DistroKid’s unfortunate evolution, Part 2
Last time, we put together a timeline of the recent evolution of the popular DIY music distribution platform DistroKid. Unfortunately, this platform is starting to show some signs of non artist-friendly behavior and enshittification.
If the recent behavior of this company is a dealbreaker for you, there are many other online services you can use for the digital distribution of your musical work.
But before we get into that, we need to understand how digital music is tracked and monetized across the Internet using the International Standard Recording Code (ISRC).
Then, we can more fully understand the role any digital music distributor plays in the musical ecosystem, and if they’re a ripoff or not.
What is the International Recording Code?
The International Standard Recording Code is a unique identifier connected to a piece of digital music, used to track the streams and payouts of your work across the Internet and various streaming music services.
Some digital distributors (like DistroKid), can handle the generation and assignment of ISRC codes for you on all the music you release using the platform, all conveniently included in the price of your subscription. Other distribution services charge you a flat fee per release to assign unique ISRC codes to your music. I wouldn't recommend paying any fees like this: here’s why.
I generally recommend managing your ISRC codes yourself, instead of letting your distributor handle this for you. This gives you maximum flexibility in the distribution of your work. You can move your codes over to any digital distributor, and you can change distributors as you like. Or, if you get signed with a label, you can simply send them your codes for them to use in the administrative work they’re doing on your behalf. Don’t sign over the ownership of them, though!
The ISRC codes that DistroKid assigns your music automatically will continue to be valid if you leave the platform. But, owning them yourself is cheaper in the long term, more flexible, and gives you more direct control over their use now and in the future.
Here’s DistroKid customer support confirming this with me:
DistroKid customer support discussing ISRC code management.
How to generate ISRC codes yourself
Apply for a Recording Rights Owner account with International Standard Recording Code. This account lets you generate and assign ISRC codes to your own music releases. You can purchase this service directly at https://usisrc.org.
Pay a $95 (at time of writing) one-time lifetime fee that allows you to assign codes for up to 100,000 songs per year as an individual artist, for any recordings that you own the rights to. That’s a pretty great deal; for most individual artists, this will probably cover your entire lifetime creative output for under $100, paid one time.
For each musical release that you do, generate the ISRC codes for your songs, keep them on file, and link them to your songs when uploading your files using your digital distributor. Or, send them off to your label if they handle that for you.
Are digital music distributors ripping you off?
Not necessarily. It depends on the individual service, so read the fine print. In this example, we’ve seen the basic value proposition that’s provided by any digital distribution service (or any professionally run music label, for that matter).
While you only need one ISRC account to generate the required ISRC codes to release your music online, imagine needing to take all of the different steps to generate the codes, upload your tracks, and manage each of your releases directly with every individual music streamer on the market today, for every single release that you do.
That $3.33/month ($0.83/week) that you’re paying DistroKid to do this for you can save you a lot of administrative time and effort, because it provides a unified portal to manage all of your music releases across many different streaming music platforms. That’s the fundamental value proposition of the DistroKid platform.
This is how a lot of these cheap subscription tech services work: they act as “convenience middlemen”, adding convenience between users who could just interact directly with a regulating organization to DIY the same thing themselves. It works similarly with Amazon and ebooks: you can take all of the steps necessary to register your copyrights and self-publish an ebook all on your own (it’s not that hard), but Amazon turned that annoying multistep process into a convenient one-click service.
DIYing your music releases yourself isn’t nearly as convenient; it will take more time and effort than an affordable one-click service like DistroKid. Also keep in mind, many of the largest music streamers don’t allow direct uploads from artists: Apple Music and Spotify both currently require the use of a third-party digital distribution service to access their platforms.
When does digital music distribution become predatory?
Whether a digital music distribution service becomes predatory or not depends on the leadership of a given corporation, and the fine print on the terms of the individual deal. I would never publish an ebook through Amazon, for example: read the fine print on their agreements, and you’ll see just how predatory they are. DistroKid hasn’t jumped that shark quite yet, in my opinion.
There are valid alternatives to DistroKid, but none I can find that get your music on as many different digital streaming music platforms for as low a price, as conveniently, right now. That’s part of what makes it so frustrating when companies like this begin to abuse their market position, and lose sight of their original founding principles.
Whether you consider the DistroKid service a fair deal or not depends on your personal preferences, the company’s reputation (currently not as great as it once was), and your own willingness to put in the extra administrative time that this service is saving you.
Next time in this series, we’ll dig deeper into DistroKid alternatives.
