this is a completely honest opinion on distrokid, non sponsored video I just
want to go over my experience with distrokid and to see if it's right for
you because I think there are a lot of strength with distrokid but it
depends on what type of musician producer singer-songwriter you are I
think there's two buckets that one bucket has a persona of musicians that
distrokid really works for them and then I think there's this other bucket
of musicians that distrokid isn't great for them so we'll talk about both
of those kind of buckets or personas and which one you might fall into if you
find you're a musician in that distrokid bucket that could be really good for
you then please use the link in the description you can get a discount when
you sign up to distrokid I'll leave it in there and that's just one of the
benefits that you get if you sign up for distrokid as well you get your own
referral link so starting from the top distrokid is by far the most simple
and easy to use music distributor out there and you'll notice that right away
when you go to distrokid, there's just hardly anything to click on there's
no navigation at the top there's a simple sign up some testimonials and
hardly any footer links as well comparing that just quickly to TuneCore
going to TuneCore's website and it's just cluttered with tons of links and
information which is also great because they do offer some more add-on features
that distrokid doesn't offer so there's pros and cons to offering more
but having a more complex platform distrokid just narrowed it down
into very simple easy to use music distribution when you sign up to
distrokid you're going to need to choose a plan and all their plans charge
you on a yearly basis so it's not a monthly recurring fee and it's not a
one-time fee per single or per album these are what the plans look like you
have the first ice cream cone which is 20 bucks a year and it's only available
to have one artist name and it's great for people who don't really care to have
custom release dates and they just want to get their music uploaded right away
the more popular plan is this musician plus I guess you have like one two
four or five five ice cream scoops there that's a massive ice cream cone so you
get unlimited songs like you would get on the musician's plan but you have you
can have more than one artist name and this is more popular because you can set
custom early release dates especially if you're doing this full-time and as a musician
you have an audience you're going to want to do post to your audience that
says my song will come out on Friday June 15th or whatever so this is the
plan I'm on and I've been really happy with it the other plan above that which
is you get a full ice cream truck really is you can have more than five artists
and that's called the label plan because it's actually more valuable if you had
your own independent label for example so going back to these persona buckets
now to see which one you're in and to see if distrokid is right for you based
on how much they charge you so let's say the musician plan one ice cream cone 20
bucks a year is that good so you have to think every year they're
going to be charging you $20 is that good if you're releasing only one song a
year not really because you're charged 20 bucks for one song and it only costs
about 10 bucks to release one song on TuneCore for example but if you want to
be releasing a hundred songs a year then that's a great deal you only charge 20
bucks to release a hundred songs a year so you have to ask yourself do you want
to be releasing more music a year or less music year and I'm sure you'll
likely fall into one of those buckets let's talk about now how distrokid
pays you like anything with distrokid they keep it quite simple when it comes
to royalty payouts you get 100% of your streaming royalties so whatever you will
make on Spotify or Apple music it all comes back to you and your bank section
up at the top here and you can withdraw that money at any time and it'll be
routed to your bank account so what some music distributors will do is they'll
actually take maybe 15 up to 20 percent of your royalties but they're
incentivized to promote your musics because they want to make money too so
they're gonna go and pitch your song and try to get sync deals and try to get it
on playlists so that people will start dreaming it but you'll get maybe up to
eighty, eighty-five percent of the revenue and they'll get fifteen twenty
percent it's a personal question or whether you want to keep the hundred
percent of the royalties or give a bit to a music distributor as well if they
are incentivized to promote your music let's talk about some of the features
that distrokid offers on top of that a couple of the features I like with
distrokid are this hyperfollow link where you get a custom link while you're
promoting your music to send to your fans which is basically saying hey go
check out this link and it has all the music streaming service buttons there
because the alternative is you just share like a Spotify link on Facebook or
something and then half your audience doesn't use Spotify so they're not gonna
click on this link another feature is the referral program that I mentioned
earlier in this video and I have my own referral link so you can check it out in
the description but you can get one too if you sign up and that gives your
friends a discount and in turn you get a bit of money on the other end as well so
it's kind of like a win-win there are some big features that distrokid
doesn't offer which some other music distributors offer and some of those are
publishing for example and publishing is the collection of royalties at a
worldwide level that distrokid doesn't offer however you can do this with other
services so it's not a hundred percent necessary that your music distributor
offers this but it is a nice add-on for example TuneCore has this and CD Baby
does have this as well another thing that I found that distrokid lacks was
their support for artists in with respect to giving them pitching them for
sync deals or songwriting collaborations on the other hand we have like TuneCore
and they promote a lot about artist support and pitching your music
for sync deals you do have maybe more of an opportunity to have your music be
pitched in TV if you're with tune core then if you're with distrokid but again
you don't necessarily have to have your music distributor do these things you
can be using another agency or a music supervisor that can do this pitching for
you and that is kind of a good segue to essentially explain the core benefit of
distrokid it's actually only really distributer it helps you get your music
online and then keep that revenue you get from that where a lot of the other
music distributors have expanded into more of like publishing and artists
support and it's kind of bloated their companies and made them a bit more
complex so coming back to those persona buckets again if you think your music
maybe has a better shot at getting in TV deals for example or if you really want
at a mid publishing service with your music distributor then TuneCore is
probably better for you if you don't think your music is really great for
sync and you don't really care about that and you don't really care about
admin publishing or you have another service that does that for you then
distrokid is right for you you can check out some of my own music it's on Spotify
and YouTube all the other music streaming services available feel free
to subscribe to this channel too if you want more videos based around music
marketing and music in general so I hope to see you in the next video.