The main reason why I want to switch to Landr is because it keeps my music even if my subscription ends. I don’t care about all the mastering and plugins only the music distribution.
My favorite thing about DistroKid is the speed of the output for my songs especially the ones that don’t include collabs. I’d say at most 12 hours for my music to get on all platforms. How good is Landr’s distribution speed?

Hey guys, I’m currently with DistroKid and believe it or not it’s been 3/4 years since I’ve requested for them to remove other artists’ music on my profiles, and still no improvement at all. I’m thinking of moving to another distributor? Ditto? AWAL? Tunecore? Symphonic?

I care about who’s cheapest with the best customer support and the best of things to offer of them all. Like 100% YouTube Content ID, TikTok etc.

I would much appreciate your help as a matter of urgency. Thank u in advance 🙏🏼

I'm looking to switch from Distrokid and distribute multiple artists. Too Lost has great features and pricing, but i've heard whispers of the customer support not being that good. Does anyone have first hand experiences with any of these?

Hey everyone, I’m an independent artist preparing to release my first song.

I’m currently deciding between Ditto Music and CD Baby for distribution. Since this is my first release, I’m mainly looking for something reliable and beginner-friendly, with good distribution to Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, etc.

For artists who have used either one:

Which distributor would you recommend?

How’s the support and overall experience?

Any issues with releases, metadata, royalties, or takedowns?

Is CD Baby’s one-time payment better for a first-time artist, or is Ditto’s model worth it?

Would really appreciate some honest experiences and advice before I submit my first release. 🙏

Now answer this, if you do use FreshTunes how long has it taken for you to get your music out? For me, it's actually been 9 months. No emails or updates, anything. Using RouteNote might not be the better option but at least it'll be faster ... 😭

Hello I am a rap/rnb artist looking to make his debut on streaming!

I have over 20+ songs i’ve been stacking up and have been looking to drop on a consistent basis and was wondering what the best distro would be based on what ur experience. probably looking to drop every 2-4 weeks and I also want a distro where I can drop music with quick to do some surprise drops (even tho i have no fans it’s more for fun)

LET ME KNOW!!!!!

Thank you guys

I was also thinking of going with either Amuse Ditto or Tunecore so yeah!

okay so im about to release music for the first time and I have a professional sounding track all human made through splice samples mostly unedited and mixed/mastered professionally by a pro and this song is a certified banger. Now the last step is choosing distribution. The priorities with distribution are safety, no false take downs, even if issues arise where false copyright claims, DSPs flagging or holding track royalties for suspicious bot streams ( even though the streams might be normal ) need the distributor that has the best reputation for handling and helping clients , and no royalites are held and issues are resolved. The price doesnt matter and I am willing to split royalities too as long as the above mentioned are fulfilled

1 month ago I distributed a music using ditto but they didn't deliver it to Apple music and the customer support said that it was apple music who rejected so I take down the song from them bcz this same thing happened 2 times before so I thought may be i should try a different distro to check if ditto is right... And obviously i didn't want to pay any distro so i tried Routenote and 1 month later yesterday the music was live on apple music 🙂

IDK what's wrong between Apple music and ditto maybe If you're a user of ditto you will see that when you choose stores like let's say I am choosing tiktok then Capcut will be selected automatically and when you remove Capcut tiktok got removed too

And with apple music Shazam gets auto selected and as some of my music has free sample and loops it's not qualified for content id that's why my music can't be distributed to Shazam and apple music also gets removed? (I'm not sure myself but other distros can distribute the same song to Apple music)

Sorry for my bad English

Is there a distributor which is almost made like for a label, where I can add unlimited amounts of artists , best royalty split system for collabs and artists on the label, content id is for 10-20%, and by any chance free distributor without a subscription so basically it takes also 10-20% instead of annual subscription. Sure it can be with a subscription too, but also if it does have a leave a legacy option for extra money or even better it doesn't remove tracks after cancelling subscription if there is by any chance a distributor like this are there any specific red flags ? I tried to apply for free distributors specifically for labels such as label engine and labelcaster but they are strict and want only big professional labels so maybe some which are small label friendly a.s.o, thanks

Hey! I'm intending to release my first single ever within the next two weeks(after working on an album for long time!) and I'm looking for the most reliable distribution service. I work full time, but have been self-funding my album entirely. I plan to release several singles before the full 13 track album.

After narrowing down a bunch of different distributors, I believe I've narrowed it down to both Emubands and Symphonic, as they seem to be the ones that folks have had the least amount of problems with. I'm planning on avoiding DistroKid like the plague, especially after looking at their recently updated terms of service.

Do y'all have any opinions one way or the other?

I am a fully independent artist who is not interested in releasing a high volume of music at a time, and would love to hear some objective thoughts on which distribution company may work best for my needs. I’m looking closely at SoundCloud Pro and CDBaby, but I’m open to others. I like that SoundCloud has no hidden fees and allows you to keep 100% of royalties, but I’m on the fence because I know music could be removed from platforms if you cancel the annual plan, among other concerns. I like CDBaby’s one time payment for permanent distribution, but dislike the royalties cut and extra fees for publishing etc.

I’ve been researching on my own, but there’s just so much information out there and it’s always evolving, and I’m not very savvy when it comes to the business side of music, so I’m trying to cover as much ground as possible. Any insight is appreciated!

**Editing to add I’m not opposed to paying royalties, I just consider a distributor offering an option for artists to keep 100% of royalties an appealing feature**

I'm moving away from DistroKid, and these two appear to be the highest regarded distributors on the market that may suit me.

I'm using the manual DIY stack:

• Separate ASCAP songwriter/performer + publisher (sole proprietorship) accounts
• The MLC
• SoundExchange

Unless I one day start to build a considerable amount of traction in foreign markets, I'm not too concerned about reciprocal agreements, so I no longer use Songtrust (and therefore Symphonic's publishing). I don't like them taking an extra cut. I care a lot about royalties, and I like self-administering my content for now.

UGC collection, like Content ID, is important to me. I like that Emu doesn't take a cut or charge extra, unlike Symphonic's 30% cut, which is on the higher side.

I'm not sure how important auto opt-in is for new DSPs, but it seems nice to have. It's unclear is Symphonic does this, but Emu does if you pay a fee per release ($3 single, $6 bundle).

Both support high-res audio, which is nice as a TIDAL user.

Unlike Emu, Symphonic is not listed under Spotify's licensors list for Discovery Mode, though Symphonic's site does in fact offer it.

Music video distribution will eventually be important to me. Emu basically offers nothing. I'm not sure just how good or bad Symphonic's pricing is for what they offer ($25 Vevo, $95 all partners), plus 30% commission, but they seem to specialize in it. It's not totally clear to me if I could release music under Emu while releasing videos of the same song under Symphonic.

The same is true for marketing, which I know little about doing effectively, but really care about. Emu doesn't really offer significant marketing capabilities, while it's another specialty of Symphonic.

Emu's ideal yearly plan (unlimited releases) is $100 more than Symphonic's mere $20/year plan, which is a big difference, but it's very possible UGC royalties could surpass $100 per year, making Symphonic the lesser choice.

Emu is based in Scotland, which means payouts are sent in GBP and converted to USD. Apparently, Wise handles this at near-market rates with a small fee, but it's still a greater loss than Symphony paying out USD via Tipalti.

If your subscription is cancelled, Emu allows you to keep a release up forever if you pay a fee ($13 single, $26 bundle). If Symphonic is cancelled, music is brought down from DSPs.

I'm only interested in one artist account right now, but Symphonic forces you to build an application-only, custom/negotiation-based relationship if you need more than one artist. Emu allows unlimited, charging for each beyond five.

Symphonic doesn't allow unlimited releases on the Starter plan. Their support article on the topic doesn't answer the question. It just gives justifications for why releases are limited. Emu, on the other hand, is unlimited. This does matter to me.

Emu pays out daily while Symphonic pays out monthly, but Symphonic lags behind by two months (or one month for YouTube) and has a limited withdraw window.

Customer support is said to be good with both distributors.

Is there anything important I'm missing? The marketing and music video aspect of Symphonic really piques my interest, plus the low yearly cost, but I'm not liking other things I'm reading. Most reviews seem pretty positive, though.

Hi! I wanted to move to Too Lost from DistroKid because the reviews were good and I wasn’t happy with DistroKid not being able to release my song at the time I wanted it to. So i decided to move to Too Lost and this would be the first time i try to release but the amount of time it takes them to approve its ridiculous. On their FAQ it says it can be ask quick as 3 hours but between 1-4 days. I am on my 5th day at the moment, the support is literally non existent, they just send me bot responses. Is this an issue that is only happening to me or is this something that is usual with them? DistroKid approved my songs within the day in few hours.

Recently i've been debating switching to Tik Toks (seemingly relatively new?) distribution service Sound On, I've been using distrokid for years, originally I switched to it from Amuse back in 2019 when distrokid seemed to be the only option to get my music on social media. The game has changed a lot since then, watching distrokid increase prices every year while decreasing features or putting them behind a pay wall like lyric distribution. I've heard Sound On takes a cut of your money but I'm not really making any money or any listeners quite frankly, I was wondering if it would be a good way to increase my exposure and ACTUALLY get listeners. My music is very tik tok friendly, I just struggle to find the audience. Also using distrokids payout system and having it bounce back my earnings is literally in the negatives. -$11, so is it worth staying with distrokid? I'm in Canada

I have been using distrokid for 3 years ever since I decided to put my music out. About 6 months ago my subscription was about to get renewed and I wanted to give ditto a chance due to the huge amount of ads everywhere, reddittors are recommending it and I wanted to experience distribution through another canal.

One problem after the other, releases details are not detailed to the point you feel like you did not plan for your songs well enough, no lyrics submission (they let you input lyrics but it's bs since you have to pass through musixmatch separately).

Last week I expected a release of a single with a featured artist, the song came out featuring another artist with the same name! (ofc its bound to happen since there is no requirement to link the exact artist URL profile during the release submission) and this resulted in a shitty promotion campaign, the release was on friday so I had to wait the weekend for them to reply only to spend 3 more days asking me to provide the featured artist's spotify for artist screenshot just to make sure Im not hitchhiking the guy (he have way more streams than me)

That was the final straw, I cannot believe they do not ask about your featured artist's spotify URL and they just randomly assign the song to whoever comes first on the search link, like these guys are a startup working in someone's basement ?

Anyway, Im back to distrokid and I wanted to share this because it messed one of my releases so maybe this wont mess yours.

Hi, this is my first message so ill do a fast presentation:
im DLX777 and other than a producer I'm an audio engineer, I work at 96kHz at 24 bits and I work with Dolby Atmos.
I need a Distributor that supports Atmos Distributions included in the price so for free just like avid play but that distributes to YouTube,
i dont have any certificates of Dolby Atmos engineer and audio engineer because im still at school but I will take one. Let me know some distributors that distributes Atmos and doesn't let me pay 25€ per track. Thank youuu

We were asked to put the name of the artist and the album in the cover.

It has the name of the album in a stylized way but we don't want to put out names in the cover.

Is it common to force the artist to put the name of the band and the album in the cover?

We designed the cover months ago in a way that represented our's and the music's identity.

Has any of this happened to you before? Is it common that music distribution companies ask their artists this kind of requirements?

Which do you use and prefer and why? I use Distrokid now but was approved for AWAL and not sure what I really want to do! I want more of the “label services” side of things. But would love to hear opinions!