I’m considering a soundcloud next pro account for pushing stuff to streaming services and am wondering if there are people here using it and what their experience are with it? Thanks to the legendary gift from @Conner_Bw I’ve enjoyed a pro account for many years in the past, but at that time there weren’t any further streaming options available besides the soundcloud page itself.
I’ve considered distrokid in the past, being cheap , but am seeing conflicting opinions on youtube. There are a few things I worry about when uploading through such services;
In the past I have released a lot of music as 'creative commons share a like non commercial’ & variations of this for creators to use in their work (videos, games, remixes etc) through the freemusic archive. Will uploading to streaming services like spotify, youtube music, potentially block the work which have used it?
What happens when you don’t update your soundcloud & distrokid account, will all the music be pulled off, any grace period or immediately? Same for false positives on used samples, I’ve seen some horror stories where tracks were removed from releases because of bogus copyright claims and the troubles one has to go through to get it fixed.
Soundcloud pro is quite ok. Since recently they sugget your tracks (not sure if this is on a regular basis) to 100 (or more people). A track I recently posted had 700 plays within a week. You also see statistics who listens to your tracks, countries, etc.
Regarding distrokid I only have good experiences. When you sign up and don’t order directly you get a discount the next day. I think it was 30% less. Not sure, but when you don’t pay anymore the tracks will be gone I guess. But uploading is easy and fast. Exchanging tracks and Covers is also easy and straight forward.
So you have both? Why not ditch distrokid if soundcloud next pro can distribute to all streaming services? I’ve been going through a bunch of reddit threads dealing with this and it doesn’t make for a clear cut decision. Apparently both services have terrible customer support, soundcloud takes a bigger part of any royalties and distrokid adds costs for extra stuff.
I’d recommend a free account at a different distributor if you can find one that suits you… Lots of horror stories about DK. Many sneaky extra addons hidden behind that cheap price tag and it feels like you’re being microtransactioned in a game. Customer service isn’t the best either, a friend had their releases removed for curatorial decisions. Look before you leap don’t take my word for it. A lot of people say positive things because they have an affiliate program so watch out if the person recommending it has an affiliate link in their glowing review.
Someone recommended https://artistfy.com/ . It’s based in Germany and the guy (or guys?) behind it answers emails quickly. Compared to distrokid, etc. you have a personal contact person.
Does the personal contact person also only speak German? Being facetious I know they learn English more than we in America learn German but I can’t find an English version of the site so I’m not full certain how welcome foreigners are there
, but am seeing conflicting opinions on youtube. There are a few things I worry about when uploading through such services;