Releasing and album via Distrokid

personalnadir

I decided on a whim to take a load of old tracks I had, polish them a little and release them as an album on all streaming services. To do so I paid Distrokid what amounted to £16.01 plus 0.70p per track to appease Apple. After that it was just a case of uploading all the tracks to Distrokid, providing the appropriate details for each track (song writer, lyrics, version etc) and hitting upload. Two days later I now have an album on Apple Music, with it going live on Spotify in a few days.

I don't anticipate ever making the £16.01 back - and it is an annual subscription. You can pay about £40 one off to ensure the album stays up no matter what. However it was fun to do, and I'll probably bring it up incessantly at parties.

The album cover is just photo I took from my desk with a filter applied to make it abstract. On the whole, if you don't mind throwing some money away, I can recommend the process if you've not done it. The whole experience has been a fun thing to do.

https://music.apple.com/gb/album/ok-to-be-ok/1628491747

roberty

I use Distrokid. I don't know if they're the best any more but they make it very easy all the same. I think I have $16 in my account

personalnadir

roberty said:

I use Distrokid. I don't know if they're the best any more but they make it very easy all the same. I think I have $16 in my account

I think I've heard some grumblings about how they do their payouts from professional musicians. Though I don't think that's going to be an issue for me. I've not really looked into the alternatives, do you know who else is worth using?

roberty

personalnadir said:

roberty said:

I use Distrokid. I don't know if they're the best any more but they make it very easy all the same. I think I have $16 in my account

I think I've heard some grumblings about how they do their payouts from professional musicians. Though I don't think that's going to be an issue for me. I've not really looked into the alternatives, do you know who else is worth using?

My mate uses Tunecore for the analytics data. You can decide where to tour based on where people are listening to you etc

smigeon

Interesting. Any idea how things might work if your album includes covers (well-known songs/artists)?

personalnadir

smigeon said:

Interesting. Any idea how things might work if your album includes covers (well-known songs/artists)?

It looks like that get pricier - there's a $12 per cover song fee on Distrokid:

https://support.distrokid.com/hc/en-us/articles/360013659693-Why-Am-I-Required-to-Purchase-My-Cover-Song-License-Through-DistroKid-

danishbacon

smigeon said:

Interesting. Any idea how things might work if your album includes covers (well-known songs/artists)?

You need a mechanical license to do so, @smigeon ;;

this page has a good overview
https://www.openmicuk.co.uk/advice/do-you-need-a-licence-to-do-cover-songs/

What is a cover song license?

A new recording of an existing song requires a cover song license, referred to as a compulsory mechanical license. This means that the owner of the song’s copyright has an obligation to give you a license. However, this is providing the use of the song falls under a certain set of conditions.

The rights owner of a song has the right to control who makes the first record. It isn’t compulsory to grant a mechanical license when there is no previous recorded version of a song. There also needs to be a public release of the first recording. Therefore, if a song hasn’t been commercially released as a record then you can’t get a compulsory license.

Another condition is that the license is for a recording only. This means that the license won’t cover music videos or videos of you performing the cover. You also can’t make any major changes to the lyrics or melody but there is an allowance to make your own interpretations of the performance.

andy_k

I used CDbaby for the simple reason that it requires a one off payment, per release, rather than a subscription.
There is a spreadsheet available somewhere, ( https://aristake.com/digital-distribution-comparison/ ) that does a pretty extensive comparison of all the distributors, which I found useful to make my decision.
The CD baby pro version, is more expensive, but takes care of all the licensing registrations, which ensures that royalties are paid to your PRO of choice.
At the time of my release, cover songs were not an easy thing to do, so I had to edit out one from the live album I was publishing and I had to also factor in the one off payment to the UK PRO, which was another £100.
To do all this properly, required setting up a Ltd Co., to avoid being personally liable for the taxes due on my multi platinum album.
The result of all this, is effectively I now own a record label, and a publishing company, which do need some annual fees to maintain via an accountant.
The whole point of this exercise, was to make any future releases as simple and efficient as possible, and then the pandemic temporarily destroyed the music business, and I don't think it has recovered properly yet.
If its all just for fun, and you just want to spend some money getting a song or 2 out there, it is easy, but if you want to actually make some money in the business, it can get quite messy and complicated, and if you do have any success, it can be very difficult to claim the money you have 'earned'.

spark240

Hey bud...great job !...Please share some songs on my Reddit channel..https://www.reddit.com/r/Newmusicreview/

hubobulous

That's great. One of the ways your efforts can live on forever!! I'll take a listen.

I'm writing an album at the moment and I think I'm going to use SoundCloud Pro to get the songs onto the major streaming services. I pay for the Pro subscription anyway to allow me to have as many tracks on there as I like as well as being able to upload/replace new versions of the tracks if I choose to polish them down the line.

Still trying to get my head around all of the things you have to do. Looks like the first one is to register with PRS so I can get an ID and then each track can have its own ID too. Or something like that.

If anyone's interested, here's the thread on here where I'm cataloguing the process of writing the tunes.....its all relatively new for me, so am finding it quite a nice way of creating the songs and explaining the thoughts behind each one.

https://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/205352/ive-decided-to-write-an-album/p1