DistroKid Review: Is “Cheap” Good Enough for Your Music Distribution?

Compared to established digital music distributors like CD Baby and TuneCore, DistroKid is still a relatively new platform, but its low prices, and a la carte business model has won over thousands of musicians and record labels around the world since launching in 2013.

With DistroKid, you won’t find some of the other perks that most other digital distributors offer, but for an affordable annual price, you’ll be able to upload an unlimited amount of music through a sleek, no frills platform. This is what the company promises, anyway. Is it too good to be true? We released music on DistroKid’s platform to find out.

In this comprehensive review, you’ll find out everything you need to know about DistroKid, from what it’s like to upload music through their platform to pricing to what, if any, extra perks the company offers. (Spoiler alert: DistroKid offers some excellent free extras.)

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Company background

Founded in 2013, DistroKid was launched almost a decade after established distributors like TuneCore and CD Baby started offering their digital distribution services. But rather than quickly sputtering out from a lack of experience in an industry that was still reeling from the dramatic decline of revenues at the time, DistroKid quickly found its footing and became one of music’s favorite distribution companies.

But before DistroKid was a popular go-to for independent musicians looking to share their music online to the masses, it was a modest side feature of Fandalism, a social media network designed to connect musicians. When it became clear that DistroKid was far more successful than Fandalism, the company split from the social media company in 2015 and became its own independent platform.

Today, DistroKid enjoys a mostly solid reputation among musicians for its sleek platform and bare bones service model, both of which prioritize uploading lots of music above everything else. While its rivals sell their services by combining digital music distribution services with assets like physical distribution and social media promotional tools, DistroKid has built its reputation on its a single asset: an ability to share an unfathomable of music quickly and cheaply.

Strangely, some of DistroKid’s biggest fans are former heads of rival companies like CD Baby and TuneCore. In 2018, TuneCore’s founder said this about DistroKid over Twitter:

“As the founder of TuneCore I hate to say it but #distrokid is the single best music distribution company in the world. Light years ahead of CD Baby and TuneCore and far less expensive.” CD Baby’s founder called DistroKid “amazing” and publicly said he’d direct all his musician friends to the service. It’s important to note that these founders aren’t currently working with the companies they started, but considering their expertise and reputations within the music industry, their glowing endorsements of DistroKid are telling.

What DistroKid does

DistroKid’s platform allows musicians to upload as much music as they want quickly and cheaply, and that’s about it. The company does a few other nifty things that we’ll break down later in this review, but its simple, thoughtfully designed platform is made purely for uploading music and pretty much nothing else. If this sounds like a bad thing, consider a couple of things.

First, one of our chief complaints in other reviews about other major digital music distributors is that many of the “added benefits” they claim to offer aren’t really benefits at all. For example, click on the “Artist Services” or “Tools” page of another big distributor’s platform, and you’re most likely going to see a page filled with links that direct you to other music companies with services that you’ll be required to pay extra for if you use them. DistroKid is all about minimalism, which means that all of the fluff is cut out. You login, upload music, and you’re done.

Second, since DistroKid’s only focus is on digital music distribution, it’s safe to assume that it’s pretty good at what it does. In an age when musicians are making more music than at any other point in history, DistroKid’s unlimited upload distribution model caters to a growing cast of musicians who want to keep 100% of their streaming and download revenues who aren’t interested or able to fork over $50 every time they release an album or EP.

But, as we’ll soon see, as the world of music has moved from physical listening formats to digital ones, the seemingly simple act of transporting music from a hard drive to giant music platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, and Tik Tok is actually quite complicated. You might be able to distribute as much music as you like through DistroKid for very cheap, but you most likely won’t have the tools you need to share music effectively and weather complications without paying extra to upgrade your tier of service through the platform. More on that in a bit.

How is this company able to distribute so much music for so cheap? At a reported full-time staff of just 10 people, DistroKid relies heavily on automation, whether it’s responding to a musician’s questions or guiding them through the uploading process. As you might already have predicted, for what musicians gain by being able to upload an unlimited amount of music for so cheap, they’re forced to make sacrifices in areas like being able to get distribution help from a human being easily and the tools needed to fully comprehend who is listening to their music and how they discovered it.

DistroKid’s reputation in the music industry

DistroKid enjoys a mostly favorable reputation among independent musicians and record labels. The fact that two founders of large, established digital music distribution companies speak so highly of DistroKid speaks volumes, but not every musician is thrilled with the company. Over the review platform TrustPilot, many disgruntled DistroKid customers vent frustrations about their experiences with the company. Most of the issues come down to a lack of access to helpful, human customer service.

In this video, a DistroKid customer says he loves the platform, but isn’t a fan of the company’s analytical tools or add-on features. This customer isn’t alone, and one of the most common gripes about the service is that it runs on an untransparent pricing structure. It’s easy to see why many customers have this complaint, but we don’t fully agree with it. Musicians get access to unlimited music uploads through DistroKid’s three tiers of service, but things like the ability to have songs recognized through Shazam and YouTube monetization are benefits that cost extra. Is it a little frustrating? Sure, but none of these add-ons are essential for releasing and sharing music.

But pesky customer service and add-ons aside, most musicians love DistroKid, and Billboard had this to say about the company in 2019: “DistroKid has a positive reputation amongst artists for making distribution fast, reliable and easy.” The platform has its obvious flaws, but DistroKid is a company that many independent musicians are enthusiastic about.

DistroKid’s pricing structure 

Compared to the pricing models of established digital music distributors like Reverb Nation, CD Baby, TuneCore, and the growing roster of new, unproven companies that offer their services for free, DistroKid lands squarely in the middle. At just $20 per-year for their least expensive tier of service––musicians can upload an unlimited amount of music annually through each of DK’s tiers of service––, DistroKid is a phenomenal value.

However, like we mentioned before, there are a couple of benefits that you might assume would be included in the price of a conventional digital distributor’s services that are extra when you work through DistroKid. What we haven’t mentioned yet is that releasing music through DK’s least expensive tier of service is a bad call if you have any interest in pitching music to Spotify’s editorial playlist curators. DistroKid will send your music to Spotify and the internet’s other massive music platforms in a day or two. This rapid music-uploading automation doesn’t give Spotify enough time to consider new music for playlists, hence the need to sign up for DK’s $35 Musician Plus tier if you’re serious about promoting your music (the Musician Plus and Label tiers let musicians customize their release dates).

But even at $35 a year, the prospect of being able to distribute as much music as you want without splitting earnings will sound like a great value for independent musicians who have a lot of work to share but not a lot of money to spend.

Here’s a brief rundown of DistroKid’s prices:

Musician $19.99 per-year

• Allows one artist or band to distribute an unlimited amount of music for a year
• Unlimited lyric distribution
• Gives one artist or band access to Spotify’s artist verification platform
• Keep 100% of revenues

Musician Plus $35.99 per-year

• Allows two artists or bands to distribute an unlimited amount of music for a year
• Unlimited lyric distribution
• Gives two artists or bands access to Spotify’s artist verification platform
• Syncs lyrics for Instagram
• Daily sales stats
• Customizable label name
• Customizable release date
• Customizable preorder date
• Customizable iTunes pricing
• Keep 100% of revenues

Label $79.99 per-year

• Allows 5-100 artists or bands to distribute an unlimited amount of music for a year
• Unlimited lyric distribution
• Gives two artists or bands access to Spotify’s artist verification platform
• Syncs lyrics for Instagram
• Daily sales stats
• Customizable label name
• Customizable release date
• Customizable preorder date
• Customizable iTunes pricing
• Keep 100% of revenues

Breaking down DistroKid’s three tiers of service 

By far, the biggest thing that sets DistroKid apart from its rivals is the fact that you can upload an unlimited amount of music through the platform for a yearly fee. This is a feature you can access through the Musician tier of service, which is the least expensive. So, why wouldn’t musicians just opt for the Musician tier? Like we mentioned before, if you’re a serious musician intent on submitting new music for Spotify’s editorial playlists, the fact the Musician tier doesn’t let you customize your release date is one of the biggest reasons you might want to consider paying the extra $15 to access the DistroKid’s middle tier of service.

If you’re a musician that releases music through different aliases, the Musician Plus and Label tiers of service will let you upload music from 2 to 100 different artists or bands. Other than the number of artists serviced, the Musician Plus and Label levels of service are identical, and include added perks like customizable iTunes pricing, label titles, and preorder dates. Paying for DistroKid’s middle and premium levels of service will also grant you access to its statistics page. We’ll touch more on this later in the interview, but this is essentially a non-feature that offers such little information that it’s surprising a company as savvy as DistroKid even bothers to highlight it as a benefit.

Add-ons

One of the ways DistroKid keeps its costs so low is by letting customers decide if they want to pay extra for services like Shazam and YouTube monetization. Some musicians make a big stink about this, but it’s hard to complain when this company offers so much for such little money. But be advised, if things like collecting revenue from YouTube, making your music recognizable on iPhones and Shazam’s platform are important to you, expect to pay a little extra in annual fees.

Here’s a breakdown of the add-ons DistroKid offers:

Shazam & iPhone Siri: $0.99 per song/year

This service makes the music you distribute through DistroKid identifiable through Shazam’s platform and on iPhones.

Store Maximizer: $7.95 per album/year

DistroKid frequently adds new stores to its long list of the ones it distributes music to. This feature automatically sends your music to the new stores DistroKid works with.

YouTube Money: $4.95 per single/year, $14.95 per album/year, + 20% of YouTube ad revenue

DistroKid doesn’t usually take a portion of an artist’s royalties, but revenues from YouTube are an exception. For a company that usually offers musicians great deals, DistroKid’s annual fees and 20% revenue splits make this add-on expensive for users who want to monetize their music on YouTube (with a one-time setup fee of $10 and a 20% revenue split, TuneCore’s similar offering is much less expensive). But with the rest of DistroKid’s prices being so low, most musicians will be able to handle their pricey YouTube monetization fees.

Leave a Legacy: $29.00 per single, $49.00 per album of 2+ tracks (non-recurring fee)

This is one of the more interesting features DistroKid offers, and we wish we knew how many musicians and labels fork over the extra cash for it. This add-on ensures that your music will remain distributed through DistroKid *forever*, or “even after you die,” according to their website. However, as we’ve all learned over the past decade, the digital institutions that we currently view as permanent fixtures in our lives could easily fade from relevance or disappear altogether at any time––we’re looking at you, MySpace, iTunes, and eMusic. The legacy DistroKid is offering here won’t be any good if the music tech landscape undergoes more sweeping changes over the next decade, which it very well could.

Cover Song Licensing: $12 per cover song/year

If you’re a musician trying to build a career off of recording other people’s songs, DistroKid can help you do it. However, at $12 a pop, it’s not cheap, but it’s less expensive than most of DistroKid’s rivals, and some of them don’t offer cover song licensing through their platforms at all. The option to designate a track either a cover or original is built directly into the uploading process, which is a nice timesaver.

DistroKid’s platform

DistroKid boasts a (mostly) well-designed and thoughtful platform that’s built to get musicians through the uploading process quickly and painlessly. One of the platform’s greatest strengths is that it runs off of a yearly subscription fee, which saves customers time and stress while they upload their work. The first thing you’ll notice on the platform is how minimal and clear everything looks, which makes for a great user experience. As you make your way through the platform, helpful questions pop up that are designed to get you through the process as efficiently as possible.

Users answer various fields of questions before the music and album art uploading process begins. We have only one complaint with DistroKid’s stylish, intuitive platform, but it’s a big one. There is no “save” button. This might not sound like a big deal, but hear us out. Midway through the upload process, our internet slowed down to a screeching halt. What was on track to take a couple of minutes ended up lasting 2.5 hours because we weren’t able to save our progress and resume later when our internet’s performance improved. This flaw was so surprising because the rest of our experience on DistroKid’s platform was excellent. If your internet connection is solid, it’ll probably take you 15-30 minutes to distribute a full-length album through DistroKid. However, if yours is slow, be prepared to spend 1-3 hours.

Stores serviced

As one of the music industry’s most popular digital music distributors, DistroKid sends music to the largest music platforms on the internet, such as TIDAL, Apple Music, Spotify, Amazon, Napster, iHeartRadio, and YouTube Music. In addition to music platforms that you’ve heard of, DistroKid also works with over 150 smaller companies from around the world. When it comes to stores serviced, DistroKid is basically indistinguishable from other digital music distributor heavy hitters like TuneCore, CD Baby, and Ditto.

You’ll easily find distributors that work with more stores, but the overwhelming majority of independent musicians will find that DistroKid serves more than enough stores. Like we’ve mentioned in other reviews, just because your music is available in hundreds of online stores around doesn’t mean international audiences will listen to your music. This means that distributing to more stores than the other guy doesn’t add up to much of a benefit for most musicians wanting to share their music with the masses. DistroKid does just fine when it comes to stores serviced.

Customer service and support

Like we mentioned before in this review, DistroKid is reported to have ten full-time employees. So how good can customer service be with a staff that small? Well, when we typed “talk to someone” on the support page’s search bar, nothing but links to articles popped up. DistroKid really, really wants you to figure out how to address your own problems without talking it through with someone who actually works there. The platform is great at matching detailed questions with articles filled with instructions for how to proceed, but after releasing music through the platform, we began to question whether DistroKid had a customer service team at all.

After googling “does DistroKid have a customer service team,” a modest page came up with an easily missable link where a customer service team could be contacted. However, even when we miraculously reached that page, we were directed back to an article when we gave details about our specific request. This wasn’t a big deal because our specific problem was small, but it’s easy to see why so many musicians rant online about DistroKid’s basically non-existent customer service team. If you had an actual problem that the platform couldn’t predict how to address, it’s unclear how long it would take to finally reach someone. Compared to other major digital music distributors, DistroKid is inexpensive, but a part of what you’ll give up to upload unlimited music for cheap is the ability to receive help from a liver, human customer service team in almost every case.

Is this a big deal? It depends on who you are a musician and what’s happening in your career. For example, if you make your living as a musician and can’t get a payment issue sorted out, not being able to access help quickly could mean the difference as to whether you’ll be able to pay your bills or not. Some disgruntled musicians have accused DistroKid of some pretty nasty stuff, which leads us to believe not that DistroKid isn’t a nasty company, but is instead a platform that, by design, lacks the resources needed to address issues quickly and comprehensively. DistroKid gives musicians an incredible value for their money, but working through this digital music distributor could result in a frustrating situation if problems crop up that you can’t handle on your own.

Speed

DistroKid sends music to stores at a rapid clip. According to the advice for artists posted on DistroKid’s website, “Give stores up to a week to push your album live. iTunes/Apple Music often happens faster (sometimes same-day) but not always. For Spotify, new deliveries will take at least 5 business days to go live.”

The impressive processing speeds DistroKid runs on sounds like a benefit, but it actually can cause big problems for musicians who release work through the Musician level of service, which doesn’t allow musicians to customize their release date. Hit the release button on DistroKid’s platform, and your music will be sent to major music platforms within a day or two, and those platforms are likely to vet and post your music soon after. The downside of this quick distribution speed mainly applies to musicians who need some buffer time between when new music is submitted for distribution and when it’s actually posted on digital streaming platforms. Spotify currently allows musicians to submit their music to playlists through an official process, but this can’t be done if music makes it through the submission process too quickly.

It’s also important to note that DistroKid’s impressively fast distribution speed will force most musicians to pay for the Musician Plus tier of service. The Musician Plus level lets musicians plan exactly when their music gets released. If you think you can just release your work immediately before the date you’ve told your fans your music is coming out and have it work out the way you hope it will, don’t bet on it. DistroKid’s speed is fast, but it’s impossible to predict and coordinate when your music will show up on other platforms without paying for the Musician Plus or Label levels of service.

Reports and analytics

We’re just going to go ahead and say it: DistroKid’s stats feature is so bad it might as well not exist. In 2020, musicians have free access to incredible analytical tools offered by Spotify and Apple Music. The stats page that DistroKid offers does nothing more than show streams broken down by day, week, month, year, artists, and platforms, and the platforms offered are Spotify, Apple Music, iTunes, and Amazon. It’s almost as if DistroKid’s executives said, “We need a statistics page to offer our artists. What can we design before lunch?”

Sure, TuneCore and CD Baby’s reports and analytical features aren’t stellar or even all that useful for artists, but they at least offer a couple of helpful or unique features, but DistroKid’s stats platform is just plain bad. However, the company knows you use their platform to release a whole bunch of music for cheap and pretty much nothing else. They know the best place to understand how your music is being heard over major music platforms is by going through the companies that offer them. If reports and analytics are a big deal for your music career, this might be an area of DistroKid’s service that bugs you, but it won’t matter to most independent musicians.

Distribution verdict:

DistroKid’s hip, minimalist approach will work for many musicians, but there are some serious drawbacks to consider, especially when it comes to customer service.  But even with its faults, DistroKid’s platform is an impressive machine designed to upload music and send it out to the masses quickly, easily, and cheaply.

• Stores serviced: 5/5
• Platform and ease of use: 3/5
• Price: 5/5 
• Reputation: 4/5
• Reports and analytics: 1/5

Total: 19/25

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Added services and benefits

One of the best parts about working with DistroKid is that the company doesn’t claim to do things it can’t. Both CD Baby and TuneCore have pages with links advertising companies that provide band websites, promotional services, and industry contact directories. These companies charge fees for their services, but are advertised as “artist services” or “promotional tools” even though it’s likely these distributors make a hefty profit off of featuring them on their platforms.

DistroKid doesn’t do this, which is one of the reasons it enjoys a solid reputation for being an effective, easy-to-navigate music distributor. Less clutter on the platform translates to better experiences using it. What the platform does offer is a nice suite of free extras ranging from assets that are truly helpful to ones that are mildly amusing. And instead of devoting an entire page to these benefits, most are found under the Settings page and are intertwined with essentials like links to view credit card and account information.

Referral Program

Users get $5 when they refer other musicians to DistroKid.

HyperFollow

This is a free feature DistroKid offers designed to help increase an artist’s online following and build awareness about the music they release through DistroKid. Essentially, DistroKid builds unique digital pages with links that direct to specific releases on Spotify, Apple Music, iHeartRadio, and other platforms. What DistroKid lacks in its stats feature it appears to try to make up with HyperFollow, which collects email addresses and tracks a listener’s geographic location and even the other music they listen to. It’s not a bad asset, but it won’t provide any benefit unless musicians intentionally share their unique HyperFollow pages with their fans. But since it’s a free tool built to truly benefit musicians, this is a solid extra perk some DistroKid users will find useful.

Marcel Generator

Remember the show Friends? DistroKid sure does, apparently. The Marcel Generator is a silly but entertaining little perk that does more to solidify DistroKid’s hip brand than anything that will actually benefit the musicians it serves. The feature places your track into a scene from Friends where a small monkey named Marcel mischievously plays a song against the wishes of David Schwimmer’s character Ross. Use this generator, and you can share a video of the male characters of the show nodding along to your song. It’s completely unnecessary, but it’s pretty cool.

Vault

Vault proves that DistroKid is punching above its weight in terms of the digital tools it’s able to offer its artists. The company offers this benefit without any fanfare, and it’s something that could absolutely help musicians. Vault gives musicians free, unlimited backups of the music files they upload to the service. This means that rather than having to scour hard drives or re-download music from platforms like BandCamp, all a DistroKid user needs to do to access their music is to use the Vault feature. This added benefit earns high marks in our book.

Fixer

It’s sort of hard to call this an extra service or benefit, but DistroKid’s Fixer page is designed to sort out issues that crop up when artists have similar names or titles associated with their work.

DistroLock

This is another solid feature that DistroKid offers for free without any fanfare. DistroLock “Stops jackasses from stealing your music and uploading it to streaming services without your permission” by building acoustic fingerprints associated with your songs. By partnering with AcoustID, Audible Magic, and YouTube Content ID, this service can even detect when your music has been altered through pitch and speed-shifting. DistroKid seems intent on not only executing its primary duties more effectively through tech, but also on helping independent musicians through innovation as well.

Lyrics distribution

As another one of DistroKid’s stellar extra offerings, this feature distributes the lyrics associated with your music to platforms like Apple Music, MusixMatch, Instagram, Facebook, and LyricFind. The service also makes your songs and lyrics more searchable through Google, which is a big help. Sure, DistroKid’s fee-driven add-ons might bug some users, but free, unique assets like this truly make the digital music distributor stand out.

Artist pages on Apple Music and Spotify

Similar to CD Baby and TuneCore, DistroKid provides easy, quick ways to access Spotify and Apple Music’s analytic data for artists. Most musicians will already have access to those pages, so this isn’t a stellar feature, but it’s nice to have if you’re an unestablished musician sharing music for the first time.

YouTube official artist channel

Any artist can create their own channel on YouTube, so this is a minor benefit that most musicians won’t use. But since DistroKid doesn’t sell this and it’s other built-in features as being helpful, game-changing tools for artists, we don’t mind it and the links to Spotify and Apple Music’s artists pages being there.

YouTube Whitelist

This is another excellent tech-forward feature that a growing number of musicians will actually consider using. Every artist’s situation is different in terms of whether they’re represented by a manager or how and if they earn money over platforms like YouTube. For example, your band might have a strict rule against people using your music online for free, unless the party in question is an influential playlister that brings your work to thousands of new fans. This automated feature allows DistroKid’s users to exempt specific videos from YouTube’s money claims. It lets a band to earn money through the YouTube monetization feature while giving them the right to allow specific videos that use their music to remain posted on the platform.

Teams

Something as simple as one song can come packed with a complex backstory involving how multiple collaborators came together to create it. DistroKid’s Teams feature addresses this issue by allowing users to automatically route specific payment percentages to multiple parties. This powerful tech asset saves musicians and labels the time and stress of having to crunch numbers and pay songwriters directly. DistroKid members have free access to this service, and non-members receive a 50% discount. If you run a label or are a musician who frequently collaborates with others, the Teams features is a phenomenal selling point to consider.

DistroKid’s added services and benefits are surprisingly helpful

We were really impressed by all the extras DistroKid offers, especially because they’re free and not presented in an overly salesy way. DistroKid is a company that leverages technology to distribute music and cater to the evolving needs of modern musicians, and these tools certainly help do that in a big way.

The Verdict 

DistroKid isn’t without its flaws, but it’s a hip, no-bullshit digital music distributing platform built to share as much music as you can throw at it as quickly as possible. This platform gives musicians something that no other established, reputable digital music distributor is able to offer––unlimited digital music distribution to hundreds of music platforms around the world for low yearly fees. Oh, and did we mention that musicians keep 100% of their royalties through DistroKid (other than money collected through YouTube monetization)?

But––there’s always a but, isn’t there?––the insanely cheap access to music distribution DistroKid offers comes at a cost. Most musicians won’t mind the platform’s weak reporting and analytical features, but DistroKid’s virtually non-existent customer service team could mean big problems for serious musicians who need quick, effective help. The platform does an excellent job of routing customers in need to digital resources designed to walk them through problems, but the countless issues that can crop up each time someone shares new music can’t always be addressed through smart tech or pre-written answers. If quick, easy access to a helpful customer service team is important to you when you put out new music, DistroKid might not be the platform for you.

However, even accounting for these issues, DistroKid is a thoughtful, straightforward, and reliable platform that most musicians will have no problems using. It does its main job, which is to help musicians upload music, really, really well with a couple of minor exceptions. And with modest annual fees, artists and labels who release multiple singles, albums, and EPs throughout the course of a year are able to save hundreds or even thousands of dollars, depending on which of DistroKid’s rivals you stack it up against.

Yes, DistroKid gets some criticism for charging extra for services most major distributors offer for free, but it also offers some excellent free benefits that you could actually use to benefit your career if you’re a musician sharing work in 2020. DistroKid’s flawed customer service solutions leave musicians who use their platform at somewhat of a risk, but most will get a great deal of value in using their hugely affordable, tech-savvy platform to share their music.

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