Distrokid for distribution. Thoughts?

#1

As of late, I have been very pleased with some of the music I have been producing to the point that I’m ready to start putting more of it out there on streaming services and shops (digital only, no physical media).

After looking around for a distributor for a bit, I signed up for a Distrokid membership. So far things seem to be going well, the pricing seems very competitive for what you get (at least initially) and they offer some cool features that I haven’t used yet but may in the future.

Does anyone have any experience with this company or its competitors? Sometimes you don’t realize that things are bad until later so I guess I’m trying to save myself some potential headaches.

Any thoughts?
Thanks

#2

What you see is pretty much what you get, which to me means that it’s a great service. You’re not going to get any on-site promotion as you might with CD baby, but it’s well-worth the price cut.

Promoting your work is difficult, but IMHO it’s a bare minimum to have stuff where people can find it. Distrokid at least gets your stuff there.

#3

I’m using online distribution via ReverbNation. It’s cheap & bare bones - your music will be available on the interwebs but there’s zero promotion, so good luck selling it.

As @xSANTAxDURSTx says, promoting your work is difficult. And that’s a MAJOR understatement IMHO.

Promotion/marketing your work could be a full time job that requires a lot of time & effort that most of us don’t have (especially if you already have a full-time job, a family and all that).

#4

And let me just add, promotion costs money! Running ads: $ Creating high quality visuals: $$$ Submithub: $$.

Distrokid will end up being the cheapest part of the whole equation. I am just starting out trying to self-release and promote my own work and honestly I’m not sure it’s worth it. Distrokid spreads your music over dozens of platforms which makes your streams look even lower than they are to the outside observer. For example, a few hundred streamed my first single on Youtube, but that converted to 0 new followers or subscribers because it was one of those automatically generated youtube postings from Distrokid…now the “Official Video” for the song is up on my own page and only has a couple dozen views!

Just sharing so you can avoid my rookie mistake of just clicking “Yes yes yes” on all their dozens of platforms…as a self-releasing musician trying to build an initial fanbase, you need to concentrate on building followers and a strong presence on one or two platforms. Spotify and all that is a whole other game that really requires its own strategy and approach (and I haven’t figured that approach out yet)