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The Economics of DistroKid

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by Melody Bot, Feb 17, 2017.

  1. Melody Bot

    Your friendly little forum bot. Staff Member

    This article has been imported from chorus.fm for discussion. All of the forum rules still apply.

    The founder of DistroKid has written a blog about the service and the growth they’ve seen in the past four years. DistroKid is a new kind of music distributor:


    That means we help musicians & record labels get their music into online stores & streaming services (iTunes, Spotify, Pandora, Google Play, Amazon, and more).

    Then we collect the royalties and pay out. Payments go either to the artist, or to any group of collaborators that the artist specifies, in any percentage.

    This paragraph really stuck out to me:


    You’re a dummy if you give any percentage of your earnings to a distributor. For goodness sakes. If you don’t use DistroKid, that’s okay — but please don’t give a cut of your earnings to any distributor unless they’re also massively promoting you and helping with marketing; the only way they’d deserve it. If we took 9% of earnings (we take nothing) there are a handful of artists who’d owe us more than $100,000 each for moving a few files around. That ain’t right.

    The whole thing is definitely worth a read.

     
    KidLightning likes this.
  2. teebs41

    Prestigious Prestigious

    ughhhhhh why did we use CD baby?? haha
     
    Jason Tate likes this.
  3. bodkins

    Trusted

    I've used TuneCore and now use Distrokid with with my new band. DK is great. Low rates and some solid customer service.
     
    Jason Tate likes this.
  4. carlosonthedrums

    Cooler than a polar bear's toenails Prestigious

    That was awesome. My band, Addax, used Distrokid for our EP last year, and it was a smooth, seamless experience. Can't recommend these guys enough.
     
    Jason Tate likes this.
  5. Malatesta

    i may get better but we won't ever get well Prestigious

    between services like this and Bandcamp, i'm really hopeful for the push to keep capital away from non-artists.
     
  6. Jose

    weightless in the valley

    Distrokid is unbelievably simple and user-friendly, definitely recommend it to anyone trying to throw their music out into the world
     
    Jason Tate likes this.