who should i use to release my music on spotify etc

[paul tha other]

hi there...ive been looking into releasing a few things ive been working on over the last few years.lockdown has enabled me to finish them off..

i just googled how to get songs up on to spotify etc and the list was extensive..so i thought i would ask you knowledgable chaps here who to use

it seems tunecore are the big guns in this (either that or they have the most money to spend on ads on google)

there is a emubands.com that are local in scotland and they look like they are good..

more importantly, is there anyone/thing i should avoid?

[RichardT]

If you look at the website 'Ari's Take' you should be able to find an analysis Ari did of the major providers.

There are lots of people offering lots of different deals.

There are some distributors who require an annual subscription - and if you cease to pay it they will take your music down. Personally I was keen to avoid that kind of deal.

[paul tha other]

There are some distributors who require an annual subscription - and if you cease to pay it they will take your music down. Personally I was keen to avoid that kind of deal.

im keen to avoid that too

[CS70]

Imho the gist is whether or not you expect to make significant money on what you release.

If you don't, the best is to use a one-time fee and be done with it.
If you do, you want to think for how many years you expect to sell and check the amount vs. yearly fee (which should be quite cheaper than the one-time fee) and see what's what.
Also depends on the amount of material you are going to release, as certain distributors also charge a yearly fee to stay in the catalog, but with unlimited releases.

In other words, look at your business plan and sales estimates and pick up the best combination out of that.

Other factors are, of course, speed, artist service and user friendliness (especially when u want something a bit out of the ordinary). It's difficult to say here because, at least with certain services, there seem to be very satisfied people and very unsatisfied people (Tunecore and Distrokid for example, but that's only what I remember on the top of my head).

Plus, all these companies ain't Amazon-size, so they seem more vulnerable to current events (for example the pandemic) but also service and staffing shifts over the years (which may also explain the variability of opinions above).

For what's worth, I'm very satisfied with Cd Baby because their standard interface is easy to use, and every time I contacted them they have replied quickly and effectively (considering that a lot of what you may ask is actually implemented by the distribution channels and they need to act as middle men).

Obviously it's a far cry from the personal relationship you may have with a real publisher, but it does the job.

And I like them also because I got the first check of the year two days ago

[paul tha other]

thanks for the reply.

id be amazed if anyone listens to it apart from family and friends, so making lots of cash isnt the goal in this instance..im just really happy with this batch of home recordings so i wanted to release it as a vanity project,

ill go and have a look at cd baby

thanks dude

[CS70]

Honestly if that's your goal, why not simply put them up on Soundcloud? No cost, faster, etc.

[Drew Stephenson]

Worth having a look at this article: https://www.whippedcreamsounds.com/best ... tion-2020/
They seem to favour Ditto and I think I'll be giving them a try this year.

[george_vel]

...
They seem to favour Ditto and I think I'll be giving them a try this year.

Once you have your own experience with Ditto, please share it here

[Drew Stephenson]

...
They seem to favour Ditto and I think I'll be giving them a try this year.

Once you have your own experience with Ditto, please share it here

Will do. Three (and a half) more songs to record for the album first though!

[depthbuffer]

I've released a couple of projects this year (a single & an EP) via LANDR and am so far perfectly happy. Similar situation to yourself - I would love to maybe one day have a small cadre of fans, but I'm mainly doing this for my own satisfaction, enjoyment, and education, not with any illusions of quitting my day job.

I first tried amuse.io and freshtunes.com, and found them both too good to be true - not surprising, really, as distributing to all the big streaming services with both no up-front fees and no commission does sound too good to be true. Amuse took over a week to review my single, halted the release due to unspecified "issues" with a notice to check my email, but never actually sent me any email. Another two weeks and two unanswered support tickets later, I withdrew the release and abandoned the account. Freshtunes took over a week to do absolutely nothing - my single sat in the "reviewing" stage with no signs of progressing any further. Coupled with the amateurish look of the site, and frequent broken English all over the interface & help articles, it just wasn't a good first impression.

LANDR seems to come under fire in reviews for hard-to-understand pricing, but honestly, I personally don't find it that hard to understand. The "lite" tier has up-front fees per release (it's more cost-effective to release albums/EPs in one go if you have the material ready to go), no recurring fees, and 15% commission. There are then "complete" and "unlimited" plans where you can pay yearly - "complete" has lower per-release fees and 9% commission, "unlimited" has no up-front fees and 0% commission, as the name implies. Not 100% sure but I assume if you're on a yearly plan, then stop paying, they start taking the "lite" tier's 15% commission from that point on. They also have a mastering service and "sessions" (some kind of online artist collaboration thing?) but I don't really know anything about those.

For a one-off vanity release like this the "lite" tier will probably do just fine. If you're using any licensed content - samples, ready-made beats, etc. - keep the license text, upload it alongside the track as proof of rights, and everything should be good. Both my single and my EP were on all the big services within 3 or 4 business days of being uploaded.

Note that you can also release completely for free on Bandcamp. You can upload lossless tracks, set your own pricing (I think they take a percentage on any purchases), generate "promo codes" where you can give people your tracks for free, etc. - buyers can either stream through their website/app or download lossless copies of the original uploads. They also have a ton of other stuff - ways to promote, paid plans, integrated merch store (just a storefront & payment handling I think, they don't actually produce merch/fulfil orders themselves) etc. which I haven't even begun to look at. Personally I put my stuff on Bandcamp as well as streaming because Bandcamp has a very strong community surrounding it, seeing as it naturally attracts loads of indie/amateur musicians; not that I've actually had any sales yet

[Drew Stephenson]

...
They seem to favour Ditto and I think I'll be giving them a try this year.

Once you have your own experience with Ditto, please share it here

So far not too impressed. Tried to add a release, keeps getting rejected telling me that it needs repairing, but doesn't tell me what's wrong. An automated email tells me there's a problem with the artwork but again, doesn't tell me what. My artwork meets the stated requirements so not sure how to proceed.
Raised a support ticket but that's not showing on the system.
I'm supposed to be on a 30-day free trial but in order to repair my releases I had to pay up ahead of the 30-days to get to the confirmation page - took a punt as I thought this might be causing problems - as there were other issues throughout the loading process so clearly their software isn't very robust - but it hasn't sorted it.
Latest 'repairs needed' email tells me I will be charged if I don't fix the issues but still doesn't tell me what the problem is.
No response to ticket to or email to support yet.
Will give them another couple of days to respond but otherwise I'll be going elsewhere.

[RichardT]

...
They seem to favour Ditto and I think I'll be giving them a try this year.

Once you have your own experience with Ditto, please share it here

So far not too impressed. Tried to add a release, keeps getting rejected telling me that it needs repairing, but doesn't tell me what's wrong. An automated email tells me there's a problem with the artwork but again, doesn't tell me what. My artwork meets the stated requirements so not sure how to proceed.
Raised a support ticket but that's not showing on the system.
I'm supposed to be on a 30-day free trial but in order to repair my releases I had to pay up ahead of the 30-days to get to the confirmation page - took a punt as I thought this might be causing problems - as there were other issues throughout the loading process so clearly their software isn't very robust - but it hasn't sorted it.
Latest 'repairs needed' email tells me I will be charged if I don't fix the issues but still doesn't tell me what the problem is.
No response to ticket to or email to support yet.
Will give them another couple of days to respond but otherwise I'll be going elsewhere.

Hmm, that’s already bad enough that I’d be tempted to go elsewhere. My distributor Horus has always given me superb customer service. I don’t think they’re quite the cheapest but they are a pleasure to work with.

[Drew Stephenson]

I always try and give people chance to make things right, they are a budget provider after all. We'll see what happens next.

[soundesigner]

I have a couple of my albums up on Spotify and pretty much all streaming platforms...The company called Rehegoo Music approached me a few years ago offering a deal - basically they put up my tracks on compilations, available on streaming platforms...they take some % off the sales...did not pay them anything...so far they released close to 20 compilations containing my tracks...I think for small indie artists like myself they are doing pretty good job by putting your music on streaming sites and hopefully gaining some interest - last time I have checked I had 6 followers on Spotify! Yay!

[Drew Stephenson]

Ditto have now got back to me about the artwork. Apparently, despite meeting all their criteria it still wasn't good enough? I've tried again at a higher DPI so we'll see what happens this time.
No mention of the disappearing trouble tickets but we'll see how it goes.

[MarkOne]

I use AWAL. They get paid by taking a cut of everyone's music (Which in my case is a cut of a few milli-cents a month

They do have a fairly long review process before sending the stuff on to the music platforms, but on the up-side it means that a real person does listen to the release for quality purposes and they do get back to you if there are issues with the file, the artwork or the little obscure things that Apple Music and Spotify have in their release guidelines, like capitalisation of words in titles, etc) and apparently if they really like what they hear they get back to you with some kind of promotional plan/package (Not in the case of somewhat obscure prog-rock though it seems!!! )

I have only good things to say about them. Their customer support is excellent

[BigRedX]

I use AWAL. They get paid by taking a cut of everyone's music (Which in my case is a cut of a few milli-cents a month

They do have a fairly long review process before sending the stuff on to the music platforms, but on the up-side it means that a real person does listen to the release for quality purposes and they do get back to you if there are issues with the file, the artwork or the little obscure things that Apple Music and Spotify have in their release guidelines, like capitalisation of words in titles, etc) and apparently if they really like what they hear they get back to you with some kind of promotional plan/package (Not in the case of somewhat obscure prog-rock though it seems!!! )

I have only good things to say about them. Their customer support is excellent

The capitalisation of words has caused problems with some bands I've been in when it comes to having your music on the various streaming and download sites. CD Baby simply would not allow capitalisation anywhere in a song title except for the first letter of each word, which means that very few of The Terrortones song titles are rendered properly on iTunes or Spotify as they nearly all have a words that run together with capital letters in the middle to separate them. However Bandcamp don't have such restrictions, so the titles are rendered correctly there.

And what do Apple Music do about J-Pop bands where the song titles can be a mixture of Kaji, Hiragana, Katakana, Romanji with seemingly random use of upper and lower case, plus symbols and punctuation used as graphic elements?

[MarkOne]

And what do Apple Music do about J-Pop bands where the song titles can be a mixture of Kaji, Hiragana, Katakana, Romanji with seemingly random use of upper and lower case, plus symbols and punctuation used as graphic elements?

No idea. It's probably all in here somewhere: https://help.apple.com/itc/musicstyleguide/en.lproj/static.html#itcb0e305d3b

Who knew there were so many requirements?

[Drew Stephenson]

Just as an update, once I'd got the artwork sorted, the Ditto process has been smooth.
But their online problem ticket thing is still rubbish.

[BigRedX]

No idea. It's probably all in here somewhere: https://help.apple.com/itc/musicstyleguide/en.lproj/static.html#itcb0e305d3b

Who knew there were so many requirements?

As it says in the first line of that section "This section applies to titles in English only." Of course it doesn't say what happens with foreign language artists that use English for their song titles.

While it's good to have a style, and it's certainly helps my OCD, it doesn't help those bands that deliberately stretch the English language to artistic ends.

Also I notice that one of the examples given as a guide is technically wrong: In "Kill 'Em n' Grill 'Em" the "n" should have an apostrophe both before and after it to indicate the missing "a" and "d".

In our case it looks as though the restrictions were put in place by CD Baby rather than the the streaming and download services themselves.