[Entox]

Has anyone ever had any experience with DittoMusic or similar companies who can distribute your music through beatport/itunes and the likes for fairly small fees without involving a label?

I am tempted to promote a new Disco House album me and a mate are working on and wanted to try and get it on the big names for sale.

TIA.

[BlindfoldKnobs]

Better use SoundCloud and YouTube and build some sort of minimal audience first. Aggregators won't offer any marketing service for free: music gets published but remains unnoticed, therefore what's the point in publishing.

[Jaded]

Well, unless you own a massively commercial label like a Kompakt or M_nus and such; or you have an established (10 years) relationship with BeatPort, you have to use an aggregate service.

The splits on sales are irrelevant because you're not going to make money through digital distribution. It's a loss game.

Literally the only way you can make a profit from producing tracks is to press acetates and sell them to local music stores. One of the local record guys here reckons he clears about $750 per 50 run. Press the record at $5 a disk, sell for $20.

So yeah, if you want to see your music on Beatport, you have to use a service.

The only warning I would give is take a look at their brands and check out their catalogues because a lot of the aggregate providers recompile your work. Like whenever you see those compilations like "Some random label that you've never heard of present Pure Tech House Beats Volume 12" or something like that with twenty tracks from a bunch of different artists... That's the aggregate services recompiling their clients' work.

So if you're okay with losing some control over how your works are presented - like if you only want your work to be available as a single EP or whatever - then you need to be more picky and go over the distribution agreement with a fine tooth comb.