6 Pitfalls to Know About Distrokid

Distrokid has become one of the major digital music distributors on the market, alongside with CD Baby, Tunecore, Amuse, Ditto and others.

However, to make sure you get what you wish for, a few things need to be kept in mind when working with Distrokid. Some of the 'claims' may not be as straightforward as it appears to be. 

To be fair, Distrokid is a decent distributor and gets the job done, and is ideal for musicians who constantly release music and want to keep 100% of the royalties. All I'm trying to do is to list these "heads ups" to anyone planning to use their service, so one can gauge whether the service meets the expectations and save the hassles later on. 

Distrokid isn't the only option on the table, some other distributors offer the same services with comparable prices or even for free.  

More about this topic: 

• DistroKid vs. CD Baby vs. EmuBands and more - My Experience with Music Distributors
• Updates on DistroKid's tax withholding controversy

Also as a sidenote, referral links to Distrokid subscription are all over the internet (7-10% off), often come in cases like a page or video comparing different distributors and listing a referral link at the end. Use the link if you decide to go ahead with Distrokid, but always digest the info with a grain of salt if there is a referral link. People earn a cut whenever someone pays the annual fees via the link.

Ok, we shall begin.

For anyone who doesn't know Distrokid, it is a digital distribution service distributing music to streaming platforms and stores, with annual fees to be paid to keep the music online.

Pitfall No 1: The cheapest plan doesn't allow you to set future release dates and customise release label names

The cheapest plan they offer, Musician ($19.99 per year) is no doubt the first option to look at when looking for distributing solutions. However, this plan lacks two important features that are available on any other competing distributors.

1. Customizable release date
2. Customizable label name

These two features are available on their second cheapest plan, Musician Plus ($35.99 per year).

The side-by-side comparison between Musician and Musician Plus was not available on their knowledge base, which is open to anyone, but only available after registration, right before you pay! (see below the screen capture)

Why should you care about these two features?

They may be crucial in a few cases. For example,

Customizable release date

In order to ensure songs are released by all streaming platforms/stores on the same date, the release date need to be somewhere around 3-4 weeks from submission. Not being able to specify a future release date will result in songs getting released on different dates on different stores.

In another case, if you ever consider submitting your unreleased songs for playlist consideration, which is a helpful way to boost exposure, a future release date for at least a couple weeks is essential.

Customizable label name

This feature allows you to list whatever name you'd like to show on the 'Labels' column for your release. It can be any names (for example "Rustling Stillness"). If no one is specified, or in the case of the cheapest Musician plan, no one is allowed to specify, then on the store pages you will see an ugly name consists of DK and a list of random numbers, like DK1234567.



So back to where we started, if none of these is going to bother you, then yes, go ahead with the cheapest plan Musician. It will deliver what you wish for to distribute your music to stores.

One thing to keep in mind is that Distrokid publically (and/or intentionally) compares their cheapest plan Musician with other competitors and claims they are way cheaper than their competitors.

Nevertheless, the two features mentioned above are available with any other major distributors but was not available with Musician on Distrokid. You will need to go with Musician Plus and pay $35.99 per year to get these two features.

Pitfall No 2: Distrokid will take down your music if you stop paying annual fees or cancel membership, even if you've paid for "Leave a Legacy"

This one is critical.

As for how Distrokid works, annual fees are required to keep music online. That's fair.

On top of that, they claimed that they offer a one-off option for users to keep music online forever, "Leave a Legacy". For a one-off payment of $29 for a single or $49 for an album, The description said: "Distrokid will never delete the song from stores due to a lapsed DistroKid membership, even if you die...You will continue to accrue 100% of royalties, as normal."

Sounds great, doesn't it? See the screen capture below.

I'm afraid this is almost a scam.
(6 July 2020 Update: DistroKid seemed changed the page and no longer saying cancelling membership will delete the songs)

In an occasion that you decide not to keep paying the annual fees, you will either terminate the membership by contacting their customer service or delete your account on your account setting page. However…

If you do so, all your music will be taken down by Distrokid. No matter what! 

(6 July 2020 Update: DistroKid seemed quietly changed the page and no longer saying cancelling membership will delete the songs)

How so? Because freely "cancelling membership" is NOT equivalent to "a lapsed DistroKid membership". Have you got the point?

Technically, to get into the status of "a lapsed DistroKid membership", the credit card will need to be declined for the next annual fee payment. This is the only scenario to activate "Leave a Legacy".

Seriously?

Yes, I'm afraid, according to this official page, "If you manually close your DistroKid account, your releases will be deleted. But your releases won't be deleted because your card is declined or that sort of thing." and a lot of posts on Reddit, for example, this one.

6 July 2020 Update: DistroKid seemed quietly updated the page and removed the descriptions I copied above. 

Ok, if that's true, how to let a membership lapse?

This is a good question.

Distrokid's portal requires users to keep a card up-to-date for payments and it validates the card when it is entered. In order to make a payment fails, you will need to "trick" the system with a valid card and ensure the card is declined (expired or whatsoever) when the next payment is due.

Before that, you still need to pay the one-off fee of $29 or $49 for ALL your releases to keep them online.

This is the only way to activate "Leave a Legacy" and maintain your music online if you no longer want to pay the annual fees.

Are all of these your first interpretation of "Leave a Legacy"?

Based on the facts gathered there, in my humble opinion, the feature should be called something like "Payment Failure Protection" or whatsoever. Naming the feature "Leave a Legacy" seems to be deliberately misleading.

There are a bunch of threads on Reddit talking about this, all about "Leave a Legacy". Just try googling "distrokid leave a legacy reddit".

Quite a few folks couldn't get customer service gets back to them, so they posted it on Reddit. Whenever that happens, Philip Kaplan, the founder of Distrokid, often showed up and answered the questions promptly. I will let you decide whether you want to take his answers to the doubts and confusions.

So in short, if you cancel the subscription, your music will be taken down no matter what! I don't know why Philip has never made this crystally clear when he replies to these threads and confusions. The company should also make the users aware of the whole fact before charging the fees. Otherwise, this is simply ripping off the musicians, especially the independent ones, at least this was how I feel when I found out.

Is that all about "Leave a Legacy"?

Not just yet. We haven't talked about the claim "You will continue to accrue 100% of royalties, as normal, forever".

Is this true? Probably.

According to the official statement about if someone stops paying annual fees, once a membership expires (your card gets declined, to be precise), without "Leave a Legacy" in place, all songs will be taken down from the stores, yet the user will continue to have access to the system and will receive royalties owed by Distrokid. Nevertheless, it didn't say anything about what would happen if the songs are in "Leave a Legacy".

On the other hand, the description of "Leave a Legacy" claimes that the royalties will be accrued as normal. However, it didn't mention whether the accrued royalties will be paid as normal, even without an active membership.

I don't know the answer and I couldn't find anything on their website or the internet talking about this situation. I guess anyone interested will need to get in touch with them to find out. If you know the answer, please let me know.

Pitfall No 3: Distrokid UPC is not UPC

Before we dive into this topic, if you need a bit of background, UPC is 'Universal Product Code', a unique identifier for each album/single release. In the era of CDs, this UPC is often presented as a bar code on the back of CDs.

Similarily but differently, ISRC, 'International Standard Recording Code' is a unique identifier for each audio track.

So for example, an album has one song (a 'single' release) would be with 1 UPC and 1 ISRC. In another case of a 10 track album, it would be with 1 UPC and 10 ISRC.

ISRC is required by most the streaming services, including Spotify, Apple Music and iTunes and by Billboards, to calculate the popularity.

Other distributors issue UPC and ISRC for free (for example Ditto) or with an additional fee (for example, CD Baby).

Distrokid provides ISRC free of charge, but they use their own internal UPC system, Distrokid UPC, and is not universal as the ones you get from other distributors.

What is the deal with UPC in the era of streaming?

It depends.

In some cases like resubmitting or making changes to the songs released, same UPC and ISRC are often required to keep all the stats. Although sometimes ISRC alone probably suffices the purpose and a valid UPC might not be necessary, it is still good to know what you pay for.

Pitfall No 4: The automatic revenue split mechanism requires each recipient owns an active Distrokid membership

What does that mean?

Distrokid provides a mechanism called "Teams" that automatically sends a specified proportion of revenue to a list of recipients. However, this feature requires each one on the list owns an active Distrokid membership.

That means at least $19.99 will need to be paid per person per year in order to be able to receive revenue automatically. Whether this is a good deal, I guess it depends on whether the revenue split justifies the cost of a yearly membership for everyone.

Pitfall No 5: YouTube ad revenues are collected for an additional $4.95/$14.95 per single/album per year and 20% commission; Shazam is $1 per song per year

This is called "YouTube Money", which requires $4.95/$14.95 per single/album per year and 20% commission to be activated. This feature assigns a YouTube ID to the songs and monitors the usage on YouTube. Whenever someone uses the songs in their video, revenues are collected.

Also getting on Shazam requires $1 per song per year, it can add up pretty quickly if you have many songs. 

These features are often free of additional charges with other distributors. If this is an important feature to you, do the math before signing up.

Pitfall No 6: "Store Maximizer" may be handy to pay, but you can do it yourself

"Store Maximizer" is an optional feature that submits your old releases to new stores whenever they are available. This feature costs $7.95 per year per release.

Sounds handy right? But if you don't mind clicking your mouse a few times, simply go to "add to more stores" of each release to save the cost.

That's all for now.

Distrokid is a decent distributing service if you don't fall into any of these shady corners. But to be honest, other distributors may accomplish the same either for free or with comparable (affordable) prices.

There is another post by Rufus Ashmount talking about similar issues with Distrokid.

Also posted here. 

[More about this topic: DistroKid vs. CD Baby vs. EmuBands and more - My Experience with Music Distributors]