I've been wanting to write about the benefits of digital distribution via DistroKid for awhile now and just decided to bite the bullet. I don't partake in too many mega posts but this one I just wanted to get off my chest.

To give you some background, I've used a variety of digital distribution services to ensure the yk records releases are on as many digital streaming platforms as possible (iTunes / Apple Music, Amazon, Google Play, Spotify, etc). These services all do the same thing - take your audio files, service them to the platforms with a designated release date and collect royalty payments for the plays you receive. I also upload directly to Bandcamp for a number of reasons but that's another blog post.

For my own personal gratification, I'm going to run through my experiences with each service and the pro's and con's.. ultimately revealing that DistroKid is the best deal out there at the moment as far as I'm aware (the title of this post was the Spoiler Alert). This isn't an ad by any means but I don't think enough people know about the service and that's a damn shame.

Here's what I've used:

• Reverb Nation - an album costs $19.95 to distribute everywhere for the first year and $49.95 every year after that, in perpetuity. For Pancho Chumley, my labels first release in 2009, that's $370 to keep an unknown album from a new artist online for eight years. The initial release takes between 14-30 days to show up on all the services.
  
  Their reporting is abysmal and their site interface is cumbersomely archaic. However, their Customer Support is friendly and fairly responsive. There's a whole social network behind ReverbNation that may have some benefits but I've never had much of any success with it despite distributing multiple artists on the platform.
• Tunecore - the Go To distributor for just about everyone I know. They've garnered nearly 1 Billion Dollars in streaming revenue from everyone using them (not hyperbole) so there's clearly a larger user base. It's $29.99 for an album for the first year and $49.99 every year after that. So, that's $380 to distribute Pancho Chumley for eight years. Oh, and they offer a ton of "add-on" services for one-time fees, i.e. tracking YouTube usage of your music wherein you garner 80% of the revenue. Not cheap by any means and, again, the initial release takes 14-30 days to show up on all the services.
  
  Their interface is nice, their reporting is okay. It's not easy to read but if you are comfortable parsing through spreadsheets, you can figure out where royalty payments need to go for each artist. I've never interacted with Customer Service but they're clearly doing something right with such a huge amount of artists using them.
• DistroKid - founded by Phillip Kaplan, the company is notoriously small (3 people) and cheaper by leaps and bounds. It costs $19.99 per year for unlimited songs for one artist. So, if you're a band or musician operating under one name, you can put everything you have on all of the streaming services for $20. There are more tiers beyond that depending on how many artist names you want to use, including the plan that I'm on for 20+ artists at $240/yr. That's $240 for unlimited songs and albums for twenty artists. Sounds like more than the above but those prices are for one artist for one year. It compounds very quickly when you have a decent catalog. Oh, releases take 2-3 days max to show up on streaming services, often it is same day.
  
  They also offer one-time upgrades for a fixed fee, as well as a Leave a legacy option in which your music is on the streaming platforms for as long as they exist, even if you stop paying Distrokid.
  
  They also offer royalty sharing so if you want to automatically divert a percentage of royalty income to another person, you can have the system handle it rather than paying yourself out, doing the math and then paying it out manually. This is an enormously helpful feature that gets overlooked far too often.
  
  The downsides to Distrokid? The interface is just OK, the reporting is good but waffles between a seemingly inaccurate overview and extremely granular payments. These are nitpicky issues tho and, on the whole, it's clearly the better service.

Even at its most expensive - $1199.99/yr for 100 artists - Distrokid is clearly the better value. It does the exact same service as the others with faster delivery and better royalty management. No brainer decision.

There are plenty of other digital distributors as well - usually tied to a physical distributor that can help get placement and promotions for your records. That's a value that none of the above offer and would bring enormous benefit. Nothing helps an album more than eyeballs and earholes. Quote me on that.

Why did I feel compelled to write all this out? Mostly because it was shocking to see how much the original services I used are gouging me in terms of price vs benefit. I've been migrating everything off those services and on to Distrokid and hope others do the same.