Recommendations for getting onto Spotify, Apple Music etc

[ChamomileShark]

A question for those of you having music distributed to Spotify, Apple music etc. I've used imusician digital in the past. But when there were problems, they didn't seem so great at either understanding the problem or solving it.

So I moved to distrokid. Something has happened there in the last few months (go and look on Youtube) re tax and also people getting "banned by a digital shop" and told they cannot distribute via Distrokid anymore.

Anyway, looking for recommndations, digital distribution only and on a budget.

[reborn579]

i use cd baby and i'm very happy with it. it's pretty cheap, and it comes with a lot of nice tools for marketing and promotion. plus, you only pay once, not per year.

[ChamomileShark]

thanks reborn, that is one I'm looking at now.

[Rites Of Spring]

Very bad experience with Imusician.

Until then I was very satisfied with their services, but now it has become a big mess:
I ask them to switch from the "starter" plan to "regular" (to be on all platforms) as well as to update my releases (because I remastered them)
They took almost a month instead of the expected two weeks (not too bad, but hey), taking a look at four platforms, I see that on two of them I'm on the page of a namesake artist . By listening to my titles on these platforms, I see that my album is still with the old versions (for the EP, the change has been made).
So I contact them to check the other platforms and correct their errors, because I don't have time to deal with 200 platforms.
They tell me that they don't either! Unbelievable.

So I withdrew all my releases from them so that I could change providers as soon as they disappeared from the platforms.

Suddenly, my releases reappear on them, and the versions on the platforms are finally the right ones.
There remains the problem of homonyms.

I receive a message from Trustpilot telling me that Imusician claims not to know me, so I had to send proof that I am a customer of theirs so that they do not delete my review.

The person at Imusician, whom I won't name, is very responsive now: 4 emails a day (before that took three days to respond).
The problem is that he tells me shit:
I should have checked that I had artist profiles at Apple and Spotify. Well no, since I didn't have one (and it is clear on their website : « do not put anything when it's your first outing on these platforms »)
And in addition there was no homonym problem at Spotify.
I tell him that I have an ISNI number, precisely to avoid these problems of namesakes (it's practically only what it's for!) Well he tells me that the ISNI is useless on the platforms!! !!

Worse! He tells me that nobody intervened to make my releases reappear on them and put the right versions on the platforms. So my releases changed version on their own, without human intervention. And decided on their own that it was really too bad to remove them from Imusician. So they reappear, like that, all by themselves!
Basically, I'm a big mythomaniac!

And in addition, with each message, he tells me to calm down, that I am aggressive, whereas I have been firm but courteous.
Crazy, I had never seen that.
I'm waiting a few days to see if, at least, they fix the homonym issues, on the three platforms I pointed out at the start of our exchanges (since everything is back online, I'm not going to remove them again, it could last a long time like that).

A few days after my releases completely disappeared from all platforms for several days. After an email, they reappeared on some, but with older versions. Now they tell me it's a bug. If it's not fixed quickly, I'll end up turning everything around (like I tried to do the first time), hoping that this time they won't miraculously reappear. If I was paranoid, I'd think they're doing it on purpose for revenge. But no, it's too childish, wouldn't they do that?

Anyway, I'm very disappointed. I had advised this platform to a friend who will release an album soon, I finally told him to look elsewhere.
Since his record is likely to sell well, he will have the means to afford a better quality service.

Sorry for the length of this post, but I think it is useful to let colleagues know what may be going on with this company.
This only reflects my experience, but hey, when I see how hard they try to get negative reviews on Trustpilot erased, I think you better be warned.

[MsFarith]

I prefer CDBaby cuz you pay for every single release, but the thing is, it stays forever. On the other hand, services like Distrokid want you to pay every year and if you want to cancel your subscription you need to pay 25$ Leave a Legacy option for every single track you've released. And if you got mysteriously banned then that means your tracks could be removed too if you didn't pay for the Leave a Legacy option.

CDBaby is just too good. It comes with a lot of tools for marketing and promotion.

[DJ Warmonger]

Labels take care of that for me. Plus, they handle the promotion on their own.

Doesn't help much ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Getting to Spotify is just the first step. My most popular track by the number of playes is ine of my earliest production, and it's rather bad. Yet Sotify seems to put it on top of recommendations for some reason.

Which leads to conclusion - getting posted anywhere by any means isn't worth it.

[BertKoor]

Saw this tweeted yesterday, perhaps good to know:

Streaming is unprofitable for every artists except the top 1%.

I’ll post some stats later. I’m on one of the best paying platforms out there and what you think I earn with 60k plays is probably not what you expect.

Btw a ‘play’ is not always a ‘payable stream’ .

Some cold, hard data from my SoundCloud (one of the better paying streaming platforms), Apr 2021-Aug-2022:

Plays: 64611 (this is what you see in the app)
Payable streams out of that: 6627 (play is not always payable)
Total revenue: USD 13.42

Spotify, Apple, etc. all pay less.

This is gross revenue btw, so taxes still need to be taken out of this. And this is over 17 months.

Now guess how many streams you will need to have a decent income/month?

Exactly.

If you buy muy tracks on Bandcamp, at 1 dollar each, I keep 85 cents. So 16 (!) sales on Bandcamp equals ~13.42 USD.

Now I'm just a hobbyist, but this is why you should support your favorite indie artists.

None of them have a mansion. Or fancy cars. They do have day job.

Unless you're Guetta or Garrix, you won't be making money on streaming.

I mean, I'm just an average joe in music, but with 50k streams/year I'm already way above what the average person does, most do way less than that.

65000 track streams is rougly the same as 15 track sales.

If you're a small/starting artist: do gigs. If you get 150 EUR/evening you're already doing 10x in a single evening what 65k streams gets you.

I'm a hobbyist with a good day job: I can afford to operate at a loss. As a pro: not so much.

Oh before I forget: SoundCloud pro is 12/month.

[ChamomileShark]

I see that on two of them I'm on the page of a namesake artist .

I had a similar issue on Spotify. I think my issue was slightly different to yours in that it was other people's work being added onto my pre-existing profile.

From the material added, one for Christmas carols, one for a play it was clear that there were at least two other artists with my name being added.

I contacted Spotify, they removed the stuff. A month or so later more interlopers were added.

I do have a fairly common name, but I've been using it for my music for at least 40 years. In the end I added a family name into mine as a middle name and set up new profiles and took down the stuff against my name.

That was all down to other aggregators / publishers but imusician digital did manage to put up my music onto someone elses Youtube channel.

I now tend to use Distrokid but I don't like their subscription model (you stop paying and they take everything down).

I've failed to get onto any playlists and so the economics of the whole thing is not good for me. Probably give it another year and then review.

I get way more money from Bandcamp by putting stuff up for free because some people do pay a bit which is always nice.

[EdwardGivens]

If a mistake is made or a change it can be really hard to deal with Spotify, Apple Music etc.
I feel that the artist loses control of their own product.
For that reason I'm a bigger fan of Bandcamp. You can make changes and rearrange track or artwork to your heart's content. And if you are an independent artist you will make a bigger chunk of revenue as well. An interesting article -

https://towardsdatascience.com/why-is-b ... 44ad63e7fb

[Rites Of Spring]

I prefer CDBaby cuz you pay for every single release, but the thing is, it stays forever. On the other hand, services like Distrokid want you to pay every year and if you want to cancel your subscription you need to pay 25$ Leave a Legacy option for every single track you've released. And if you got mysteriously banned then that means your tracks could be removed too if you didn't pay for the Leave a Legacy option.

CDBaby is just too good. It comes with a lot of tools for marketing and promotion.

I'm trying CDBaby now, I had a coupon for two free albums. I'll see if they do a better job (I think they can't do worse )

[Rites Of Spring]

Now, I can confirm, they do a really better job. Everything went smooth.
Avoid Imusician if you don't wanna loose time and money, for my experience.

[el davo]

Amuse.io's free tier has been good in my experience. Works as advertised with no issues over a few years and releases.

[FlexiMusic]

There are so many alternatives to Spotify and Apple Music, some are growing fast, many are free:
Amazon Music
Pandora
TIDAL Music
YouTube Music
Deezer
SoundCloud
iHeartRadio
SoundHound
JioSaavn
Gaana
Wynk Music
Hungama Music
Bandcamp
Funkwhale
Clementine
Tidal
Jamendo
Audius
gPodder
Jango
Yandex
Spotube
Ampache

[FlexiMusic]

Missed one more:
Qobuz
This is also popular

[thecontrolcentre]

I'm currently using EMUbands for digital distribution ... only got one album there atm. I get regular royalty reports from them, and my music is available on most, if not all, major platforms (Spotify, Apple, Amazon, etc). I have a few albums on Bandcamp too, which have actually provided more income.