The streaming model of listening to music is categorised as a sort of public performance as the music is not owned by the listener and is similar to a radio play in that respect. You can submit one track per artist at a time, so if you have a Musician Plus subscription and manage two artists, you can submit one track for each. Mechanical Royalties are the part of song sales that go to the songwriter and publisher. If you want to share your profits with your collaborators, DistroKid offers an easy way to automatically divide your earning by percentages. You can even use Baby Yoda to promote your new song. DistroKid and other similar services are only for distribution and collect mechanical royalties for digital streams and sales. The good news is that CD Baby is a non-exclusive sync licensing company. When you distribute your music through CD Baby Pro, you are added to CDBabys non-exclusive sync library. Its a great system that encourages community. Songtrust is not a distributor but an administrative publisher so you cant just use Songtrust. Both BMI and ASCAP are great options and will follow through when it comes time to payout performance royalties to rights holders. You'll still get the same payments from Distrokid and he same performance royalties from your PRO. Cassettes, CDs, and in many cases, even record labels, are things of the past. It is nice that they have an Admin Publishing company and it is nice to keep everything under one roof, but the actual smarter thing to do is to go with Distrokid and Songtrust. If you have a Musician Plus or Label subscription, youll be able to adjust your releases price on iTunes, and some additional freedoms well go over later. In order to collect these publishing royalties, you must be affiliated with a performance royalty organization (PRO), like ASCAP, and you need to have a publisher or publishing administrator, like Songtrust or CD Baby Pro Publishing. Does Distrokid Collect Your Performance Royalties? if(typeof ez_ad_units!='undefined'){ez_ad_units.push([[250,250],'bestfriendsclub_ca-medrectangle-3','ezslot_7',108,'0','0'])};__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-bestfriendsclub_ca-medrectangle-3-0');To better understand the difference between the kind of money that each of these services collect, it is important to understand music publishing and what money is owed to you once your music is streamed. However, you should know that PROs only collect performance royalties so you would still be missing out on some mechanical royalties that are owed to you. But dont worry about it. But in the meanwhile, check out https://songtrust.com. Thats a bit vague and lines start to blur a little here, but its not too bad. You dont actually need to be a member of DistroKid to vote for songs with Playlist Spotlight, but you do need to be a DistroKid member to submit your own tracks. DistroKid vs. TuneCore Songtrust vs DistroKid: Music Distribution, Royalties & Publishing One of those avenues is through a non-profit, public performance rights organization like BMIor ASCAP. Sounds pretty good, but the only thing is that if you voluntarily decide that you want to leave Distrokid and stop paying the yearly fee they will still take your music down. Songtrust is a service that collects the publishers share of your performance royalties and your mechanical royalties. The playlists are updated every week, and when the playlists get updated, all the votes reset to zero. The MLC is funded by the Digital Service Providers they service, and they remit 100% of the royalties they collect to copyright owners. Some of those royalties, like publishing, CDBaby would have collected for you (hence the extra cost). Because there is no Spotify direct upload anymore, Spotify relies on music distributors to act as a middleman between the artist and Spotify. This site and Peer Through Media LLC sometimes recommends products that were affiliated with. Neither CDbaby nor Distrokid do it. That is by far the cheapest option and the option you should go with if all you are trying to do is throw some songs up on streaming services for fun. Does DistroKid Register with BMI or ASCAP? Do I Have to as an Artist? There is no guarantee, however, that your Leave a Legacy releases will remain published if DistroKid goes out of business. You can also get a social phone number to directly text your fans (for $12.99/mo), and this can serve as a great marketing tool. HFA continues to handle the other types of mechanical royalties. Were working on a publishing admin system for artists. This is awesome. PRS (Performing Right Society) is the biggest collection society for performance rights in the UK and in the USA its Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI). Thats a nice add on by CDBaby, but it really doesnt matter as its just a matter of going to the PROs website and filling out some forms. Without a publisher administrator, your performance and mechanical royalties will remain uncollected. In that same example, because your music was technically performed in public (ie: on the listeners phone) and because the audio file was mechanically reproduced on the listeners phone to play the music back, you are also owed both performance and mechanical royalties. We feel strongly that you shouldn't give a percentage of your earnings for streams / sales to your distributor. Voting for playlists with the Playlist Spotlight feature can help artists get on DistroKid's Spotify playlists, and other artists can vote for your songs too. However, while DistroKid might seem like a starving artist's dream come true, you'll have to pay a lot of hidden fees to get the most out of it. I have been working on my singing voice for over 2 years, but I have recently becomeobsessed with the idea of deepening my everyday speaking voice. Match with the search results: Distrokid and other similar services are only for distribution and collect mechanical royalties for digital streams and sales. CD Baby review - SoundGuys Promote Your Music Video With YouTube Ads, CDBaby vs Distrokid: Digital Sales & Streams Commission, Types Of Music Royalties (Beyond Music Distribution), Mechanical Royalties CDBaby vs Distrokid, YouTube Monetization CDBaby vs Distrokid, Performance Rights Royalties- CDBaby vs Distrokid, Non-Interactive Streaming Platform Digital Royalties: SoundExchange, CDBaby vs Distrokid Which Should You Use Conclusion. If you opt into Upstream, labels will have access to your Upstream profile, which will include links to your music, your streaming statistics, and your contact information. That could be 1000s of dollars if a song blows up. DistroKid is a music distribution company that allows artists to get their music on online stores and streaming services while Songtrust is a publishing administration company that helps artists collect publishing, mechanical, and live performance royalties. That's where CD Baby Pro Publishing Administration comes in. There is a cheaper option called Songtrust that will collect your YouTube money for 15%, If you go with Distrokid, youll need Songtrust for other helpful services like collecting all your songwriter royalties. DistroKid is a music distribution service that distributes your music to digital stores and streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music. DistroKid currently doesn't have any add-on, admin publishing services (at least not yet). Your understanding should all come together at the end, but even if you only grasp half, youll understand more than most artists and be able to truly make an informed decision not only on CD Baby vs Distrokid, but on a lot of other business decisions that have to do with your music career. read more 3. Performance royalties are paid to songwriters and their music publisher in exchange for the right to broadcast or perform a copyrighted musical composition in a public environment. Throughout the year, companies report song usage to BMI and ASCAP. To submit your track to Playlist Spotlight, just click +Your Track on the Playlist Spotlight menu bar. Generally, the store platforms take around 30%. Alternately, being set up with any other music distributor can help you distribute and maintain your music catalog. If youve ever played KittenWar, it works a lot like that. Mechanical Royalties Guide | 2021 - Royalty Exchange For the most part sync royalties are a stand alone separate thing. You can register (and check on your songs) at themlc.com. Distrokid offers lots of helpful promotional tools to artists. This can be a plus or a minus depending on how often you release music. Same as CDBabys percentage, but with a 1 time fee. Distrokid can also collect your streaming royalties from YouTube and SoundCloud too. However, after all this, Im not just going to just leave you hanging like that. It is a shame that DistroKid does not have a publishing service because it makes publishing much more simple. When you opt into this service, DistroKid manages your cover by obtaining a license for it and paying the original songwriter their royalties. You can easily create Hyperfollow links and when someone clicks one, theyll automatically follow you on Spotify and have your music saved to their library. If you are using DistroKid to distribute your music but hope to sign a record deal someday, DistroKid Upstream can help you out. DistroKid does not collect performance royalties on your music. The higher percentages could earn you multiple thousands in extra revenue if your music takes off. From earning royalties, to crafting a journey for your fans, our mission is to make sure that every single one of our students feels confident with how the music industry works and has clarity on how to move forward with growing their music-based brand. Once you upload your music to Spotify (and other streaming services and online stores) using DistroKid and your music gets streamed, that play generates these royalties: The master recording royalty is for audio file, where the publishing royalty is for the intellectual property (ie: the copyright) of the composition (ie: the songwriting, melody, chords, lyrics, etc). BMI charges a one-time fee of $150 to apply as a publisher. At the time of this writing, any physical record sale or download has to pay a mechanical royalty to the compositions copyright holder of 9.1 cents. What Music Distributors Collect Publishing Royalties For Me? Distrokid just doesnt have a sync service. But to really understand mechanical royalties, let's take a step back to understand how mechanical royalties first came about, how they've changed over the years, and the different ways they can generate income. After signing up for DistroKid, youll want to design your personal profile.