The Process of Releasing a Song Through DistroKid

First, there are a lot of options out there. My decision was that I want my music on as many digital platforms as possible. In researching those options I landed on DistroKid as my distributor. They have several different options available, if you are a label and represent five or more bands/artists, a personal plan or someone that wants to release a couple different artists or bands under one account. The fees are all listed on their website with the least expensive option costing $20 per year with unlimited uploads available.

It seems simple enough, you upload a song and click what stores you want it to go to, whether that it iTunes, Apple Music or Spotify, they pretty much deal with every major service there is. Once you upload a song you also get a landing page to send people to and in the case of Spotify if they click the link they will automatically follow you. One more thing, outside of the annual fee you keep your earnings (or if there are several songs writers record labels they get their cuts over any agreements you have with them).

Second, this post is my personal process and things I have learned from uploading my first song. So if you are thinking about getting more music out then read on. If you want a full review of DistroKid, that will be in another post after my first song goes live (May, 22, 2020 follow here).

Things I wish I had done before uploading my song:

1. Create a checklist of everything I wanted to do

2. Create album artwork, I ended up just using a picture I had taken

3. Get a nice artist/band photo for your profile

4. Get my Social Media in order. Do I want to post under my personal accounts? The Moon Door account? Or did I want to create something specifically for my artist alter ego?

5. Listen to to my “final” mix on multiple devices

6. Take my time, write everything in a program like Word just to make sure the spelling is correct

The reason those made my list is well, because I either rushed or messed something up. Once you upload a song and fill out all the sing information you really won’t be able to edit anything other than the song credits. So if you need to make changes like I did, you will have to remove the song and start over. Ultimately that did not take a long time to do but it is something I learned from right away.

If you want more information on DistroKids’s pay plans click here

If you have done your own research and want to sign up with DistroKid click here and you will get a 7% discount.