Least-shitty distribution and manufacturing channels

[Pigfarmer Jr]

The songtradr website shows nothing about free + % options. Is it an option once you create an account? Also, the monthly cost is $19.99 which is less than the $22.99/month currently charged by distrokid. I wonder what, if any, differences there are in the services.

[jast]

Huh, I guess Songtradr's free plan is no longer available for new users. Must be a fairly recent change; some of the search engines still show the free option in their snippets.

That leaves the following free options:

Amuse (limited to 1 release/month; release after ~4 weeks; 0% commission; fairly low number of distribution targets, much like Soundrop)
Fresh Tunes (release delayed 14 days; 0% commission; Facebook/Google account required for sign up; can't use existing UPC/ISRC so can't really move existing releases to FT)
RouteNote (release delayed ~5 days (or more?); 15% commission)
Unchained Music (released typically delayed 3~5 days; 0% commission; first $30 of income locked until you close your account)
UnitedMasters (limited to 1 release/month; release delayed ~10 days (?); 10% commission)
Vibeable (unlimited artists in a single account; release delayed ~5 days; 15% commission)

PS. I've done no more than cursory testing on these distributors. All of the info is from their websites.

[jast]

The songtradr website shows nothing about free + % options. Is it an option once you create an account? Also, the monthly cost is $19.99 which is less than the $22.99/month currently charged by distrokid. I wonder what, if any, differences there are in the services.

Side note, they're yearly costs, not monthly. :)

[Pigfarmer Jr]

Aye. Thanks for the response.

[ujnhunter]

Bummer about the Songtradr thing not being FREE anymore... I know that they changed things a few months ago... where they made all the FREE accounts only able to release X releases by only 1 artist per year (it used to be unlimited releases by unlimited artists which was admittadly too good to be true...), which I know because I was struggling to try and release a bunch of different "artist" releases before the change happened... but I failed. Boo.

[fluffy]

So hey, it turns out that tunecore has finally gotten with the times and have adjusted their pricing to be Good, Actually. They seem like a better deal than DistroKid now. Their $15/year unlimited plan is a bit better than distrokid’s $25/year plan (with support for scheduled releases and custom ISRCs), for example, and they have a few other service levels that are similarly useful and competitive.

They still offer their shitty legacy pricing though. Why pay $15/year for unlimited uploads when you can pay $10/year for each individual song? So weird.

[Pigfarmer Jr]

I like that you can pay $15/year per band and do almost 5 bands for the same price as Distrokid's label level which I was subscribing to because of all the side projects.

[Pigfarmer Jr]

Used Soundrop for that double album tribute thing that Vom and I were a part of back in June (ish.) Setting up was harder than on distrokid but not by a lot. A buck a song for each cover, one time fee. Their reporting seems very simple and undetailed but those songs haven't received many streams/listens so it's hard to tell what reporting time etc., is looking like. It was a pain in the rear to get everyone set up (like 11 artists for each album) but I think that would have been only slightly less cumbersome with distrokid.

I'm thinking of releasing something original just to see the difference. Also, I have one album released through distrokid that has one cover on it and that extra fee every year is sort of pissing me off.... I might try to remove it from distrokid and put it up through soundrop. Maybe.

[Pigfarmer Jr]

That link has been updated... which link? The one comparing distribution options:
https://aristake.com/digital-distribution-comparison/

I hate to agree with Fluffy *wink, wink* after spending so much arguing a couple of years ago, but in the article it mentions this about cdbab:

Long story short, the rate that Spotify paid CD Baby per stream, was not the rate that CD Baby paid out to their artists.
If Spotify indicated that a song earned $.007 for a stream in the US from a premium subscriber, and $.0008 for a stream in India from an ad-supported account, CD Baby didn’t pay these rates out to their artists. Instead, they combined them into their own ‘bundled’ rates and paid $.003 for both.

[fluffy]

Funny thing is my opinion on CDBaby had changed somewhat since they've restructured their pricing to actually be pretty okay these days. But wow I didn't realize they were taking that big of a cut, jeeze.

[ujnhunter]

Thanks for that link comparing them all and mentioning Soundrop @Pigfarmer Jr, finally going to put the rest of our Photovoltaik tracks up on Streaming/Digital Storefronts as our 2nd release included a Cover Song which forced me to not upload it with Distrokid as it wasn't worth paying yearly fees on a song that would never (barely ever) be purchased. Going to have to check into switching the EP from Distrokid to Soundrop as well now too.

[Pigfarmer Jr]

Thanks for that link comparing them all and mentioning Soundrop @Pigfarmer Jr,

So the drawback to soundrop is they only release to 23 platforms rather than 100+ on some of the others. Routenote also takes 15% with no fee (if my research is correct) so I think I'm gonna try that one next.

If anyone has experience with Routenote, feel free to elucidate.

[ujnhunter]

Well, at least the 23 platforms include the only platforms that I'd really care about... (obviously 100+ broad scope getting seen in as many places as possible is great... but you're really only being seen on like 3 of the 100+ platforms IRL anyhow) and the Cover Song license is what seals it for me and for $0.99 a song one time, I'm fine with that, unless you try Routenote and find that it's above and beyond... their "Free" tier sounds like what Songtradr had too... and they've since changed it... so I'm not sure I would be 100% comfortable trusting that Routenote won't change at some point too.

[fluffy]

I just learned about TooLost which is like DistroKid back before DistroKid started to suck. They cost less than DK, offer way better services without it being piled up with little add-on nickel-and-dimes, actually gives you control over your ContentID shit (allowing you to greenlist YouTube channels you've granted usage rights to etc.), and also have a pretty easy mechanism for transferring an existing catalog over to them. Also their website doesn't feel like a relic from the 90s.

I'm switching to them as my distributor going forward.

[fluffy]

Okay actually TooLost's catalog importer is fucking broken and not worth working with

But the rest of it seems a lot better

[jast]

They failed to send me an activation/confirmation email when I tried to sign up. I tried ten times.
I use LANDR now.

[fluffy]

Valid reason to not work with them. I’d just not heard of them before today and they seem a lot better than distrokid, enough so that I’m switching away from distrokid after using them for like 15 years.

I mean they still fucking suck in a lot of respects but what in the streaming industry doesn’t?

[jast]

I totally would have worked with them, but since I couldn't get to the point where they'd let me actually log in... yeah.