Distrokid, Tunecore, Cdbaby: Prices, Costs & Hidden Fees

Distrokid has 3 plans and no free plan:

• Musician: $22.99 per year

• Musician Plus: $39.99 per year

• Ultimate: $89.99+ per year (for labels)

The yearly flat $22.99 doesn't change, you pay it once and you are free to release as much singles and albums as you wish for the next 12 months.

Distrokid wont take a percentage cut off your music sales or streaming, you will keep 100%, except for YouTube where they take a 20% cut.

To monetize your music on YouTube you will have to pay for the Distrokid extra called YouTube Content ID.

Like I said in the hidden fees part, it's $4.95 per single or $14.95 per album, per year. Plus a 20% cut of your YouTube Ad revenue.

Tunecore offers you a free plan which will deliver your music to socials platforms (and yes, this is a free YouTube Content ID service):

• YouTube

• Facebook

• Instagram

• Tiktok

They will collect a fee of 20% of what you earn on all platforms.

Tunecore has 3 different yearly plans with different features you can choose from, the first 2 are aimed at independent artists, while the last one is for labels:

• Rising Artist $19.99 per year

• Breakout Artist $34.99 per year

• Professional $49.99 per year + $14.99 per artist

The new Tunecore flat costs are very interesting for independent music artists. You can release as much music as you wish for the next 12 months.

Do you expect it to be really bad here? Surprisingly, it's not.

Tunecore's new free and flat-fee yearly plans introduced a 20% fee on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Tiktok revenues.

There are no additional fees on top of that, you'll keep 100% from all sales and music streaming on other platforms.

In December 2023, Tunecore announced that they will take an extra 20% cut of what your songs generate in their Tunecore Accelerator program (more information about this in the "Spotify Discovery Mode" section later at the bottom of the article).

Tunecore's YouTube CID is a free feature in every plan (even in the free plan). Using it will allow Tunecore to monetize your music on YouTube.

Cdbaby has not switched to unlimited releases, unlike Distrokid and Tunecore. Additionally, Cdbaby does not offer a free plan.

This is Cdbaby's pricing per single and per album:

• Single $9.99

• Pro Single $49.99

• Album $9.99

• Pro Album $49.99

• CDB Boost $39.99, on top of the initial $9.99 price

CDB Boost is the new name for the Pro Publishing, it's still the same price: $9.99 + $39.99 = $49.98.

The change from Pro Publishing to CDB Boost is both a cover-up for removing features of standard releases and an attempt of driving some new sales (more in "Publishing Administration" and "Cdbaby's Hidden Fees" below).

The good thing about Cdbaby's pay-per-release system is that you pay once and you are done. No yearly payement, only a one time payement.

The UPC barcode is now permanently free since the promotion ended on February 14, 2023. They used to sell it for $5 per single and $20 per album (which was a significant hidden fee).

Here are all Cdbaby's fees:

• 9% on all your sales and music streaming

• 30% on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Tiktok revenues

• $4 on physical sales (CD or Vinyl)

• 15% of publishing royalties (if you add CDB Boost)

• 40% on sync placements and YouTube Creator sync licenses.

You now need CDB Boost to opt-in syncs. They are no longer part of standard releases after August 8th, 2023. Releases before that date are unchanged.

Only the 9% fee is displayed on their pricing page (you will have to scroll down), while the remaining fees are hidden and are only listed on the previous page that I linked you to. In a similar way, when the UPC barcode was not free, it was also not prominently displayed.

Cdbaby's YouTube monetization option is a free feature that you can opt-in per release (after you pay for your release, of course).

I will be taking some close to real values here, rounding numbers to make it easy to read and understand.

Let's say that your average payout per stream is $0.003, that means that you get roughly $0.01 every 3 streams.

This is your first year and your first album. You got a combined 30,000 streams on all platforms (excluding socials), making your payout $100. And you got a combined 30,000 streams on social platforms, adding another $100.

Your total payout is $200, now let's see what is left after each digital distributor costs and fees:

• You choose Distrokid: your payout will be $200 minus the yearly $22.99 flat fee. That makes it $177.01. On top of that you would have to substract any additional features you paid for (here you didn't add any).

• You choose Tunecore: your payout will be $200 minus the yearly $19.99 for the Rising Artist plan and the 20% on all socials (20% of $100 is $20). That makes it $160.01. No fees on top of that.

• You choose Cdbaby: your payout will be $200 minus the $9.99 album cost and 9% + 30% fees. That makes it 200-(9.99+100x0.09+100x0.3) = $151,01.

To summarize what I just said in the payout comparison:

• If you want the highest payout and already have a monetized YouTube channel: go for Distrokid.

• If you don't have a monetized YouTube channel and want a free YouTube CID service: go for Tunecore.

• There is no current scenario where choosing Cdbaby is better then the others. Your per-release payout will just become lower and lower the more you release the same year.

For starters: you should use Tunecore. Don't waste your time going through 1000 additional payed features on Distrokid. And don't waste your earnings, getting drained by Cdbaby's high fees.

For intermediate/experts: if you have a high presence on social platforms, then Distrokid letting you keep 100% of revenue instead of Tunecore 80% will be better for you (your YouTube channel needs to be partnered, because both take 20% on YouTube).

Distrokid and Tunecore will takedown your music from all platforms if you cancel your subscription or if you don't renew your yearly plan.

Cdbaby will not takedown your music, because you already pay per release and not on a annual basis. You pay once and it's out there forever.

In short, Spotify's Discovery Mode boosts your selected songs in Radio & Autoplay, and Spotify takes a 30% extra cut of the royalties.

When using either Distrokid or Cdbaby, and meeting the eligibility requirements of Spotify's Discovery Mode, this feature will appear in your Spotify for Artists dashboard.

Most recently with the launch of the Tunecore Accelerator program, Tunecore can now also use this feature, but it wont be through Spotify for Artists.

On Tunecore, if you opted in the Accelerator program, some of your songs will be automatically selected. As of December 2023, Tunecore now takes a 20% cut of what your songs are getting from Spotify's Discovery Mode.

Important: While Cdbaby and Distrokid use the conventional way, Tunecore's version doesn't give you any control over the selected tracks. I have also confirmed with my own account that the eligibility on Tunecore for this feature is locked behind having 20k monthly streams on your Tunecore releases instead of your whole Spotify account (this part is annoying when you have your releases on multiple distributors, I had the feature unlocked since December on Spotify but is only working since April through Tunecore).

Updated: I have personally used Cdbaby for my albums before the new Tunecore unlimited plans. I will be switching to Tunecore (I did) for my next ones. Distrokid isn't attractive to me because of the pay-per-feature business model.

Every single or album you release the same year adds up to the gap between Cdbaby and the other 2. The fees don't make it better in the long run, in fact, they make it way worse.

In the payout comparison example I gave you, just the Cdbaby fees of 9% ($9) and 30% ($30) are already more than the yearly plan cost of its competitors. And those fees will always follow you, the more streams you get, the more you'll pay.

Just to make things very clear: even IF Cdbaby gave you FREE releases, it would still be BETTER to PAY for Tunecore or Distrokid, because of the current FEES.

Tunecore had a very close system, they changed it for a far better one.

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