Music Distribution Selector - Find The Best Music Distributor

How do artists find the right music distribution company?

You can't use them all. You can't personally sign up for every distribution company, release music through all of them, and say, “I like this one better than that one.” A lot of them charge money upfront, so you'd literally have to pay just to test them.

So what do you do?

You rely on other people's opinions and experiences.

You go to YouTube, and there are 1,001 videos telling you which music distributor is the best. Some people are doing the affiliate marketing thing, where they're going to tell you whatever they need to tell you to get you to sign up so they can make their $10, $15, or whatever they're getting for referring you.

Then you have people genuinely sharing their personal experiences.

And personal experience is valuable, but having experience with something doesn't necessarily mean you're knowledgeable about it.

Somebody can tell you what it's like to drive a car. That doesn't make them a mechanic. They can't necessarily tell you how the car functions, how it's supposed to function, what's happening underneath the hood, or break down every feature of the car.

Personal experience is also subjective.

What's easy to one person might be difficult to somebody else. What somebody considers good customer service might be terrible to somebody else. What somebody considers a good value might not make any sense for you.

That information is worth something. But you also want the facts.

And here's the bigger problem: even if you have the experiences of other artists and all of the facts, you still might not find what you're looking for.

Maybe the reviewer doesn't care about the thing that's most important to you.

Maybe the analyst doesn't cover the feature you actually need.

Maybe everybody is arguing over which distributor is “the best,” when what you actually need to know is:

Which distributor is the best fit for me?

That's the point of the Music Distribution Selector.

I wanted to build an engine where you could tell it what you need and have it evaluate distribution companies based on that.

Not somebody else's perception of what's best.

Your best.

The best fit for what you're trying to do.

So when I started building this tool, I went through the things an artist could need from a music distributor and then looked at all of the different ways distributors charge for those things.

Because this industry gets complicated fast.

There are features that almost every distributor includes for free, except for one or two companies that charge for them. Because charging for that feature is so unusual, somebody comparing distributors might not even think to mention it.

But that charge can still cost you money.

So we factor it in.

We factor in everybody's weird charges for things you wouldn't even imagine somebody charging for.

We factor in everybody's weird percentages for revenue you wouldn't even think somebody would take a percentage of.

We factor in annual subscriptions, monthly subscriptions, one-time fees, per-release fees, add-ons, revenue shares, Content ID percentages, social-media monetization percentages and the other ways these companies make money from artists.

Because comparing the advertised price doesn't necessarily tell you what you're actually going to pay.

One distributor might charge you a one-time fee.

Another might charge you every year.

Another might charge you nothing upfront but take a percentage of your revenue.

Another might charge an annual fee, let you keep 100% of your streaming and download revenue, but take a percentage of Content ID or money generated through platforms like TikTok and Instagram.

Those offers can look completely different depending on the artist.

If you barely make anything from Content ID, that percentage might not matter much.

But what if Content ID and social platforms generate a huge percentage of your revenue?

Now that “keep 100% of your royalties” offer might not be as inexpensive as it sounds.

That's why the Selector doesn't just look at the sticker price.

It can look at how much music you release, the features you need, the services you use, the revenue you generate from different sources, and the different ways each distributor charges you.

Then it can estimate what those different business models could actually cost you.

That's what we're building with the Music Distribution Selector.

Not another list telling you which music distributor somebody else thinks is the best.

A tool designed to help you find your best fit.