Releasing Music as an Indie

I am not on a label, and many other artists follow the path of releasing music themselves. There are many services available that allow musicians to get their music on streaming platforms, such as Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, and more, and have various costs. I believe a careful balance has to be considered for choosing a platform based on the intent of the musician.

First, a big shoutout to Bandcamp to making it easy for musicians to release music on a legit platform with minimal overhead and no sign-up fees. It is not as user-friendly for those unable or unwilling to buy music outright, but it still gives musicians a landing page, a link, and a way for people to listen.

Distributors like DistroKid, CDBaby, and LANDR give artists a paid option to distribute music, which can be very beneficial to independent artists who have a significant amount of music to distribute. In particular, artists who are already popular can benefit greatly from the short timelines and easy process offered by both companies. The catch is that for many new artists, the potential revenue from streaming is likely to be a few dollars a year, meaning that any music profits are simply fed right back to the distributor.

I use a distributor that offers a fully Free tier, Unchained.io. Their paid tier has more services and flexibility, but if your subscription lapses they simply move you back to Free. It’s a great way to get on DSPs, and they still pass on 100% of royalties. I’m not sure how long the model is viable, but since each song distributed through them still gets an ISRC (an identifier for the song), it’s possible to move services without losing streams or revenue.

The risk for any artist starting out is that there are many, many services advertised that want new artists to pay for something that the artist doesn’t understand. Most musicians are not independent because they are independently wealthy! To a playlist service, a distributor, a website provider, promotion services, the few dollars they charge seems small, but to a musician who is deciding whether to buy new guitar strings or pay rent, it makes a difference and adds up. Simply dumping music on a site like Soundcloud or Youtube is fine if you want to share with friends or “get it out there,” but it’s hard to actually find listeners that will return to you repeatedly (especially since Soundcloud, for example, puts strict limitations on uploaders who aren’t interested in paying for a subscription).

If you’re putting music out there for others to hear, it’s worth the effort to try to save money and not get locked into a website or platform that causes you to lose control of it. Part of being an indie musician is also being independent from services that don’t align with your values.