Music Distribution
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Short answer
To get your music on Spotify, Apple Music and the other streaming services, you need a distributor: a service that delivers your releases and passes the royalties back to you. This hub compares the distributors we've reviewed and links to every distribution guide on Sound Tech Insider.
What does a music distributor do?
A distributor sends your music to streaming services and download stores, and collects what they pay you. You upload the audio, the artwork and the release details once; the distributor delivers them to each service and gives your tracks the codes those services need (ISRCs for recordings and a UPC for each release).
Every distributor covers the big names: Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube Music and Deezer. They differ in three ways that matter more:
- How you pay. A yearly subscription for unlimited releases, a fee per release, or a share of your royalties.
- What’s extra. Features like YouTube Content ID, royalty splits with collaborators and pre-save pages are included by some services and sold as add-ons by others.
- What happens if you stop paying. With some subscription services, your releases come down when the subscription ends.
The distributors we’ve covered
| DistroKid | TuneCore | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | From $24.99/year | From $24.99/year |
| Pricing model | Yearly subscription, unlimited releases | Yearly subscription or pay per release |
| Free plan | No | No |
| Best for | Independent artists who release often | Artists who want YouTube Content ID included |
| Our review | Read it | Read it |
Prices checked October 2026.
Which distributor should you use?
For most independent artists, we recommend DistroKid. One yearly fee covers unlimited releases, and DistroKid says you keep 100% of your earnings. Pick the plan by how many artist names you release under:
- One artist or band: Musician, the cheapest plan. Enough for most solo artists.
- Two projects (say, your own name and a side project), or you want to set your own release dates and label name: Musician Plus.
- A label or manager with five artists or more: Ultimate, which is where its packages start.
| Plan | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Musician | $24.99/year | 1 artist or band; unlimited songs and lyrics |
| Musician Plus | $44.99/year | 2 artists or bands; adds synced lyrics in Apple Music, daily streaming stats, custom label name and release dates |
| Ultimate | $89.99/year | 5 artists and up (packages up to 100); adds advanced analytics, file sharing and Spotify and Apple Music monitoring |
Prices checked October 2026. Check current prices before you buy.
Consider TuneCore instead if you’d rather pay per release than keep a subscription running, or you want YouTube Content ID included in the base plan.
Our DistroKid pricing guide goes through the plans and extras in more detail.
