Writing and releasing an album is no small task. You spend countless hours on your own or with your band, writing, rehearsing, recording, mixing and mastering. Maybe you save a few bucks and record it yourself on your laptop and contract out the mixing and mastering, usually the hardest part of the entire project and the most expensive. It’s been months and now you’re finally ready to release it into the world.
Thirty years ago, none of this was even possible unless you had a lot of money or access to someone who did. This was the main reason bands or artists sought recording contracts with record labels but it’s 2025 now, and you really don’t need a record label to represent you. You can do all of it on your own thanks to the rise in computer recording technology and digital streaming platforms like Apple Music, Spotify and Tidal. But even more importantly, it’s also thanks to the rise of music distributors like CD Baby, Distrokid and TuneCore, to name a few.
Working with a music distributor to get your music on the big stage all sounds great on paper, but the reality is anything but. Oh, they promise you the stars and the moon, but you better make sure you read the contract before you check that little tiny box accepting the Terms and Conditions because this is where they get you. It’s not only the royalties you’re offering up to use their service, but they also gain exclusive access to your master sound recordings as well.
Almost anyone now can release music, and based on the claims of these digital streaming platforms of having over one-hundred million songs in their vaults, it’s not just your favorite bands or singers loading up the platforms with their songs. The majority of the content is coming from independent artists like you and me. And this is where understanding what you are getting into comes in.
Where the Trouble Begins
I released my first album on CD Baby in 2011 and several others, using them as my distributor. I made the mistake of duplicating a few releases with Distrokid in 2019 after discovering an artist had the same name as me. Doing this essentially nullified all of my songs on Spotify and resulted in being booted off of Apple Music. At the time, I had no clue really what the ramifications were of doing any of this.
Fast forward fourteen years. I also didn’t realize the ramifications of losing access to an email address would have as well. With CD Baby, a different email address was required to release music under a different band name.
This is where the troubles with the music distributors begin. If you lose access to your accounts, you lose all access to your music and that’s wrong because as the copyright owner of the sound recording, you still own the masters and should be able to decide whether you wish to continue having them distributed by a particular distributor.
While CD Baby and Distrokid have music take down clauses in their contracts, trying to get this done is a nightmare if you can’t log into your account. Dealing with their support is about as useful as tits on a bull. Weeks pass before they even respond to your ticket request and when you finally get a support representative who replies to you, they are not very supportive, to say the least.
Moving your music to another distributor is not a problem if you have the ISRC and UPC codes for your music. These can easily be found in the international ISRC database by going to their website and searching for your album or songs.
The catch is, you also have to take them down from the previous distributor. I’m trying to move one of my albums over right now after putting in a request to take my songs down but I am getting zero help from them. I’ll see where it leads.
Paying Peanuts
Apart from the hassle of losing access to your accounts, in the big scheme of things, the amount of money you make giving exclusivity to your music to these digital streaming platforms is peanuts. Unless, of course, you’re a social media influencer and can get tons of people to stream your music, but I don’t think getting fifty-thousand listens and making a whole ten dollars is something to write home about. Spotify won’t even pay an artist unless they get one-thousand streams in a twelve-month period.
I think the best way to go about being an independent artist at this point is to set up your own shop and look after your own interests. Sell digital downloads of your music from your own website and earn revenue that way. You’ll make a lot more than any of these distributors are ever going to pay you; you’ll maintain one-hundred percent of your royalties; and you’ll have full ownership of your masters. Not to mention complete control over all aspects of your product and your art. You could use other sites to sell your music but you’re back in the same boat, giving up a percentage of your earnings and being lost in a sea of thousands of other artists.
By all means, use a music distributor to get on the big streaming platforms but make sure, even ten years from now, that you keep your accounts in a safe place and never lose access to them. After you pay to use their services, these companies will not help you one iota. They’re not in the business of losing artists, but in the business of amassing as many as they can.
If you want to explore more about the dark side of these music distributors, checkout this YouTube channel, Top Music Attorney, who goes through the Terms and Conditions of a lot of these popular music distributors.
The Future
I’m only scratching the surface on all of this. One of the newer developments with some of these music distributors is giving independent artists an “opportunity” to share in a big pool of money in exchange for the rights to use their music to train their AI platform. This is another case where artists will lose their intellectual rights and be given a pittance in return, if any at all.
The music business has always had a bit of a shady side to it but we’ve come to the point where it’s becoming more of a racket by ripping off independent artists. It’s time to take back control of our intellectual property and build our own independent music platforms.