Best Music Distribution Services

The best music distribution service for most artists

DistroKid is the best music distribution service for most solo artists: one yearly fee of $24.99/yr covers unlimited releases, it keeps 0% of store royalties, and it pays collaborators automatically. The right pick changes with your plans. Ditto has the cheapest unlimited plan at $19.00/yr. CD Baby charges once per release with no yearly fee, which wins if you release one or two songs. TuneCore costs the same as DistroKid and includes YouTube Content ID, which pays off only if you make every sound yourself. These are US prices and policies, checked Sep 24, 2026.

Three questions sort it out for you, in this order:

1. How many songs will you release in the next two years? One or two points to CD Baby. Three or more points to an unlimited plan.
2. Did you make every sound in your songs? If yes, Content ID can earn you money on YouTube and TuneCore gets more attractive. If you use loops, sample packs or leased beats, Content ID is off the table anywhere, so don’t pay extra for it.
3. Do you split money with anyone? Every service here except CD Baby handles splits inside one account.

The first question is about money, so start there.

Best music distribution by cost

Ditto has the lowest yearly price of the seven distributors TheDebutRoom tracks, at $19.00/yr, but the cheapest distributor for you depends on how many songs you release. TheDebutRoom compares distributors by what you’d pay over two years for your real release count, because a yearly fee and a fee per release only line up once you know that number. A per-release service like CD Baby, at $9.99 per single, costs less for one or two songs and more after that, and it keeps 9% of your store royalties. Every unlimited plan here costs the same whether you release two songs or twenty. The table above sorts all seven by price, cut, payout minimum and features.

Work it out with your own count. Two singles over two years on CD Baby means two one-time fees at $9.99 per single, and nothing after that. On Ditto it means two years at $19.00/yr. Push it to six singles and CD Baby’s fees stack up while the yearly plans don’t move, and that’s before CD Baby’s cut comes out of every stream.

Watch the payout minimum on cheap plans. Ditto sets its withdrawal minimum in British pounds, about $33 in dollars, which is the highest of the seven. For a first release with a few hundred streams, that can mean waiting months before you can pull anything out. DistroKid’s is $6 and TuneCore’s starts at $1.

The fee you pay each year is half of the cost question. The other half is what happens to your songs when you stop paying it.

The best distribution for music you want to keep up

TheDebutRoom’s view is that what happens when you stop paying matters as much as the price, because it decides whether your songs stay online in five years. The seven distributors split three ways. CD Baby charges once per release, so there’s no renewal to miss. LANDR and Amuse keep releases live after you cancel and take a commission instead: 15% at LANDR and 25% at Amuse. Ditto Pro, and DistroKid’s Leave a Legacy extra for a single release, also keep music up. TuneCore takes releases down 42 days after a missed renewal, and UnitedMasters removes them when the membership ends. Pick for the artist you’ll be in five years, not just this year.

The fear here is real. You take a year off, a card expires, and the songs you worked hardest on vanish from Spotify along with every playlist spot they had. Here’s how each one handles it, from each company’s own help pages:

• CD Baby: you pay once per release. There’s no subscription to lapse.
• LANDR: releases stay live after you cancel, and LANDR takes 15% of royalties while the account is inactive. That applies to your collaborators’ split shares too.
• Amuse: music stays online without a subscription, with a 25% commission on royalties.
• Ditto: releases are at risk of removal but aren’t taken down automatically. Ditto Pro includes Release Protection, which keeps them live indefinitely.
• DistroKid: releases are removed after notice, unless you’ve added Leave a Legacy to that release.
• TuneCore: reminder emails for 35 days, then releases come down on day 42.
• UnitedMasters: releases are removed when the membership ends, and you get one year to renew before the records are deleted.

If you plan to release steadily for years, none of this comes up. If you’re not sure, a commission after cancelling (LANDR, Amuse) is a softer landing than a takedown. And if you only ever plan to put out a couple of songs, CD Baby removes the question entirely.

Staying online is one part of it. Getting paid from YouTube and paying the people you work with is the other.

Best music distribution companies for Content ID and splits

TuneCore, CD Baby, Amuse and LANDR include YouTube Content ID, DistroKid and UnitedMasters sell it as a paid add-on, and Ditto only offers it on Ditto Pro and label plans. Each one keeps a share of Content ID money: CD Baby keeps 30%, LANDR 20%, TuneCore 20%, and Amuse 15% on its entry plan. For splits, every one of the seven except CD Baby pays collaborators automatically from inside your account. Content ID only works on music you hold exclusive rights to, so songs with samples, loops or non-exclusive leased beats don’t qualify at any of these companies.

That last point decides more than the price does. YouTube’s Content ID rules require exclusive rights to the material, and DistroKid’s eligibility page spells it out: no beats, loops or library sounds you didn’t create. If that describes your songs, “Content ID included” is a feature you’ll never use, and Ditto or DistroKid cost you nothing extra for skipping it.

If every sound is yours, the add-on model gets expensive the more songs you monetize. UnitedMasters and DistroKid charge per release, so a plan with it included (TuneCore, LANDR, or Amuse’s higher tiers) usually works out cheaper. Amuse’s Content ID fee drops to zero on its higher plans.

On splits: CD Baby doesn’t split payments between accounts, so if a producer is owed a share, you pay them yourself. For how DistroKid and TuneCore differ on splits, see our DistroKid vs TuneCore comparison.

If you’re on your first release, most of this can wait. The starting question is simpler.

Best music distribution service for independent artists just starting

For an independent artist releasing a first song, the best music distribution service is a cheap unlimited plan you won’t outgrow, because none of the seven distributors TheDebutRoom tracks still offers a free plan for new releases. TuneCore ended its free New Artist plan on June 18, 2025. Amuse retired its free Start tier, and UnitedMasters’ free tier can no longer distribute music. That leaves Ditto at $19.00/yr as the cheapest unlimited option and CD Baby at $9.99 per single if you only have one song. Pick on what you’ll use in the next year. Content ID, publishing and label features can all wait.

If a site tells you a distributor is free, check the date on it. The TuneCore change, the end of Amuse’s free tier and the UnitedMasters tier change all happened recently, and older roundups haven’t caught up.

A quick way to pick, if you’re starting from zero:

• One song, maybe two, then see: CD Baby.
• A song every month or two, solo: DistroKid or Ditto. Ditto is cheaper per year, while DistroKid has the lower payout minimum and a way to keep songs up later.
• Every sound is yours and YouTube matters: TuneCore.
• You also want mastering in the same account: LANDR, though mastering isn’t in its basic distribution plan.

Switching later is possible. You re-upload with the same ISRC codes, which carry your stream counts over, and take the old release down in the order the new distributor asks for, so this isn’t a forever decision. More on that in the distribution hub.

How we chose

TheDebutRoom ranks distributors in four steps: we record each service’s price, cut, payout minimum, Content ID and splits from its own pricing and help pages; we work out the two-year cost for common release counts; we check what happens to releases when you stop paying; and we mark anything we couldn’t confirm. All figures on this page come from one data file, last fully checked on Sep 24, 2026, so the picks, the table and the text can’t disagree. No distributor pays for its place in the order.

Three entries are marked with an asterisk in the table: UnitedMasters, Amuse and LANDR. Their official pages disagree with each other on some numbers (store counts, and LANDR’s exact yearly price), so we’ve shown what we could confirm and flagged the rest. More on our process on the how we test page.