Musicians have known it for decades – It’s a jungle out there. And now the jungle is digital. Digital music distribution have opened new doors, and reaching out to new fans as an indie or amateur artist is suddenly possible.
The reason is the Internet. It gives us streaming music and digital downloads from music services like Spotify, iTunes, Amazon and tons of similar services and sites.
With this new era comes the new role – Artist aggregator.
So what does the Artist aggregator do? If you ask them, they will answer that they help you reach a lot of new fans and sell a lot of music. And they take care of all the boring stuff that involves releasing music to a greater public. This is pretty much true, but even though there are several active Artist aggregators out there we can see that their service differs. And their prices. And their ability.
The basic role of the aggregator is to take your digital recording, do necessary processing and administrative work, and hand it over to retailers or streaming sites working with the aggregator. Sales and revenue are collected by the aggregator and, sometimes minus a fee, handed over to you. Basically, you do one release, get exposed at all the right places, and collect earnings from one place.
Why am I writing this post?
If you google the subject, you will find an equal share of
- Artist aggregators and their service descriptions
- Artist sharing their experience and thoughts about the aggreagtors
I’m writing this post because I’m in the process of finding the right Artist aggregator to release my first album. It is truly a really time consuming and difficult process. They all offer different services, work with different retailers and streaming services, and have different prices. Anything from absolute free to higher prices…and pricing models that is almost impossible to calculate.
Googling the subject will also give you a lot of stories about artists that give strong warnings about a certain aggregator..and another artist that swears by the same aggregator and thank them for their career boost. The more you google, the less you know. Or maybe that’s just me..
Here’s my list of aggregators. I will list the reasons why I considered to use them, and the reasons why I skipped them.
I strongly recommend an active discussion. Please post your stories as a struggling artist. And please defend, correct, inform, agree, or disagree if you are an Artist aggregator. I will happily add more services on your request.
(Please note that I have limited my reasearch to aggregators that include Spotify. Not that they seem to give artists a noticeable income, but because their large listener base.)
Routenote
+ A free service. Good for the low budget. They earn their money from a percentage of your earnings.
+ Pretty easy to understand and learn about their service.
– Their website is not really stable, and clicking around gives all sorts of website errors.
– They work with a really small amount of retailers, although the essential ones are included (Spotify, iTunes).
The reason why I skipped them is their limitation in upload formats. They only accept MP3′s, and this gives a lower quality as some extra rendering is done prior to distribution.
ReverbNation
+ I’m already using their free service, which is really nice.
+ A nice collection of retailers and streaming services.
– Fee’s are pretty expensive – and recurring.
– Other artists complain about hidden fees or circumstances that increase the already high cost.
The reason I skip ReverbNation is that I don’t like hidden costs, and I don’t like recurring high costs. This could be different though, if I would expect some serious sales from my music.
CDbaby
+ They seem to have a good reputation, probably from a thorough service dating back to the “print your own album” era. They offer re-distribution of your “home made” CD’s.
+ Fee’s are one time only (per release).
+ They have a lot of services and features not found elsewhere.
+ A nice collection of retailers and streaming services.
– Even though I like one time fees, they are a bit high.
Right now this seems like the best choice for me, but I still want to learn more before making decisions.
DittoMusic
+ A nice collection of retailers and streaming services.
+ Pretty informative website.
+ They claim to stay by your side if (when?) you run into legal issues with other labels or artists.
– Fees seem low at first, but they have a price model that give the impression that overall cost could suddenly explode.
– I’ve seen indications on other blogs that Ditto really screwed up in more than one occasion, and their cover up made it worse. Stuff like that makes me think more than twice.
I skipped Ditto because of too many negative statements from other artists.
More will follow…
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