However, if you use the Leave a Legacy program for all of your releases, opt-in for YouTube monetization, or partake in any of the other paid services DistroKid offers, it will cost you more per releaseyoull pay additional fees on top of your annual subscription. To ensure you make the most money out of your music, get started with a service that will collect them for you. Uploads your music to Spotify, Apple Music, etc. The only way to collect mechanical royalties is to register with a publisher or publishing administrator like CD Baby Pro Publishing. The only way you can get these is if either you or your publisher is signed up with the MLC. You could probably forgo this, but I figured its best to let them stay on top of this in case a new platform comes out of nowhere. However, given the strides that AI has made in the field of graphic design, we can certainly say that a combination of human and artificial intelligence can open up new avenues for creativity and bring increased efficiency to the design process. However, Distrokid takes 20% of the YouTube royalties they find and collect. It can be difficult to understand the conditions of royalties, and which types of royalties DistroKid can collect on your behalf. The coolest part of Slaps is the comment/track ratio (CTR). Here are CDbabys prices: CD Babys pricing is a little more straight forward in terms of fees you directly pay. For the Pro fee + a 15% commission, CDbaby will take care of collecting your mechanical royalties for you and pay you just like they pay you the digital sales and streams. DistroKid members can link their DistroKid account to an Audiomack account, upload their songs lyrics into the Instagram story creator, and get a Spotify verified checkmark. if(typeof ez_ad_units!='undefined'){ez_ad_units.push([[300,250],'bestfriendsclub_ca-leader-1','ezslot_10',112,'0','0'])};__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-bestfriendsclub_ca-leader-1-0');A DistroKid account is needed to upload your music to online stores and streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music, and Pandora. CDbaby vs Distrokid, it doesnt matter, if you want to collect these royalties you have to sign up for sound exchange either way. However, while DistroKid might seem like a starving artist's dream come true, you'll have to pay a lot of hidden fees to get the most out of it. Reproduction royalties are a type of recording royalty, and generated by each individual use of a master, such as when a song is sold on a digital store like the Qobuz download store, or when someone plays your song on a streaming service like Tidal. This site and Peer Through Media LLC sometimes recommends products that were affiliated with. As of May 2021, you will be able to select whether or not you want your Leave a Legacy releases to remain online when you cancel your account. Go create. Learn more. Some of those royalties, like publishing, CDBaby would have collected for you (hence the extra cost). If you are a songwriter without a publisher or publishing administrator contract, you own 100% of your song, but you can only collect 50% of the performance royalties (the songwriter's share) through ASCAP. As a Distrokid user, I will tally up the price in terms of the services I chose: I pay for the musician plus account. DistroKid distributes your music to all the major streaming services and digital stores. Copyright 2023 Best Friends Club Ltd., all rights reserved. When setting up your profile, you can categorize yourself on all of DistroKid's social features by genre and artists who have influenced you. You can register (and check on your songs) at themlc.com. (I dont know how actively CD Baby pitches your music or how common placements are.). You can set this up through CD Baby with the pro option and they take a 30% cut of what they collect. That is why I chose to go with Distrokid. A composition refers to the lyrics and notes of a song. The deal breaker between CDBaby and Distrokid is that CDBaby takes 9% of digital sales and streams and Distrokid doesnt take a commission. Your email address will not be published. As soon as a vinyl record is produced, a mechanical royalty is born. That difference is completely negligible when you factor it into the big picture of the royalties you are entitled to and the commissions that each service takes. However, if you sign up for Distrokid you are still missing out on royalty streams, particularly publishing. If you are a solo artist, your subscription will cost $19.99 per year. This way you wont lose any royalties! You are a music hobbiest. We can help you collect all the publishing royalties you're owed worldwide including mechanicals from interactive streams on Pandora. Please always do your own research and consult a professional. These are the royalties that are collected from streams and sales on digital music stores or streaming services. While this seems unsavory, these fees could lead to opportunities that advance your music career. After signing up for DistroKid, youll want to design your personal profile. These added benefits come into play when we start looking at how money is collected for music used in YouTube videos. Continue with Recommended Cookies. Instead an administrative publishing company, is there for the administrative work of collecting your royalties. Neither CDBaby nor Distrokid collect performance royalties for you. DistroKid does not collect any publishing royalties however other music distribution services do. You are looking to take your music career seriously and you like the idea of housing more of the royalty collection process under one roof. If you are using DistroKid to distribute your music but hope to sign a record deal someday, DistroKid Upstream can help you out. Leave a Legacy costs a one-time fee of $49 USD for albums (or any release composed of two or more songs) and $29 USD for singles. Theyre also organized under US law and the US Copyright Act, so you can trust they wont run away with your money. Anyone who spins the Wheel of Playlist will get their song on the Wheel of Playlist. Since not everyone reports usage properly, especially smaller companies, royalties are paid based on an estimation, instead of by the nitty-gritty numbers that distributors calculate. .06 for every 100 streams. This makes sense: in order to keep your music available in stores and on streaming platforms, you have to continue to pay an annual fee. You want to collect the largest % of your royalties available to you. We dont yet offer admin publishing services. However, the caveat with this is that if you cancel your membership, or switch banks and forget to let DistroKid know, all your music will be removed. In that same example, because your music was technically performed in public (ie: on the listeners phone) and because the audio file was mechanically reproduced on the listeners phone to play the music back, you are also owed both performance and mechanical royalties. But today, ASCAP and BMI do the exact same thing: collect all your public performance royalties, and send that royalty payment to your bank. You also have the right to collect mechanical royalties on any cover versions recorded and released by other artists. A composition refers to the lyrics and notes of a song. It mainly depends on your needs and output as an independent artist. My name is Matt and I release music under the name Best Friends Club. DistroKid vs. TuneCore However, you can still collect those royalties for cheaper if you pair Distrokid with a few more services. Here youll select how many tracks you plan to release, and the distribution partners you want to send your release to. This is important to note because PROs don't actively monitor usage. However, you should know that PROs only collect performance royalties so you would still be missing out on some mechanical royalties that are owed to you. The consent submitted will only be used for data processing originating from this website. At the same time, they collect funds from all the businesses and entities through something called a blanket license so that they can use copyrighted music for their businesses, such as restaurants, music venues, on the radio, or in a shopping mall. You can easily create Hyperfollow links and when someone clicks one, theyll automatically follow you on Spotify and have your music saved to their library. All mechanical royalties from download stores like iTunes. This is an awesome service that I wish Distrokid had. if(typeof ez_ad_units!='undefined'){ez_ad_units.push([[468,60],'bestfriendsclub_ca-box-3','ezslot_9',103,'0','0'])};__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-bestfriendsclub_ca-box-3-0');For a complete breakdown of who collects what money for you, what the difference between Songtrust and DistroKid are, and if you need to have accounts with both, simply keep on reading, my friend. Performance royalties are split into a publisher's share and a writer's share. Music Distribution. Roll with it, and get back to creating music. PRS and MCPS on the other hand charge a one-time payment of 100 so you should only really consider signing up to these services if you know youre going to get a lot of listeners engaging with your music and earning you royalties. However, I couldnt give up that 9% commission. Affiliate links on SoundGuys may earn us a commission. It is calledSoundExchange. For the most part, performance royalties are due to you if you, or anyone, plays your song live in a venue, over a stadium loudspeaker, on a radio station, or even in a Starbucks. The bad news is that other exclusive sync agencies might care you work with CD Baby and make you opt out of that service. Performance AND mechanical royalties. Songtrust is a service that collects the publishers share of your performance royalties and your mechanical royalties. If you arent signed up to a PRO outside of DistroKid, and youre getting a high level of digital streams, then youre probably missing out on money and youre closed off to a valuable income source. DistroKid Help Center Getting Paid Getting Paid Keep 100% of your earnings, and receive them faster than any other distributor! Click here to see a list of my favorite and most recommended tools and resources thatIve personally used to get my music streamed over 5,000,000 timeson Spotify as an artist (called Best Friends Club). if(typeof ez_ad_units!='undefined'){ez_ad_units.push([[300,250],'bestfriendsclub_ca-banner-1','ezslot_5',110,'0','0'])};__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-bestfriendsclub_ca-banner-1-0');Instead, DistroKid only collects the money owed from your musics sales on stores and streams from streaming services (Master recording royalties). Performance rights organizations (PRO) collect performance rights royalties on behalf of publishers and songwriters. Where music distribution services will collect mechanical royalties, BMI or ASCAP will collect performance royalties. If your release hasnt gone live yet, you can also use your Hyperfollow link as a Spotify pre-save link to build traction around it. Mark majored in finance but his adventures starting a hot sauce company turned him into a creative marketer. Distrokid is a distributor. With that said, because you can use any music distributor to get the job done, here are some articles that compare DistroKid to the competition: Thank you for reading this article, my friend, and I hope you found it helpful as you build your own successful career in music. Recording royaltiesare the royalties generated by masters. What Im saying is, if youre trying to be the next Biebs, I wouldnt evaluate these services with the idea of saving ten bucks as the most important criteria. DISTROKID in that they give you 100% of your earnings. Collects the master recording royalties and payments for you (ie: Collects the music publishing royalties for you (ie: performance royalties and mechanical royalties), Signs up you for and allows you to easily submit your music to performance rights organizations around the world, DistroKid does not collect and payout performance royalties for the public broadcasting of your music, DistroKid does not collect and payout mechanical royalties for digital streams and sales that your music makes, Your music is being played all around the world, Your music is being played thousands of times per month, You do not want to sign up and deal with PROs all around the world, You do not want to (or cant) sign a traditional publishing deal or create your own publishing company, Youd prefer a simple way to collect all your music publishing royalties and feel confident you arent leaving any money on the table, Your music is not currently getting very many plays per month, Your music is only being played in 1 or 2 countries. This means that streaming services pay performance royalties through performance rights organizations who then distribute them to songwriters and publishers. What Music Distributors Collect Publishing Royalties For Me? Thats a nice add on by CDBaby, but it really doesnt matter as its just a matter of going to the PROs website and filling out some forms. Regardless though, it is good to understand the big picture music industry no matter your situation. Songtrust is a publishing administration company that helps artists collect publishing, mechanical, and live performance royalties. If you're an established artist, then you should be signed up to an organisation that collects your other royalties, such as performance and songwriting royalties. Were working on a publishing admin system for artists. This means you can avoid long wait times, but it also means DistroKid wont help you preemptively avoid legal issues with your releases. Any artist that is getting 1000s of plays per month around the world and doesnt want to deal with setting up a publishing company or setting up accounts with every international PRO will benefit from the additional royalties that Songtrust can bring in. to show your friends and have no real plans of a music career. The low yearly fee is good if youre short for cash but it will obviously become more expensive than the other publishers weve looked at if you keep your music up for a long time. Is DistroKid A Music Publisher? Whether it is performing live on stage, music playing in the background at a cafe or radio playtime, BMI and ASCAP collect the royalties and distribute it among the copyright owners (songwriters and publishers). You get a member number and you use that to register any songs that you write or co-write. If you would like to learn more about them, check out my big fat DistroKid review for everything you need to know about DistroKid and music distribution. I will help you decide by giving you three scenarios. So if you distribute your music with DistroKid and wrote the songs, the only way to collect all of. They dont care if you work with other sync agents. Distrokids store maximizer option means Distrokid will automatically add any of your past music to new stores and streaming services that comes into existence after youve released. With all these services you have to release the song using the distributor in order to access the mechanical and performance royalties unlike Songtrust. Connect to Collect. DistroKid is a music distribution company that allows artists to get their music on online stores and streaming services. If you have a Musician Plus or Label subscription, youll be able to adjust your releases price on iTunes, and some additional freedoms well go over later. Manage Settings They do a bit more for their artists than just distribute, but it comes with a higher cut. There are a few options out there, but one of the most popular is DistroKid. Im torn: DistroKid offers arguably the best exposure and promotional tools of any distribution service, but the fact that you have to pay for every add-on service is kind of sketchy, especially since DistroKid does not tell you about these charges from the start. A distributor works hard to sell or stream your music, but their main focus is collecting royalties from your master recording. songwriters, beatmakers etc. They'll collect songwriter royalties for you. Not everyone can afford to hire a manager to parse through the legal jargon, and plenty of independent musicians track and manage their own royalty collection. You could be missing out on a lot of royalties which will go uncollected if youre only using a distributor. The MLC is the only organization in the US that collects mechanical royalties. It was almost enough to make me not use them. Beyond these basic features, DistroKid has a referral program where you can offer discounts to your friends and receive money when they sign up. Record labels, artists and producers generally own The Master. With a DistroKid membership, you gain access to a wide selection of customizable video templates that you can insert your songs into for promoting your releases on social media. CDbaby vs Distrokid which should you use? My recommendation for a music distributor would be DistroKid because they offer unlimited song uploads for a small annual fee without taking a percentage of any of your earnings away. Once your music is live and getting played on online stores and streaming services, Songtrust is able to help you collect all of your music publishing royalties. Its free to sign up for SoundExchange. You can also get a social phone number to directly text your fans (for $12.99/mo), and this can serve as a great marketing tool. Let's start by restating the basics: For you to collect mechanical royalties, you need. Yes, they USED DO issue licenses and collect mechanical royalties from the DSPs. This is great if people decide to cover your song because even if their version is more commercially successful than yours youll get paid for it. . *This post may contain affiliate links. Distrokid charges $7.95 a year (per album) for store maximizer. Note: This article is written from the perspective of an independent musician who both writes and performs their own music. DistroKid provides a service to help you easily release cover songs, which costs an additional $12 per year. Play Your Part continues with maintaining your works data and spreading the word with your peers. Many distribution services offer things like your musics permanent existence on the internet and YouTube monetization, and they dont charge an additional fee like DistroKid. I also write helpful articles on how to make sweet music and grow those sweet, sweet Spotify streams. The simple answer is that mechanical royalties are payments to the writer of a song whenever that song is reproduced in some form. Also, CDBaby doesnt charge yearly fees, but rather you pay by release. It gives you better analytics, you can customize your label name, release date, preorder date and iTunes pricing. Slaps rewards people who engage with other musicians by promoting their music. In the example of a Spotify stream, Spotify pays the master recording royalty portion to DistroKid, who then pays you those royalties for your ownership of the recording. Winner: Moot Point. They just take 15% of what they collect. Check ouraffiliate disclosurefor more info. When finishing up a release, you can add on additional charges for services like Leave a Legacy, which will make sure your music stays online forever, even if you stop paying your subscription fee. Both BMI and ASCAP split royalties of a song between the Songwriter and Publisher, and artists have the choice of what percentage of royalties theyll earn from each category during a process called song registration. With BMI Affiliates, you'll get discounts with FedEx and Berklee online courses. The higher percentages could earn you multiple thousands in extra revenue if your music takes off. For BMI, since their percentage system is on a 200% scale, independent artists with no music publisher or record deals will put 200% into the songwriting section and 0% in the publishing. It doesnt matter which tier you choose on either platform. Synchronization royalties are generated when a song is used in a TV show or video game, and accrues a one-time royalty. Once you start to gain some traction you can upgrade your subscriptions. We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. If I ever do release a cover song, I will use it. However, we only recommend products we believe in and try to provide as much useful information as possible, regardless of affiliation. The play counts will remain the same and everything will remain up. It is also better than CD Babys per release model if youre releasing a lot of music. The biggest PROs in the US are BMI and ASCAP. That is by far the cheapest option and the option you should go with if all you are trying to do is throw some songs up on streaming services for fun. Many of us shy away from singing in public. Distrokid is planning on creating a publishing team that will collect publishing royalties in the future. Mechanical royalties are paid out any time a physical or digital copy of one of your songs is made. We feel strongly that you shouldn't give a percentage of your earnings for streams / sales to your distributor. TuneCore charges$75 per writerto cover setup and administrative costs and they also retain a 15% commission from the royalties that they collect on your behalf. A 50-50 split is common, but again, each company has their business model, level of connections etc. CDBaby gives you 91%. Non-interactive streaming royalties are paid out by any digital streaming service where the listener doesnt get to choose (interact) with the song. Many independent musicians write and perform their own music on a recording, in which case they will want to collect both recording royalties generated by masters, and publishing royalties generated by compositions. If a music licensing agent browses that library and uses one of your songs you get 60% of the sale and CDBaby takes 40%. The audio file types DistroKid accepts are WAV, WMA, M4A, FLAC, MP3, and CDDA. If you just want most of your basis covered, don plan to release music at regular intervals, and dont care much about commissions go with CD Baby Pro. DistroKid and other similar services are only for distribution and collect mechanical royalties for digital streams and sales. Distrokid will not collect these for you and they can amount to quite a lot of money. Youre just trying to release one song as a hobbiest and have it available on streaming platforms for fun to show your friends. Performance royalties are paid to songwriters and their music publisher in exchange for the right to broadcast or perform a copyrighted musical composition in a public environment. Summary: Collect all your music royalties in four steps. Spotify then pays those publishing royalty portions to a performance rights organization (which specific organization depends on where in the world your song was streamed. Bestfriendsclub.ca also participates in affiliate programs with Bluehost, DistroKid, Loopmasters and other sites. If your collaborator doesnt renew their membership the following year, their bank will still receive payments from your release as long as it generates royalties, too. Anytime a video that uses your music gets a play, you should get a % of that monetization. Your understanding should all come together at the end, but even if you only grasp half, youll understand more than most artists and be able to truly make an informed decision not only on CD Baby vs Distrokid, but on a lot of other business decisions that have to do with your music career. Ditto also offer global publishing administration like TuneCore and CD Baby, and like the other distributors you can only claim publishing royalties for works released through Ditto. DistroKid is a distribution service for independent musicians who release music often. The standard plan will allow you to release songs as you make them and not have to pay for each release. Youre just trying to make some fun songs every once in a while and throw them up on iTunes/Spotify etc. This site is for entertainment purposes. Reproduction royalties are generated every time a master is used. Of course, you will receive the YouTube revenue from YouTube for your own music videos, but what about if someone uses one of your songs as background music in their viral video? The home page promotes artists and there are designated group pages with various artists organized by genre, mood, other musicians that serve as inspiration, and more. When you withdraw earnings, you may be subject to applicable taxes and/or fees from . There are a few other add-ons that I dont use. Theres also a Twitch affiliate program, and an AI bot that analyzes your song and tells you how danceable it is (in percentages) and its key signature. To learn more about this, check out my article: Is DistroKid A Publisher? But now that you know everything, you can make an informed decision. If you want to upload your music today and ensure it remains available for years to come, you must opt into the Leave a Legacy program. From a pure value perspective, DistroKid is a better choice if youre releasing music often and dont care about opting in to the Leave a Legacy program or any additional services. DistroKid offers a slew of artist development tools. This can be a plus or a minus depending on how often you release music. Some distributors offer this service as part of their yearly subscription. Cassettes, CDs, and in many cases, even record labels, are things of the past. Distrokid just doesnt have a sync service. . DECAP explains how to collect royalties as a producer.Mentioned in the video:Distrokid (discounted link): http://bit.ly/36sJQYYSongtrust (discounted link): h. Mechanical royalties are frequently the main source of royalty income for a successful songwriter. If youre not sure you want to opt-in at the time of release, you can always go into your releases and add it later in your career. You can set this up with Distrokid and it is $4.95 a year per single or $14.95 a year per album, and they take a 20% cut. If a record label likes what it sees, it will reach out to you directly. Summary: Match with the search results: DistroKid does not collect and payout mechanical royalties for digital streams and sales that your music makes. You can release cover songs easily, and DistroKid will help you take care of which royalties go where. revenue from streams on streaming services like Spotify. Now, when someone buys your song from a major store, your distributor doesnt get all of the revenue. If you don't, you will only be able to collect your mechanical royalties, which is what Spotify, Apple Music and other streaming services collect. Collecting Publishing Royalties Without Distrokid How Do You Do It? Performance Rights Royalties are paid for the right to perform a song in public places. DistroKid is a music distribution company that allows artists to get their music on online stores and streaming services while Songtrust is a publishing administration company that helps artists collect publishing, mechanical, and live performance royalties. Its the one thing I very much dislike about Distrokid. If you want a distributor+publisher, CD Baby and Tunecore let you sign up as a publisher. The money works out the same between BMI and ASCAP, just the percentages they use are different. When you distribute your music through CD Baby Pro, you are added to CDBabys non-exclusive sync library. Songtrust collects performance and mechanical royalties from about 98% of the global music publishing market. When your music is streamed, you are owed royalties for the master recording (the actual audio file) as well as for the composition that was created (the songwriting and intellectual property that went into the creation of the final audio recording). 3 mountainwampus 6 yr. ago They charge a 1 time setup fee of $100 and then they collect all of your mechanical royalties for all of the songs and projects you register. But in all honesty,these are the exact tools that I personally use, love, and recommend to anyone including my own friends and family. The royalties are collected by DistroKid and are redistributed to yourself. If you do decide to go with my option: Im an optimist and plan to release music regularly and for it to take off, so this is the option I used. You don't need to be registered with a Performing Rights Organization in order to collect your earnings from the streaming services you distribute to via DistroKid, but you're welcome to do register your works with them for additional publishing administration outside of DistroKid. You can submit one track per artist at a time, so if you have a Musician Plus subscription and manage two artists, you can submit one track for each. 98% of the global music publishing market, from 60+ pay sources, covering 245+ countries/territories, 100% of US mechanical royalties from streams goes to the newly formed. To watch how to register a song on BMI check out this step-by-step guide: Don't get overwhelmed if you are confused by music publishing. Songtrust is a popular admin publishing company for independent musicians. However, if you also want to register as a publisher, you'll save money with ASCAP. PROs can be quite costly, however BMI is free if you sign up as a songwriter. For the most part sync royalties are a stand alone separate thing. We Tested it Thoroughly To Find Out! DistroKid currently doesn't have any add-on, admin publishing services (at least not yet). Mechanical royalties are paid for the right to reproduce a composition through the process of recording, manufacturing, and distributing the work. DistroKid does not collect performance royalties on your music.