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
That is a loaded Question for sure! I have used DistroKid for a few years now and think the potential is phenomenal for what I pay for all that. Through DK I was led to another nifty Artist tool called Bandzoogle that is extremely affordable and gets you up there real quick with a serious Website you can use to Sell your Music and Merch and much more. I cant say enough good things about my experience with DistroKid. Plenty folks complain about the tiny PayOuts. If you are thinking you are going to make your Living entirely from DistroKid its very unlikely you can do that. If you are that hot and wanted then I would imagine you have a line of Managers and Promoters begging you ti Sign? Probably not. So with the Tools and Services DistroKid and Bandzoogle give you you can really get yourself out there in every nook and cranny of the Streaming Universe and use THAT to attract the Big Money Dream. I am looking at adding SoundCloud Next Pro to my quiver. Its redundant but if I use the same Metadata and Trackers on my Uploads it just gives me that much more Oomphf. Is it gonna be a game changer? I doubt it. But I hate Google. Google ruined my life. Anything spinning on Google is subject to attack by UMG. Your gonna get hit by UMG sooner or later; UMG can afford the bogus Claims that you cant do much about yourself. So my stuff spinning on any Google Platform I dont pay any mind to. If it remains great. If not I dont fret because like Meta and Facebook Google is a dung thing anyway; THEY make the money-you dont! But your Art is there; its out there. If folks never hear you they will likely never look deeper into your Music. Think about how you buy others Music. Your Customers are similar minded for most. The most successful Artist I knew is Josh Woodward. https://www.joshwoodward.com He is literally a 1 Man Show! Earns $ Millions from Donations. You might want to pick his brains. See how he did his thing. P.J. Reddie is another worth looking at. He is not into Music but does self promote very successfully. https://pjreddie.com/darknet/ > I love SoundCloud simply because it has always been for us Music Makers. Though mostly redundant with my DistroKid it gives me many more Tools to work with. More anyway. And its helping to support something for the next guy ( gal or whatever ) ( I am a whatever myself so can say that ). For another $100 a Year I think its worth it. Until I am as prolific as Josh I will use what SoundCloud and DistroKid & Bandzoogle give me. SoundTrap is interresting too by the way. Very integrated with the Spotify world. I have lost interrest in everything Spotify though. I have been paying almost $40 a Month for several years now for everything Spotify has and SoundTrap only to find myself hearing the same damn Music over and over and over again. No matter how I " Shuffle " its always just like everything Google the same Songs over and over if I leave it to play music in the background. Try that with SoundCloud. Your lucky to ever hear the same song again. Even if you try to find it might not be able to. So many new Tunes to discover here every minute! That last statement is WHY I really want to add SoundCloud Next Pro to my quiver. I dont want to get sucked into being influenced by others popular Tunes. I wanna listen to new innovative Tunes in the hopes something grabs me and I can build on that to make my Sound more Unique. I dont have UMG to promote my stuff so much even if its crap people still buy it. I have to make mine so Cool folks want to listen to it so bad they will buy it to hear more of it. Recording Cover Songs will unlikely get folks to buy my Works. All I say is my own opinion. If I am wrong I am willing to still say my mind. Correct me then. I am open for correction. I am hoping I sort of answer some of your Question. Oh, I have to look again since its been a while since I have Uploaded through my Distrokid, but I believe you can opt out of Uploading to Spotify & YouTube Music? When I Uploaded last if my memory does me right I had the Option to deny or allow those Uploads. You get quite a bit of Power over where your stuff lands out there. I opted for EVERYTHING. Besides, what I Uploaded was never intended to be Uploaded in the first place. I needed to create my Artist presence so used two tracks I had on my Desktop " Songs " so it populated all the Music Streams as Songs and an Album. I meant to replace all that immediately when about that time my partner killed himself. With him went most of our Tracks and my Equipment. Its taken me 2 solid years since to get back on my feet and buy more Gear. I am ready to do this Solo now and when can pick up partners along the way. If you get mad at the length of my response here look again at what you are asking please. I am basically telling you all my experience with DistroKid and what can be done with it. I see a great potential and I am gonna run with it and add SoundCloud Next Pro to it because I think its worth it in the long run. Shoot me your Hyperfollow link when you do it too. Good luck to you
Those who think that one can earn enough for a living by producing electronic music (at home) are lost anyway. If one’s lucky one can earn some small pocket money. I’m pretty sure most users are paying way more than they get back. Soundcloud Next Pro costs 85 €/year, DistroKid costs 30-90 €/year and there are (additional) fees everywhere, like on Bandcamp, Amazon or wherever. So you have to sell at least 120 songs just to compensate the yearly basic costs, and even if one’s selling that much one will probably already be taxed. For those who aren’t kind of popular at least within a specific scene, it’s surely not worth it. But of course everyone has the right to dream… Just don’t be disappointed if it doesn’t work out in reality.
Personally I’m considering a Bandcamp artist account, but I’m oscillating between yes and no for a couple of years now. I’m not considering DistroKid because it looks like a tool to make some money from dreamers who think they could become popular by amateurish distributions. Even comments on YouTube videos are disabled if it was distributed by DistroKid, and the only information in the description is “distributed by DistroKid”. Not good if you ask me. That’s not how I would like my stuff to be represented in public if I’m looking for spreading or selling my stuff and possibly becoming more popular, especially not if I have to pay for it. It looks cheap and unprofessional imho. There must be a better option.
I’m also a bit sceptical about them because you are required to constantly pay every year or they’ll remove your songs everywhere, that isn’t worth it for most musicians I bet.
I just use Cdbaby because they are cheap and easy, sometimes they have 50% sales and I buy like 10 singles releases for 5 USD each, that’s almost enough for me for years. Obviously if you churn out a million releases every year Distrokid would be better.
Right, but at least you get to keep 100% of the earnings with them whereas Cdbaby takes a 9% cut so there’s a line where which DistroKid becomes a better choice. While I’m a positive guy I don’t believe I’ll ever come close to that line, so I stick with Cdbaby and if a miracle should happen you can always start releasing on DistroKid from then on.
yes, distrokid is like netflix. pay pay pay. stop paying? no access.
that’s why it boggles my mind that people ALWAYS choose DistroKid over CDBaby. with CDBaby I pay per release. then it’s there. no monthly / annual fees.
similar in the way as in “you have access to other people having access to your stuff” “but if you stop paying” “you lose access to other people having access to your stuff”
hence why cdbaby all the way. pay to release once once, get paid multiple times, no monthly/annual payments or “keep your account active with money” type jazz like how distrokid does it.
, but am seeing conflicting opinions on youtube. There are a few things I worry about when uploading through such services;