One of the biggest challenges for all upcoming musicians globally has been the difficulty with promoting and selling of their music. Penetrating the traditional music distribution channels has continued to be an elusive dream for newcomers, as these channels seem to favor only established artists.
With changing trends in the music industry, music distribution companies have emerged to offer platforms specifically made for independent artists to showcase and sell their content.
What is Songcast?
Songcast is a digital music distribution service provider, that primarily targets independent musical artists. Songcast enables musicians to upload, promote and sell their music through streaming services from other digital music providers such as Apple Music, iTunes, Spotify, Google Music, and others.
With Songcast, musicians get access to all the major digital music retailers in a single platform. This platform also facilitates access to listeners across the globe, through links to international radio stations.
Key Features of Songcast (Distribution + additional services)
Distribution Networks
With Songcast you can distribute your music in iTunes, Apple Music, Spotify, Google Play, Tidal, SoundCloud, Shazam, Amazon Music, Emusic, Napster, 7digital & MediaNet.
With this range of available music distribution channels, your music can be purchased by almost everyone on the planet, as these are the most common digital music streaming applications.
Reports
Songcast features customized reports for monthly royalties, and daily statistics and analytics for Spotify and Apple Music. Also available with Songcast is the iTunes Daily Trend Reports that show the daily aggregated sales.
These reports and statistics will help you identify your fan base and where to channel your marketing initiatives, to improve your music sales and grow your career.
Easy Sign-Up
Signing up with Songcast is quick and easy. There are no cumbersome contracts to get into as it is not exclusive. It is also easy to cancel a subscription, and withdraw your songs, should you feel that it is not working for you.
100% Royalty Payout
A key feature of Songcast is that all royalties are paid to the artist, with Songcast only earning revenue from monthly subscriptions, as per their established subscription plans.
Get a Facebook Music Page
Songcast will also enable you to get a custom Facebook Music Page to promote your music and get fans to know upcoming tours and events.
What to expect from Songcast? (promises vs reputation)
Songcast has built a decent reputation with its music distribution service and is one of the best music distribution platforms for independent music producers.
Trustpilot.com gives an “Excellent” rating for Songcast based on reviews by 350 users, with 84% of the users giving a 5-star rating with positive comments and feedback. To get a feel of what to expect from Songcast, check the reviews here.
With Songcast, you can expect the following;
- Timely royalty distribution – Songcast distributes royalties on the 20th day of every month, and you can be sure of a steady income stream, once your music starts selling.
- Excellent customer service – Songcast has a proactive and dedicated support team with a commitment to providing an excellent customer experience.
- Speedy distribution and availability in all the main music streaming services within one week of uploading content to Songcast.
- Access to custom reports and analytics that can help your marketing strategy, and point you to your market segment or demographic.
- Very convenient and easy to use – Uploading songs and albums into the Songcast platform is easy and quick.
- Songcast will offer a worldwide exposure to your music, through available distribution and radio channels.
- Songcast also offers beautiful custom album cover selections that you can use.
How to upload your music using Songcast?
- To begin, create an account with Songcast by clicking the “Sign Up” or “Get Started” tab on www.songcastmusic.com.
- Enter the details of the artist or record label that will be submitting music to Songcast.
- With the account set-up ready, you can now start uploading your musical content.
- When logged in, click on Add an Album, where you will provide information about the artist or band name, album title, genre and original release year of the album.
- Next, select either the “None” or “Explicit” depending on the nature of the album.
- You will then fill in the track titles, for each track in the album.
- Upload the album cover, following the stipulated album cover guidelines on dimensions and file types allowed.
- Next, upload each track in your album individually, paying careful attention that you upload the correct track for each track title. Be sure to follow the instructions given on the track upload page.
- Create your artist profile, and select a payment plan suitable for your needs.
- You should expect your music to be available for sale by the different digital music stores within one week.
Price and plans
Songcast uses a monthly subscription model for usage of the service. It does not retain any percentage on music sales and distributes all royalty proceeds to the artist.
There are three pricing plans to select from. These plans are Standard, Premium, and Ultimate, with each plan offering different features from the other.
Standard Plan
The standard plan offers distribution to Spotify, Amazon Music, iTunes, SoundCloud, Napster, Apple Music, MediaNet, Google Music, Tidal, 7digital, Emusic and Shazam.
This plan also comes with standard monthly reports on sales and gives musical artists with content in the platform 100% royalty distribution.
What differentiates this plan from the others is the additional analytics, statistics, and reports of music streams with Spotify, iTunes and Apple Music, that is available with the Premium and Ultimate Plan.
With the Standard Plan also your music will not be available for streaming in Pandora and radio.
The standard plan comes at an initial cost of $1.99 for the first month, and $5.99 monthly thereafter. It also gives a two-month discount if the annual payment is made.
Premium Plan
With the Premium plan, you will be able to sell and stream your music in all the digital music retailers available with the Standard Plan, but with the inclusion of Pandora. Also included in addition to monthly sales reports are daily iTunes trend reports but without trend and analytical reports for Spotify and Apple Music.
With this plan, access to radio channels is also missing.
This plan costs $2.99 for the first month, and $9.99 monthly thereafter, with a four-month discount if you make payments for a full year.
Ultimate Plan
This is Songcast’s top-tier plan giving a full range of features, includes everything available in the other two plans.
Exclusive to this plan, are daily stats and reports for Spotify, Apple Music, and iTunes, plus access to iTunes Radio, Tunein Radio, and Shoutcast Radio.
This plan is priced at $3.99 for the first month, and $17.98 monthly thereafter, with a four-month discount for annual payment.
Pros and Cons of Songcast
Pros
- Songcast does not eat into your sales. Songcast neither takes royalties nor commissions from the sale of your songs. A monthly subscription and one-off fees on singles or album uploads are all they need.
- Money distribution is quick and efficient, with royalties being credited into the account on the 20th of every month.
- The platform also provides statistics and reports on music sales, keeping you well informed, and also giving you tools that you can use for targeted marketing.
- It’s a quick way to get your music available on iTunes, Pandora, Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play, SoundCloud, Tidal, Amazon Music, Napster, and MediaNet!
- Songcast will take away the hustle of having to upload your music in all the major digital music retailers, and will instead do it for you, and convert your music into all the different formats required by different service providers.
- Through Songcast Radio you will get access to an Indie Artist Radio network that will promote your music to listeners from across the globe.
- There are no exclusive and limiting contracts, and users are free to cancel their subscription and withdraw their music at any time.
- Songcasts allows user accounts to have unlimited artists and tracks without having to pay more.
Cons
- If you are not selling well enough then the monthly payments can be a big setback. With Songcast, the monthly subscriptions are payable, whether you make any sales or not. Uploading content with Songcast will therefore not take away the hard work that you have to put in to ensure that your music is purchased.
- The pricing model of Songcast is uneconomical for uploading of a single track and will work best for account users with multiple tracks or albums.
- Songcast can reject your songs after review if it does not meet the required standards or is plagiarized or stolen content.
Verdict
Songcast offers a great service for upcoming and independent artists without the financial muscle or connections to a big record label. Using their service artists can get their music to all the digital music streaming vendors, and has affordable payment plans that give a wide array of options.
Besides that Songcast enables artists to start earning from their music right away, without the hustle of contracts, agents or promoters.
This seems a good deal for upcoming musicians.