r/MusicDistribution

Great experience with TooLost re: timely posting of music, easy process, getting paid on time, ... EXCEPT, they pay only 60-70% of the rates that other Distributors pay, which means, they are keeping it for themselves, since Spotify does not pay them less than others. For example, for Spotify USA region, TooLost's average rate is $0.0023 per stream, while all my other distributors (Distrokid, Tunecore, CDBaby, Routenote... I have music with all of them) pay ~$0.0034+... It may not seem a big deal, but it's 30% less!!! That's the difference between $500 vs $340. And that's across all regions, not just USA rates. Then, to withdraw the money via US bank wire, they charge $25 flat fee... Depending on how much your withdrawal amount is, that's another 5-10%. So you literally make 35-40% LESS than what you make with other Distributors... I guess that's why they are so cheap, cause they rip you off on the payout side. I contacted support, never heard back.

been thinking about this properly recently and realised most people (including me before) just pick a distributor and don’t really question it

like you upload, it goes live, and that’s it, until you actually need something or start releasing more consistently

i’ve been working on a distribution platform with a small team and it’s made me look at things a bit differently

stuff like how important support is, how easy it is to manage releases, payouts etc

not here to make you buy anything, just curious what people actually care about when choosing one

is it price? speed? support? something else?

all feedback helps more than anyone thinks 🤞

Hello!

TLDR FIRST:

We want our music to exist permanently & reliable, without hassle. No interference with our own youtube channel. If we cant get that from a distributor, we'd choose to opt out.
Any recommentations for the DACH REGION? (RecordJet, Rebeat: Austria, iGroove? )

--

INTRODUCTION:
We are an upstarting female vocal Electro-Pop project, with mostly English lyrics and about a month or two away from our first releases.

Our output will be approximately up to 10 full Songs a Year (+ Remixes, Instrumentals, etc.) With one or two music videos per year for those.

Overall the initial feedback we got was very positive and we are pretty proud of the quality we have reached.

THE START WITHOUT A DISTRIBUTOR:
For the start we now want to focus on building subscribers on youtube (for future monetization), with the full songs available for free. This channel we want manage our self without any interaction or interference from a distributor. From what we have read, once a certain threshold of subscribers is reached, we can monetize our self.

Additionally we will have our songs on bandcamp as well.
(So free on youtube, bandcamp for the usual small fee.)

Soundcloud, we might use for some Snippets & Experiments as well, but with no priority as we are currently unsure if its worth the actual effort for exposure.

There is a realistic chance we will have some exposure in the DACH (+IT) Region on the local radio as well.

DISTRIBUTION:
We see this typically discussed here, the current options like Distrokid & Co do seem to be rather messy for a lot of users here. It currently seems to us, there is often very little payout and a larger potential of unreliability and extra work involved.
We do not expect to make money quickly here; but the one real benefit would be of course to reach a larger audience with apple music & spotify (which we personally do not like as a platform at all).
We actually consider not using a distributor for now until we actually see something good coming our way.

We also considered local options: As we come from the DACH Region: DE, AT, CH (& IT), we found some local distributors

• RecordJet: German
• Rebeat: Austria
• iGroove: Swiss

QUESTION: Has anyone feedback for us with those?

Thank you very much for your feedback!

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

landr is good on my first year. but the second year, it's soooo bad.

they just ignored my release, support never response, etc

so i'm planning to discontinued that one and looking for alternative, seems ditto music is good.

is it good for original (not cover, not using sample, created my own lyrics) ai music to spotify release?

probably just around 1-3 song per months, in starter plan

music creation is not my focus, but my released being ignored is just too much

Hi everyone,

I’ve been using Ditto for a while and recently noticed that my royalties are stuck in “pending” and not moving to “available.”

I reached out to support, and they told me my account was suspended due to suspected artificial streaming or bot activity. The thing is, I’ve never used any kind of bots or fake streams. I replied to their email with evidence, analytics, and explanations to support my case.

I’m trying to understand if anyone else has gone through something similar. Is there a way to resolve this and recover the account (and earnings), or is everything basically lost at this point?

Any advice or shared experiences would really help.

Thanks.

1 month ago I distributed a music using ditto but they didn't deliver it to Apple music and the customer support said that it was apple music who rejected so I take down the song from them bcz this same thing happened 2 times before so I thought may be i should try a different distro to check if ditto is right... And obviously i didn't want to pay any distro so i tried Routenote and 1 month later yesterday the music was live on apple music 🙂

IDK what's wrong between Apple music and ditto maybe If you're a user of ditto you will see that when you choose stores like let's say I am choosing tiktok then Capcut will be selected automatically and when you remove Capcut tiktok got removed too

And with apple music Shazam gets auto selected and as some of my music has free sample and loops it's not qualified for content id that's why my music can't be distributed to Shazam and apple music also gets removed? (I'm not sure myself but other distros can distribute the same song to Apple music)

Sorry for my bad English

As someone who's trying to release music. Is cd baby best? I just need to know if there's hidden fees and other shady bullcrap like that.

I am extremely disappointed with Symphonic Distribution, Inc. After distributing my music with them successfully in 2025, they suddenly stopped paying my royalties in January 2026. My dashboard shows $0 despite my music being active on all platforms. When I reached out to ask for my earnings, they provided no clear answers and eventually blocked my account access.

My music was written by me and is created with a Suno Pro Plan, which grants me full commercial rights, yet they treat independent artists like scammers without providing any proof of "terms violations." They are keeping money that has already been paid by stores like YouTube Music and Spotify. Avoid this distributor if you want your hard-earned money to be safe.

The strange thing about this is that the same thing happened to three of my friends. This company is stealing thousands of dollars by pocketing the royalties when an artist’s earnings exceed thousands of dollars, which is exactly what happened to my four artists and my friends. What’s disappointing is that they keep scamming people, and I don’t see the government or any regulatory body doing anything to stop this behavior.

If you search on YouTube, you’ll see that even an entertainment lawyer has filed a complaint against them for using deceptive terms to keep their clients’ royalties. This is disappointing.

Hey, guys. Me and my team just built a small platform (www.clertag.io) to help artists earn, share, and publish content directly to their audience as they grow.

We just launched and are looking for a few early testers. It’s not paid, but it’s completely free to use and set up your page. Super simple, just use it, and if you notice anything off or have ideas, please reach out.

Dont want to sell anything, but looking for a few people to try it out and give some real feedback. Let me know if you’re open to it 🫶