Welcome to Music Distribution 101. It’s Hell. I decided to write this out to help our clients, but also to shed some light and experience on ways to avoid pitfalls in distributing your precious tracks. This applies to Music only, not podcasting... maybe for another day. Have fun with the suck.
Step 1:
-Get your Music recorded at Sekret Studios
Step 2:
-Pick your Distribution Company
-These is not fun waters to wade so here are some things to consider
Cost
This is also hell because some companies do monthly pricing, and some companies do one-and-done pricing
Check out their plans. Hidden costs can creep up from the floorboards. Especially with plans that take a percentage of royalties. Read the fine print and do your research. Some distros are better for some and others not so much. ie - frequency of upload, amount of uploads, album based, royalty skimming.
Royalties
I kinda covered this above, but the top most used platforms basically mirror each other. CDBaby and Distrokid. They do their royalties the direct opposite of each other. I wont map this out because Youtube has great comparison videos, and the plans are extensive, but this is something to consider. Have a song that pops off? Maybe you should've been on one vs the other, but the one you chose to begin with was best for you at the time. It’s kind of gambling.
Platform Coverage (streaming services)
Most of these distros will cover the big ones/important ones like Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, Amazon Music, and Itunes. They will deliver to all of these at the base price.
What you do want to look into is Sync Licensing. Generally an additional charge.
Sync Licensing is for collecting royalties whenever someone writes even a portion of your song to video format AKA TikTock, youtube, youtube shorts, InstaReels, etc.
Some distros don't offer sync licensing. In the case that they do not, you need to register it yourself, but you will have to have an UPC. A UPC will be issued with any Distro you use. This is your official song identifier. You can obtain this first then explore Sync Licensing.
Customer Service
This kind of speaks for itself, but...will the platform help you when something goes south? Most big Distros are pretty good with this, but its worthy of making my list.
Growth Opportunities
Does the distro help you pitch to playlists and promote your music?
This will be covered a bit below, so hang tight.
Most Distros are great.. It usually comes down to cost, and our preference is usually CDBaby. At least for now. So lets walk through uploading with CDBaby.
CDBaby Upload:
-I’m going to skip over a step by step approach to this and highlight important parts of this process. CDBaby’s upload process is pretty damn user friendly, but there are important things to consider when sending that sucker off.
STOP.
PICK A DATE TO RELEASE AND STICK THE F*** TO IT. If you push that s*** further out.. Fine. But you absolutely cannot, and will not, want to move it closer, no matter how bad you want it to be discoverable. Once you have submitted, good luck stopping it, and you wont get your money back.
DISTRIBUTION COMPANIES DON'T GIVE A S*** ABOUT WHEN YOU WANT IT RELEASED. CDbaby will even tell you this when processing. (nicely of course) My advice? Put it at least a month out. I know, it sucks hard. You just finished recording, you want your release to hit hard and fast. Or you have an upcoming show, and you want that s*** pressed and hot. Try your hardest to do a month, or 3 weeks at the least. I will explain why below.
There are like plenty of things to consider when you roll the album/song out. Depending how hard you want your release to splash, there are things that you will need to do, but cannot do until the song is fully out onto platforms, and out of the distros hands.
Social media promos
Linktree's
Playlist pitching
Platform customizations (Spotify canvas, artist page, etc.)
Pre-save
Links of any kind.
Remember this. If you push your release a month from now expect the following:
2 weeks for the distro to review and push your release to platform
1 week for your song to show up on the platform once received from the distro
1 week for all platforms to be uniform and show correct links.
If you don't have an artist page yet on any platform, understand that if there is another band/artist that has your name, the platform will not care and they will push your release under the same “artist”. This takes an entire week to sort out in some situations, and therefore you can write off pitching to playlist and pre-save endeavors.
If you don't have an artist page, or haven’t “Claimed” it, it will take a week to claim, and that’s after your release is up and going on the platform. IE Spotify for Artists. The release has to exist to claim the artist. Fun right?
If your release hits the said platform before its release date, it will not show up, but will show up under, for example, Spotify for Artists. This is where you manage pre-save and pitch to playlists. If you don't give it enough time to process into this status before the release date, you can kiss all of the above goodbye. Most of the platforms now have a separate app for artists, so that's pretty cool at least.
Royalty Division
With CDBaby you can divvy up song owner-ship by percentage. Even if you register it under a band name.
With CDBaby, your royalties will be handled by ASCAP. You will want to follow CDBaby’s instructions on signing up for an ASCAP account so that you can collect those royalties.
Putting an email address in for each owner, will allow them to register themselves to collect their portion of royalties
Tax stuff
Fill this s*** out so you don't get audited or whatever. CDBaby will five you a W-9 when the time comes.
Sign up for Sync Licensing
Anytime someone puts a story up with your song on it, you get paid. TikTok will have the release officially available on the platform and you get paid when its used. Youtube shorts pays, FB stories pays, Instagram stories pay. Just do it.
That's it, for now. If you made it this far, you probably are actually submitting something to a distro, or you are simply crazy for reading my rambling. I actually created this for a friend and client, because I know it sucks to navigate. If you ever have questions, feel free to reach out to me at chance@sekretstudios.com.