Music distribution
You can get your music onto Spotify, Apple Music and the other big services without paying anything upfront. Free distributors make their money by keeping part of your royalties instead: RouteNote’s free plan, for example, keeps 15% of what your music earns. That makes free distribution the cheapest option while your earnings are small, and the most expensive once they grow.
A yearly plan costs the same however much you earn, while a free plan’s cut grows with every stream. This is the point at which each of the cheapest yearly plans starts costing less than the free plan’s cut.
Once your music earns more than about $127 a year (roughly 2,600 streams a month), Ditto Music’s Starter plan costs less than giving away 15%.
| Paid plan | Yearly fee | Cheaper than a 15% cut once you earn more than | That’s roughly |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ditto Music Starter | $19.00 | $127 a year | 2,600 streams a month |
| Too Lost Artist | $19.99 | $133 a year | 2,800 streams a month |
| UnitedMasters DEBUT+ | $19.99 | $133 a year | 2,800 streams a month |
| Amuse Artist | $23.99 | $160 a year | 3,300 streams a month |
| LANDR Distribution Basic | $24.00 | $160 a year | 3,300 streams a month |
| DistroKid Musician | $24.99 | $167 a year | 3,500 streams a month |
| TuneCore Rising Artist | $24.99 | $167 a year | 3,500 streams a month |
Enter how often you release and how many streams you get, and the calculator compares the free plan with every paid one.
| Example artist | Cheapest | Second | Third |
|---|---|---|---|
| Just starting out 2 singles a year, earning about $50 a year |
RouteNote
Free plan, $23
|
Soundrop
Pay per track plan, $52
|
Ditto Music
Starter plan, $57
|
| Releasing regularly 6 singles and an EP a year, earning about $600 a year |
Ditto Music
Starter plan, $57
|
Too Lost
Artist plan, $60
|
UnitedMasters
DEBUT+ plan, $60
|
| Band or small label 8 singles and 2 albums a year across 3 artist names, earning about $4,000 a year, with royalty splits and YouTube Content ID |
Too Lost
Label plan, $108
|
Amuse
Artist Pro plan, $180
|
SoundCloud
Artist Pro plan, $297
|
Of the distributors we track that any artist can join, RouteNote is the only one with a free plan that gets your music onto Spotify and Apple Music. It keeps 15% of your royalties. TuneCore, Amuse and UnitedMasters no longer offer free plans that deliver to the main streaming services.
If your music earns only a little, yes: you’ll pay less than you would for any subscription. The table above shows the point at which each paid plan becomes cheaper. Past that point, a cheap yearly plan costs less than the cut, and you keep everything extra you earn.
RouteNote’s free plan delivers to the same stores as its paid plan, including Spotify and Apple Music.
Yes. RouteNote lets you move each release between its free and Premium plans. Moving to a different distributor means uploading your releases again; use the same ISRC codes so streaming services can match them to your existing play counts.