at $44.99 per year. Along with everything in the Musician tier, it adds synced lyrics on Apple Music, daily streaming stats, the ability to customise the name of your label, customise release and pre-order dates and customisable iTunes pricing for downloads. It’s not hard to see why this is the most popular tier, with streaming stats especially an invaluable tool for seeing the results of promotions and other campaigns that you might create. And customising pre-order and release dates gives you complete control over your promotional campaigns rather than having to build things around a date over which you have little control.
Finally, the Ultimate tier, which is $7.50 per month or $89.99 a year, allows up to 100 artists or bands, making it ideal for someone running a record label, even a larger one. You get everything from the previous tiers plus 1TB of instant sharing space, the ability to monitor music on both Spotify and Apple Music and RIAA Gold and Platinum monitoring.
What other services does DistroKid give me?
So what about those extra goodies we mentioned earlier? After all, distribution is just one part of the process; an enterprising producer or musician will need to promote their work and create supporting content and campaigns as well. To this end, DistroKid also provides 21 extra services — and counting — most of which are included with all the tiers, including the Musician tier.
For promotion, your account provides access to HyperFollow, a way to make pages that showcase your music, videos, social media links and more as well as Mini Videos to create free, short-form videos and Promo Cards, giving you dozens of customisable images you can use to promote yourself. In terms of getting heard, your account gives access to Playlister, Slaps.com, Playlist Spotlight and the Wheel Of Playlist — a chance to get on DistroKid’s Spotify playlist. There’s a bunch of other stuff too, notably the ability to add liner notes and credits to albums, AI analysis of your music, Twitch integration and much more, including Vault — free, unlimited backups of everything you ever upload.
As creatives, we usually prefer making music — composing, arranging, mixing and producing — to the business of selling and distributing it. While some people love it, others just see it as a daunting part of the process. But DistroKid streamlines it so that it’s quick and easy rather than feeling like work. When even the founders of competitors TuneCore and CDBaby have joined DistroKid, you know it’s on to something.
“I hate to say it, but DistroKid is simply the best distributor in the market.” — Jeff Price (via X), Founder of TuneCore
“This is amazing. I’ll be sending everyone I know to DistroKid now.” — Derek Sivers (via HackerNews), Founder of CD Baby
There’s never been a better time to take control of your music career by letting DistroKid handle the distribution of your tracks and albums and even promotion, while keeping 100% of the money you earn. With an easy-to-use interface and pricing that makes it accessible for everyone, it truly is the perfect way to get your tracks heard by the world and earn money.
Why not check it out today and take the next steps towards building your career in music?
Sign up now and start distributing your music today!
The post Is DistroKid the best music distribution platform for independent producers and beatmakers? appeared first on MusicTech.
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