Alright then, one specifically for folks who are still using a distributor for stuff like Apple Music, Tidal and the like (feel free to answer too if you’re between distributors or have just removed music from streaming). What company are/were you using and what’s your brutal, honest review of them? Obviously, stuff like the link below exists, but I’m looking more for personal reviews and experiences…
I have used the following:
- CDBaby: The OG. They were the only game in town early on, and they were super expensive. Even with their current better pricing they’re still on the pricy side, and they nickel-and-dime you over things like having “hyperfollow” pages (which they charge a ridiculous amount for). I’ve heard that they’re super aggressive about taking down albums that are accused of "bot streaming."j
- TuneCore: I tried them for a year early on and they were similarly super expensive and very much not worth it. Their pricing is better now. I can’t speak to their service.
- DistroKid: They were pretty okay but their support is terrible, they charge a lot of money for things like ContentID and don’t give very good control over copyright enforcement to begin with, and they’ve been accused of some pretty shady stuff, including union-busting. They also are very quick to destroy albums that are accused of bot traffic, and will take them down everywhere with no recourse. Also if you switch distributors they aggressively take down the redistribution if you reuse the UPC codes (which is what other distributors say to do).
- amuse.io: I tried them out for a couple releases when they were still free. Getting my stuff distributed was easy, getting any payments out of them was not. Nowadays they’re about the same price as Distrokid.
- TooLost: They’re who I was using most recently. Price was good, getting any amount of support was frustrating, and if something led them to believe there was a copyright issue with any of your music, good luck getting it actually posted anywhere. I’ve also heard that they’re quite difficult to get royalty payments from. I ended up canceling my subscription with them but at least if you do that they don’t take all your stuff down, they just go to a 15% royalty cut to maintain it, which is a nice gesture.
- Soundrop: I’ve been trying them for a couple of smaller releases, specifically because they supposedly handle all rights management for you. So far they haven’t actually distributed my music anywhere that I’ve paid for and I’m getting very frustrated
At this point I feel like the only winning move is not to play.
Distrokid was the least bad of all of them but they were still bad.
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This is pretty eye-opening. I feel like indie distribution is sort of broken?
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Additionally, I asked a friend about their distributor today and they use RouteNote (haven’t had any issues themselves), so I went over to Reddit to check out opinions on them and their official sub is just a list of horror and complaints.
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Last night I was chatting about this with a friend who has had a very different experience from me. He’s had the best luck with Soundrop, even with their prices having gone up substantially lately, and also for him it’s super worth it because he makes most of his money on streaming and basically nothing on Bandcamp. Which is really surprising to me, as I’ve been releasing on all of the platforms for ages now and my total lifetime income from all of the streaming platforms together is under $100, whereas I make most of my money on Bandcamp.
I guess different musicians end up with different audiences and different experiences, as a result.
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A few days ago I had another distro suggestion come up but don’t know anyone who has used them yet and that is…
…EmuBands. Have you had any experience with them?
I’ve never heard of them. Interesting that they’ve been around since 2005. Their pricing seems a bit high though. 9€/month or 15€/track or 30€/album? At those prices I’d rather go back to CDBaby.
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I can understand that, although if a few folks are going in on a collective or a label (something I’m hoping to do with my partner and a few of our friends), I can see it being worthwhile. There’s still a few things that aren’t clear though, so might drop them a line.