Sockpuppet Blog.

Recommended: TooLost

TooLost is my current primary distributor for the major streaming services. Their upload process is pretty okay (not perfect, but not the worst either), they have support that are reasonably responsive, and they cost only $20/year for unlimited uploads with full royalties going to the artist. They also support a huge number of streaming providers and marketplaces, including the ones that people actually use.

They also provide content ID management with a good level of granularity (for example, you can whitelist various YouTube/Twitch/TikTok channels to allow them to use your music without restriction), and they have a bunch of addons for analytics tracking.

It would be nice if they had better bulk-editing features for the music uploader, and if their catalog importer actually worked reasonably well (I do not recommend trying to use it if you’re migrating to them since it ends up being more work than just reuploading your tracks directly), and I’ve had some difficulty with my YouTube channel mapping (which doesn’t really matter all that much), but generally-speaking they’ve been great to work with.

They also provide mechanical licensing for cover songs, but currently charge $15/track (as a one-time fee). This is perfectly reasonable, but not the best deal around.

They also include a simple “find this release” page for free (and you can customize the URL!), and it works well enough, although sometimes the links break and you have to pester them to fix it.

As far as I am aware, they are unique in being an affordable distributor that also lets you specify your own release label without paying a bunch extra for a label account.

On my radar: Soundrop

I have’t worked with Soundrop yet but I’ve heard good things about them. They charge only $1/track per upload with no annual fee, and instead take a royalty cut from the streaming services. This makes them less of a good deal than TooLost if you’re uploading a lot of albums or singles per year, and it also means you aren’t maximizing your revenue, but for another $1/track they will also provide mechanical licensing for cover songs and administer your royalty splits, making them an extremely good deal if you do a lot of covers. You won’t make as much money on a popular cover as you would doing it yourself or through TooLost, but you also won’t get sued for messing something up. Probably.

Less good: CDBaby

CDBaby is pretty much the original indie distributor for the streaming services. A lot of why they have so much cachet is due to them being around the longest. One of my albums is still handled by them because I can’t be bothered to move it elsewhere.

The plus side to them is that they only charge a one-time fee for distributing your album, and then maintenance comes in the form of a 10% royalty cut.

The minus side is that one-time fee is $10 per release (which isn’t awful for albums, but is enormous for singles).

It’s a lot better than it used to be, though; back when they were the only choice it was something like $75/album and a 30% cut, and I think they only changed it very recently. They also charge money for a “find this release” page, and the amount they charge is enormous for what amounts to a single non-customizable static webpage. No thank you.

I ended up moving the two released-as-Sockpuppet CDBaby releases to TooLost mostly to simplify my album management and that process was also a bit annoying, especially since they ended up taking down the TooLost versions of those albums when they did so and that was a giant mess to sort out.

Probably avoid: Amuse

Amuse made their way by being a free distributor that used artist success as a sort of A&R thing. I did a couple releases through them. The process was abysmal, and accessing any information required running a goddamn mobile app for some reason.

They are no longer free, and they’re still very app-focused. I don’t see any reason to go with them over any of the above choices.

Probably avoid: DistroKid

I was pretty loyal to DistroKid for many years, but I switched from them to TooLost last year because of a number of issues.

• Their cover licensing is incredibly expensive and requires ongoing maintenance fees
• Their ContentID is incredibly expensive, requires ongoing maintenance fees, and doesn’t allow fine-grained whitelisting
• When Spotify notifies them of algorithmic streaming (legitimately or not) they will just outright remove your music from the services with no real recourse
• They have been accused of union-busting and being bad to their support team
• Their support has definitely gone way downhill in recent years
• The uploader interface is pretty terrible

If you are fine with all those things, their price is pretty good, although not as good as TooLost. Like TooLost they provide a “find this release” page for free, although you can’t customize the URL at all.

Probably avoid: Tunecore

TuneCore was the first real alternative to CDBaby, and when they came around they were very much not good. They were extremely expensive (something like $100 per album per year) and I don’t even remember why I was convinced to try them out for a year. I think it’s because they were the first distributor which didn’t take a royalty cut? Not that it mattered, because I made something like $2 in royalties on that album. Then when I asked to take my album down instead of spending another $100 they got weird about trying to retain me as a customer even though that release was now $98 in the hole. So I have a lot of lasting resentment because of that.

Nowadays they charge much more reasonable rates, starting at $23/year (which is decently competitive, although doens’t include all the features that TooLost does at that price point). Getting all of TooLost’s features requires paying twice as much.