Best Free Music Distribution

Free music distribution in 2026: the short answer

Free music distribution still exists in 2026, but you pay with a share of your royalties instead of a fee. RouteNote Free and ONErpm charge nothing upfront and keep 15% of what your music earns in stores. None of the seven distributors TheDebutRoom tracks (DistroKid, TuneCore, CD Baby, Ditto, UnitedMasters, Amuse and LANDR) still offers a free plan for new releases. If you’d rather keep all of your royalties, the cheapest paid routes are Ditto at $19.00/yr for unlimited releases and CD Baby at $9.99 per single with no yearly fee. These are US prices and policies, checked Sep 24, 2026.

So “free” here means no fee. It doesn’t mean no cost.

You’ll notice the two picks at the top of the page are paid services. That’s on purpose. Our picks and the comparison table only cover the seven distributors in our data file, and none of them is free anymore. The free options live outside that list, so they’re covered in full below, with links to each company’s own pages. If you want the full paid lineup, our roundup of the best music distribution services ranks all seven.

Start with what’s actually free right now.

Free music distribution services that still exist

Two free music distribution services still deliver new releases to Spotify and other major stores for no fee as of Sep 24, 2026: RouteNote Free and ONErpm. Both pay you 85% of store royalties and keep 15%. RouteNote Free sends music to the same stores as its paid RouteNote Premium plan and includes YouTube Content ID, but it holds your earnings until you’re owed $50. ONErpm charges no registration, annual or upload fees, and it pays 70% of YouTube money and 50% of other video income. These terms come from RouteNote’s support hub and ONErpm’s own FAQ.

RouteNote Free. RouteNote says its free plan is “completely free”, and that there are no restrictions on store selection on either plan. The only difference is the split: 85% to you on Free, 100% on Premium. Its pricing breakdown says eligible releases can move between Free and Premium later, so you’re not locked in. The catch is the $50 payout minimum. Your money is safe, but it sits there until you cross that line.

ONErpm. The self-service tier has “zero registration, annual, or upload fees”. ONErpm’s FAQ says it only earns a percentage of what your music makes, and you’ll need a PayPal or Payoneer account to get paid. Stores usually pay ONErpm 30 to 60 days after the end of each month, so your first money shows up a couple of months after release. We couldn’t find a payout minimum on its public pages.

Some services advertise a free account that turns out not to release music. Too Lost’s free account, for example, is for collecting splits, and you upgrade to create your own releases. Read what “free” covers before you build a release around it.

Both free options take the same 15%. What that adds up to depends on how much your songs earn.

Distribution music free: what “free” costs you

TheDebutRoom’s view is that free music distribution is a fee you pay later, and often a bigger one. A 15% commission comes out of every stream for as long as the song stays on the free plan, while a yearly fee is a fixed number you can plan around. RouteNote Free also holds your earnings until they reach $50, which can take a first release months of streams. On ONErpm, the cut on video is larger than on streams: you keep 70% of YouTube money and 50% of other video income. None of this makes free a bad deal. It makes free cheapest when your music earns little, and most expensive when it takes off.

Here’s the part that stings. You release a song, your friends share it, the dashboard slowly climbs to $31.40, and you can’t withdraw any of it. Nothing’s wrong. You’re just under the bar. On a free plan with a $50 minimum, that can go on for a long time if you’re releasing one song and not promoting it.

Then flip it. Say a song catches on and earns $2,000 in a year. On a free plan, $300 of that goes to the distributor. That’s years of a paid plan’s fee, spent in one year on one song.

The commission also covers things you might not think of as “distribution money”. YouTube is a big one. If you make every sound in your songs yourself, YouTube Content ID can earn real money, and on ONErpm you’d keep 70% of it.

One more thing worth a minute of your time: a free distributor is the easiest bait for bundled “promotion”. If an offer pairs free distribution with guaranteed streams or playlist placement, walk away. RouteNote and ONErpm don’t need you to buy anything, and nobody legitimate guarantees a playlist.

So when does paying a fee beat giving up 15%? There’s a simple number for it.

Music distribution free vs the cheapest paid plans

A free plan that keeps 15% costs you less than a paid plan until your yearly royalties pass about 6.7 times that plan’s yearly fee. TheDebutRoom compares distributors by what you’d pay over two years for your real release count and earnings, because a commission and a flat fee only line up once you know those numbers. Against Ditto at $19.00/yr, the cheapest unlimited plan among the seven distributors we track, free wins while your songs earn little and loses once they earn more. CD Baby, at $9.99 per single, charges once per release and keeps 9% of store royalties, so it sits between the two for a single song.

Work it out with your own numbers:

1. Add up what all your songs earned in the last 12 months. For a first release, use a guess.
2. Take 15% of that. That’s what a free plan costs you per year.
3. Compare it with the yearly fee of the paid plan you’d use instead.

If step 2 is smaller, stay free. If it’s bigger, pay the fee, and the gap only grows as you release more.

Payout minimums matter as much as the fee when you’re small. RouteNote Free holds money until $50. Ditto sets its withdrawal minimum in British pounds, about $33 in dollars. DistroKid’s is $6, and CD Baby’s starts at $1 depending on the method. If getting any money out in your first year matters to you, those numbers are worth more attention than the price.

There’s also a middle path inside RouteNote. Its Premium plan charges $10 for a single and then $9.99 a year per release to keep 100%. That’s fine for one or two songs. Past that, it stacks up per release, and an unlimited plan like Ditto’s is simpler. CD Baby’s per-release model has the same shape, as its pricing page shows.

For most people, “distribution” means one store in particular.

Free music distribution to Spotify

Spotify doesn’t let artists upload music directly, so free music distribution to Spotify means using a distributor with a free plan, such as RouteNote Free or ONErpm. Spotify for Artists tells artists to work with a distributor to get music on Spotify, and notes that most distributors charge a fee or commission. The free options deliver to Spotify the same way paid ones do. The difference is the 15% of royalties they keep. SoundCloud’s free Basic plan doesn’t include distribution to Spotify or anywhere else, so uploading to SoundCloud for free doesn’t put your song on Spotify.

That line from Spotify’s own help page is worth taking at face value: “Work with a distributor to get your music on Spotify.” Any site promising to put your song on Spotify with no distributor involved is either a distributor by another name or not telling you something. RouteNote lists Spotify first in its store list, and ONErpm names Spotify among its distribution partners.

SoundCloud is where a lot of people get mixed up, because it’s free to upload there. Its plans page lists distribution on the paid tiers only: the Artist plan at $39 a year covers 2 tracks a month, and Artist Pro at $99 a year is unlimited. Both pay 100% of royalties. If you already pay for Artist Pro for SoundCloud features, the distribution comes with it. If you don’t, it’s not the cheapest way onto Spotify.

Our step-by-step guide on how to put music on Spotify for free walks through the upload itself.

SoundCloud isn’t the only platform people still call free.

Free music distribution platforms that stopped being free

TuneCore, Amuse, UnitedMasters, BandLab and SoundCloud all charge for distributing new releases to stores as of Sep 24, 2026. TuneCore ended its free New Artist plan on June 18, 2025. Amuse retired its free tier and now needs a subscription for new releases. UnitedMasters’ free DEBUT tier can no longer distribute music. BandLab Distribution is part of BandLab’s paid Membership, and SoundCloud’s free Basic plan doesn’t include distribution. Several still offer a free account for something else, like uploading to SoundCloud or collecting splits on UnitedMasters, which is why older guides keep listing them as free music distribution platforms. Check the date on any list you read.

The TuneCore change is the one to learn from. According to TuneCore’s update, artists on the free plan who didn’t upgrade by June 18, 2025 had their releases taken down from all stores, and they can’t upload or restore anything until they sign up for a paid plan. TuneCore also stopped free distribution to social platforms like TikTok and Instagram in May 2025. If you built your first releases on a free plan, that’s the risk: the terms can change, and the songs go with them.

The others, in brief:

• Amuse: new releases need a subscription, per its help page on royalties without a subscription.
• UnitedMasters: the free DEBUT tier can receive splits but not distribute.
• BandLab: distribution is part of Membership, at $8.25 a month on the annual plan or $14.95 month to month, and releases come down if the Membership lapses.
• SoundCloud: distribution starts on the paid Artist plan, per its plans page.

There’s one kind of “free” that does still exist at two of the seven: keeping old releases up after you stop paying. Amuse keeps music live without a subscription and takes a 25% commission. LANDR does the same for 15%. That doesn’t help with a new release, but it’s a softer landing than a takedown.

So with that list cleared away, which option fits you?

Best free music distribution for your situation

The best free music distribution for a first release you want to test is RouteNote Free, and the best option once you release regularly is a cheap paid plan such as Ditto at $19.00/yr. ONErpm is the other genuinely free choice, with the same 15% cut on store royalties and a bigger cut on video. CD Baby, at $9.99 per single, suits one song you want up for good with no yearly fee, in exchange for 9% of royalties. Pick by how many songs you’ll release in the next year and how much they’re likely to earn, then switch when the math turns.

A quick way to pick:

• One song, just to see what happens: RouteNote Free. No money down, and you can move the release to Premium later if it does well.
• One song you want online forever, and nothing after it: CD Baby. You pay once and never think about renewals.
• A song every month or two: Ditto or DistroKid. A flat fee beats 15% as soon as your songs earn anything real, and both keep 0% of store royalties.
• Every sound is yours and YouTube matters: RouteNote Free includes Content ID. Ditto only offers it on Ditto Pro.
• You split money with a producer or bandmate: Ditto and DistroKid both pay collaborators automatically. CD Baby doesn’t split payments.

If you’re asking whether DistroKid has a hidden free tier, it doesn’t. Our page on whether DistroKid is free covers what its cheapest plan includes.

Starting free isn’t a trap, as long as you know how to leave. Moving to another distributor means re-uploading the same audio with the same ISRC codes, waiting until it’s live, then taking the old release down. More on that in the distribution hub.

How we chose

TheDebutRoom checked free music distribution in four steps: we listed every service that claims a free plan and opened its own pricing and help pages; we recorded what “free” costs (commission, payout minimum, video cut, store limits); we checked whether the free plan can still send new releases to stores, since several now can’t; and we compared the free plans with the cheapest paid ones using a yearly break-even. Figures for the seven tracked distributors come from one data file, last fully checked on Sep 24, 2026. Figures for RouteNote, ONErpm, BandLab and SoundCloud are linked to each company’s page where they appear.

The picks at the top only cover the seven distributors in that data file, which is why both are paid services. No service pays for its place in the order. More on our process on the how we test page.