Monetize Your Music Independently (Distrokid, CD Baby, Tunecore, etc)

 

Are you an independent musician looking to monetize your music or get on platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music, or iTunes? If you are, I'd like to fill you in on how I get my music onto monetized platforms, as well as some other options.

The first thing you're going to want to do is find a distribution platform. There's a few options for this, but I'll start with the one that I use "Distrokid". 

Cost: $19 - $35 a year (Standard plans)

Distrokid is one of the most popular services for independent musicians to get their songs onto streaming platforms without the help of a label. My experience with Distrokid has been mostly positive minus some technical issues with title formatting, but other than that I've had a good experience with their service. It generally takes about 2 weeks from upload for your tracks to get onto every platform (and there's a lot), and from there it takes a bit of time before you get to start seeing some revenue, but once you're set up it's a breeze. Personally I prefer Distrokid as I pay a simple one-time fee a year versus other services where you pay per upload. 

Distrokid Information

Tunecore:

Tunecore prices per upload/project

Another competing service a lot of my fellow musicians use is Tunecore. Tunecore is a company that has a longer history for independent distribution having been founded in 2005. Tunecore can be regarded as a better "professional" option, but for someone starting out I'd recommend Distrokid due to the lower costs. As I showed above, Tunecore prices based on per song or per album vs. Distrokid charging annually for unlimited uploads. However, Tunecore provides a lot of additional services at cost such as vinyl pressing, merch help, and physical printing. 

Tunecore Information

CD Baby: 

CD Baby Pricing Page

CD Baby is another distribution service that has a long history behind them. Founded in 1998 as a "Anti-label" by founder Derek Silvers, CD Baby is the oldest most experienced company out of these three in the list. Like Tunecore, they charge per upload vs the Distrokid subscription model. I'd say their strongest advantage is that you can get paid weekly, vs other models where your revenue is stored in a "bank" until you withdraw it from your account. 

CD Baby Information