A Quick Guide to Self Distribution
.jpg)
Krister Axel
9
A good friend of mine is releasing some new songs after a pretty long hiatus, and she had some questions for me about the simplest way to distribute her new project. That is an important question, and also something I have a lot of experience with. There are more options than ever right now, and so you have to decide how edgy you want to be with this - for example, there are Ethereum related distribution channels that can be promising for artists in the right sub genre. From what I understand, Lyrah has had some fantastic experience releasing tracks on alternative distributors like sound.xyz, but it's important to keep in mind that she is both a very appropriate artist for that platform in terms of the musical style, because her music really intersects between electronic pop, and some of the deeper electronic sub genres that are doing quite well right now, and ALSO that she is ready and willing with a crypto wallet and a lot of time online to manage these accounts into success, as it were. So before you decide how you are going to release your new project, whether that be a single, an EP, or even a full album, you have to decide how much time you have to dedicate to the process itself. It's very important to understand the allowable range here - mainstream artists routinely take anywhere between 6 and 18 months to properly do an album release: tours are booked and vinyls are pressed, T-shirts are made and it all comes together on top of a PR campaign to radio and television. But none of my friends are mainstream artists (haha, except for that one guy). The rest of us just have to do it the way we have to do it. So the answers to those questions: how much time do I have to do this?, and how hands-on do I want to be?, will lead in one of two directions.
Let's Make This Easy
First up are distribution channels have access to more or less of everything. From what I understand there are four main players in this arena, some of you may argue about which is a main player, but these are the four main distribution channels that can get you on all platforms, and that I see enough in my daily life and work to be able to vouch for as things that do exist and people use.
Distro Kid
This is the one that I use, and truly, I have almost nothing bad to say about them. The costs are manageable, the UI works, I can do everything I need to do, I have some rudimentary statistics available. It's basically a huge menu of things that you can have if you want, so they are basically trying to make their money on micro transactions, but if you spend a little time figuring out what add-ons you do and don't need, it's a cost-effective and totally functional distribution platform. Pro tip, apparently adding the YouTube "ID" tracking, proves to be a nightmare for anyone who wants to actually license their music to anyone online, so probably don't pay for that.
CD Baby
When I launched my career in the 90s, I used CD Baby to print my actual compact discs. So when the streaming services popped up, that felt like a natural transition for me. But of course, years later, Derek Sivers sold his company, and I kid you not, the experience immediately turned to proverbial shit. So that's when I made the difficult transition to DistroKid. My only regret is losing all of the iTunes comments I had for the release of Arms Around the River - people really loved that album and said a lot of nice things about it, but those comments are gone because if you switch distro channels, everything gets reset.
Ditto Music
I hear about Ditto music from the British artists that I work with occasionally, and I myself reached out to them once, and just didn't have a very good experience. I think their support is hard to connect with, and the UI at least at the time that I worked with them, didn't make a whole lot of sense. But your mileage may vary, so it makes sense to at least give them a look.
Tunecore
Tunecore is based out of New York, and their model used to be slightly different in that they charge only per release. After looking at their site for a few minutes, it looks like they have now rolled out what they're calling "unlimited" plans, which is exactly the model that everyone else is using.
My personal take on this list, would be to take a serious look at both DistroKid and Tunecore. Both of these platforms are powerful, and have some history to them, which is a nice thing to see in this business. Tunecore seems to be trying to put together a more integrated list of artist services, where distrokid is really trying to stay in the distribution lane. As someone who already creates his own art, and can print his own merch, and isn't really looking to get into the hottest new studio in Atlanta, distrokid is a much better match. If you are a very young artist, without a lot of access to resources to get started, then maybe tunecore is a great fit because you can use them to generate a cover, and attend music seminars, & even work with their marketing services.
Let's Make This Hard
The other option is to put in some of the work yourself. Unless you decide to pursue options with record labels or management services, which I suspect will not be most of you, your best bet might still be to go with a standard distributor like distrokid or tunecore. But there still remain, beyond that, some real concrete steps you can take to give yourself the best chance of success.
So let's say you decided on a distribution channel. You can end there and just say to yourself: eventually I'm going to get an email from these people with a link that says my songs are live. I can then put up a Facebook post and say look, my songs are available for people to listen to. Maybe I will set up a linktree page with all of the streaming links in one place. and then, I will hope that people start listening. This approach is called "Drop and Pray." We've all done it, but let's be fair - it doesn't work that well.
Aside from looking for new distribution channels that are out of the mainstream, a bit like the sound.XYZ example from above, there are still a few things you can do to at least maximize the Spotify exposure. This is the approach that I have used over the years with some success. There might exist an approach like this for some of the other platforms, but I'm just not aware.
We'll call this approach, Drop and Nudge. Warning, you do have to sign up for at least one free account membership to Spotify for Artists. There is no way around that. But you do NOT need to have a paid Spotify account.
Tip #1: Make Some Great Art
We all shop with our eyes. It cannot be overstated how important, in this day and age, a good graphic is for your album and for your singles.
DO NOT: procrastinate. Pretend it doesn't matter. Try to do it all in five minutes.
DO: Work with a graphic artist. Experiment with AI. Try a few different things and run it by your friends. HAVE FUN.
Tip #2: Sign Up for an Artist Account
Spotify offers musical artists a portal for managing their songs. In some cases, you can submit directly to the streaming services, but I don't suggest that. You still need to go through a distributor, but once you've done that (and be sure to set your release at least 6 to 8 weeks in advance), within a few days of processing the payment with your distributor, that release will show up in the 'upcoming releases' section of your artist account. Be sure to click through and add information, including details about you, genre, information, as well as setting the location for your release, which I think has some effect on what Spotify calls the 'release radar.' Here's a quick detail that you may not know about the release radar: if you are an artist that has any sort of following whatsoever, like literally a handful of listeners, it makes sense to pay attention to the release radar. It's the thing that drives a lot of listening within the Spotify ecosystem, it gets shown to you when you open the app, some people just visited weekly to hear new songs, but the bottom line is that your followers will have your new release in their release radar if you provide it to Spotify with enough lead time and offer all of the details about it so they can match things like location and genre, and offer it to them for 'editorial consideration'. So, just taking that one step of managing your account within Spotify to offer those details can have a very important effect on your existing listenership: your people will get the chance to hear your song, and it may even spill out and bring in some new listeners for you. Just make sure to submit it, this is how they manage the massive volume that they have, if you don't provide all the details and press submit, you will not be considered not even for release radar. I have done a handful of releases this way, and although I have never been selected for one of their editorial playlists, the process of submitting that release for consideration for editorial playlists was enough to trigger the release radar in the way that I just mentioned, and that typically has a 2x to 4x effect on your numbers that lasts about 30 to 45 days.
Tip #3: Have a Story
As part of that submission to editorial consideration, for each release you are allowed to pick one song for them to listen to, with something like 500 characters for you to write a little 'pitch.' If nothing else, it's good exercise for doing press releases, and that kind of thing. What you really need to do is boil the essence of you and your release into 2 to 3 sentences--something that even I, your humble narrator, struggle with on the reg, so don't feel so bad. Just do your best and try to make it sound genuine.
Tip #4: Stay Local
Wherever you are, there is probably some sort of local resource that you can check in with. You probably have a local NPR affiliate within a short drive from you. Many of these local programs have specific submission procedures - to be perfectly fair I jumped through these hoops in upstate New York with zero success (maybe check your email one day Sarah Scafidi-McGuire!) - but it is worth doing, and if there is any way whatsoever to actually show up and hand something to somebody, you should definitely do that instead. Email and online submission flows suck and you should hate them, as I do.
Tip #5: Nail the Dismount (haha, it's timing, I mean u need good timing)
The very best thing you can do at least in the short term for a release, is have a fantastic release show. To this day, the most money I ever made at a live show was the release of Permanent Friday Night at the Hotel Café, and more importantly, the night itself was an event, and a memory that I will forever cherish. We have to remember that yes, we want this to mean something over a long period of time, but we also want it to mean something right now, and investing the time and energy and resources into creating an event that is interesting and special and memorable will oftentimes, itself create other opportunities, and certainly can be a source of joy and celebration of the accomplishment itself. It's not easy to get an album project to the finish line. We deserve to have a ceremony that honors the process, and the sacrifice that it took to get there.
What About the Other Stuff
I will add a list here of other channels that I know almost nothing about. Remember to always do your own research, but in general, the upside here is basically the risk reward ratio. On a standard distribution channel, you have next to zero chance of your release, being flagged in any particularly special way by the distributor itself. On the other hand, with some other lesser-known channels, you have a very real possibility of being a flagship artist for their small start-up brand, so to speak, but that can never be a guarantee and it's some thing that you have to assess on your own. Are they presenting the music of other artists as a sort of vouch-for representation? Listen to those artists, and very specifically the songs that they are promoting as part of this collaboration, and ask yourself, is my music as good or better than these artists? If the answer to that is yes, then it might make sense to reach out directly to a representative and see if you can get some of that sweet, sweet, personal exposure. That's when having a good feeling about your genre can help tremendously. Most of the time they're not just looking for anything, they want something good inside some genre window, which is probably driven by some upstream brand partnership. I'm not saying, just label your music correctly to get through the door, as much as I am saying, know where your genre hotspot is, so that when those keywords come up you know that is where your song has the best chance of succeeding.
Anyway, good luck out there, everyone. Whitney, if you're still reading this, in your case, I would suggest the more hands-on, safer, probably slightly more expensive option would be Tunecore, and if you just feel like taking a chance on something interesting, you might want to try Amuse.io.
