UnitedMasters vs DistroKid: which one should you use?

UnitedMasters vs DistroKid: the short answer

UnitedMasters is the better pick if you want the cheaper plan and split money with producers, and DistroKid is the better pick if you want your songs to stay up after you stop paying. UnitedMasters DEBUT+ costs $19.99/yr and DistroKid Musician costs $24.99/yr, and both keep 0% of store royalties. UnitedMasters collaborators can collect their share with a free account, while DistroKid collaborators need a DistroKid subscription. DistroKid sells an extra called Leave a Legacy that keeps a release live after your plan ends. UnitedMasters’ free tier no longer distributes music. This covers US plans and policies as checked on Sep 24, 2026.

Two questions sort most people. First: is anyone else on your tracks? A producer on a percentage, a featured rapper, a bandmate. If yes, the collaborator rules below probably matter more to you than the price.

Second: do you see yourself still paying a distributor in five years? If you’re not sure, read the section on what happens when you stop paying before you pick. It’s the one place DistroKid clearly pulls ahead.

The price gap is small, so it helps to see what each plan actually buys.

UnitedMasters vs DistroKid pricing

UnitedMasters DEBUT+ costs $19.99/yr and DistroKid Musician costs $24.99/yr. Both cover unlimited releases, and both pay you 100% of store royalties, so DEBUT+ is the cheaper way to get unlimited distribution by a few dollars a year. The next plan up on UnitedMasters is SELECT, which adds sync licensing and brand deals. The next plan up on DistroKid is Musician Plus, which adds a second artist name and more release controls. TheDebutRoom compares distributors by what you’d pay over two years for the number of songs you actually plan to release. With two flat yearly fees and no per-song charges, UnitedMasters DEBUT+ stays cheaper at any release count until you add extras.

Over two years the base plans differ by about the price of a sandwich. That’s real money when you’re starting out, but it’s not a reason on its own to pick either one. The extras, the collaborator rules and the stop-paying policy move the total more.

The upgrade paths go in different directions. SELECT costs $59.99 a year and, per UnitedMasters’ plan comparison, adds exclusive brand and sync deals and 2 free mastered tracks at signup. Above that sits PARTNER, which is invite-only. DistroKid Musician Plus is about release features instead: a second artist name, synced lyrics, daily stats and custom release dates. Our DistroKid pricing breakdown has every DistroKid plan and extra with current prices.

One number we can’t give you cleanly is the store count. UnitedMasters’ pricing page and its help center list of music services disagree, so treat the store count in the table as a rough figure. Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube are on every list. If you need a specific smaller store, check the help center list before you pay.

The cheapest UnitedMasters plan used to cost nothing. That changed.

Is UnitedMasters still free?

No. UnitedMasters’ free DEBUT tier stopped distributing music on Oct 29, 2025, and releases from DEBUT accounts were queued for takedown from every platform, including Spotify, Apple Music, Instagram and TikTok. To release music on UnitedMasters today you need a paid plan: DEBUT+ or SELECT. A free account still works for two things: accepting Split Pay invitations as a collaborator and keeping a wallet to cash out earnings. DistroKid doesn’t have a free plan either. Comparisons that call UnitedMasters the free option next to DistroKid are describing the old DEBUT tier, which kept 10% of your earnings in exchange for no fee.

The details are on UnitedMasters’ DEBUT Sunset page, and its releases-per-tier page now says DEBUT users can no longer distribute music. The old split is still documented on the DEBUT royalty split page: 90% to you, 10% to UnitedMasters.

If you had songs out on DEBUT and they vanished, here’s the part that matters right now. UnitedMasters gave DEBUT accounts a one-year grace period that runs until Oct 28, 2026. Upgrade before then and your releases are reinstated automatically, usually within a day or so. Miss it and you’re starting over with a fresh upload, wherever you go.

If you’re choosing between staying on UnitedMasters and moving to DistroKid, upgrading first is the safer order. It gets your songs back up with their history, and you can still move them properly later.

For every distributor that still has a free option, and what it costs you instead, see our guide to free music distribution.

Losing releases when the plan ends isn’t only a DEBUT problem, though.

What happens to your music if you stop paying

TheDebutRoom’s view is that DistroKid is the safer home for songs you want online for good, because it sells a way to keep a release up after you stop paying and UnitedMasters doesn’t. When a UnitedMasters membership lapses, your releases are taken down from all music services. Resubscribe within one year and they’re redelivered within 24 to 48 hours, with their streams, playlisting and saves intact. After that year, UnitedMasters deletes your data and you’d have to upload everything again. DistroKid sends notice and then removes your releases, unless a release has the Leave a Legacy extra, which keeps that release live even if the subscription ends.

This is the scenario that actually keeps people up at night. You take a year off, the card on file expires, and the song your friends added to their playlists disappears from Spotify.

On UnitedMasters, the lapsed-payment page is clear about the order: takedown first, then a one-year window to come back. The window is generous. Coming back inside it means you lose the time offline, not the song’s history. Coming back after it means new uploads, and any Content ID you bought for those releases has to be bought again.

On DistroKid, the lapsed-fee policy gives you notice first, and you keep access to your account and earnings. The difference is Leave a Legacy. Add it to a release and that release stays up with no subscription behind it.

So sort your songs before you choose:

1. Songs you’re done with. An old project, a single you’re proud of but won’t promote. You want these up without a yearly bill. On DistroKid, that’s Leave a Legacy on each one. On UnitedMasters, there’s no equivalent, so they stay up only as long as you pay.
2. Songs you’re still building on. Anything you’ll follow up soon. These ride on whichever plan you’re paying for anyway.

If the first pile is empty, this whole section is a tie and you can pick on price.

Staying up is one worry. Getting a producer paid is the next.

Splits: paying producers and collaborators

UnitedMasters is the easier choice when you share money with collaborators, because they can collect their Split Pay share with a free UnitedMasters account, while DistroKid requires each collaborator to have a DistroKid subscription to accept and withdraw their share. On UnitedMasters, you need a paid plan to send split invitations, and collaborators only need an account to accept them. UnitedMasters takes no commission on royalties a collaborator earns from a split, whatever plan they’re on. On DistroKid, invited collaborators get a 50% discount on a subscription, or you can pay a yearly fee to cover them yourself. Both pay each person’s share automatically, so nobody has to do the math or send a bank transfer.

Picture the usual case. Your producer gets 30% of the master and has no interest in paying a distributor. On UnitedMasters they make a free account, accept your invite and collect, per the help page on collaborator memberships. On DistroKid, someone pays every year so that producer can collect, either them at the discount or you on their behalf, per DistroKid’s Splits page. With three or four regular collaborators, that yearly cost adds up faster than the gap between the two base plans.

There’s one catch on the free side. A collaborator without a paid UnitedMasters membership can only cash out once their wallet reaches $20. On a small song, a producer’s 30% can take a while to get there. It’s their money either way. It just waits.

DistroKid has one feature UnitedMasters’ help center doesn’t describe: a recoupment, which pays a collaborator a fixed amount before the percentages start. Handy if a producer charged you for the beat and wants that back first.

Splits decide who gets what. Next is how fast it reaches you.

Royalties and payouts

Neither UnitedMasters nor DistroKid takes a cut of store royalties on paid plans: both keep 0% of your streaming and download royalties. The difference is the withdrawal floor. UnitedMasters has no minimum for paid members beyond having enough in your wallet to cover payment processing fees, while DistroKid needs at least $6 owed to you before it processes a withdrawal. UnitedMasters pays out by bank transfer or PayPal. Its wallet updates when music services report, usually 45 to 60 days after the end of the month the streams happened. The sources are UnitedMasters’ help page on getting paid and DistroKid’s help page on its minimum payout threshold.

The reporting lag is the same idea on every distributor: stores pay late, so your first streams show up in your balance a couple of months after release day. UnitedMasters’ payout page states it plainly, so don’t panic when the wallet reads zero in week three.

On DistroKid, $6 is the floor, and some withdrawal methods add a fee your balance has to cover too. None of that money is lost. It sits there until you clear the bar.

If you release often, you’ll clear either floor fast and can skip this row of the table. It matters most in year one, when a few dollars is all there is.

Store royalties are one pot. YouTube money is another.

YouTube Content ID

UnitedMasters and DistroKid both sell YouTube Content ID as a paid extra per release, and both keep 20% of what it collects. UnitedMasters charges an opt-in fee per release on DEBUT+, SELECT and PARTNER, regardless of how many tracks are on it. DistroKid sells Content ID inside its Social Media Pack, charged yearly per release. Neither can register a song YouTube won’t accept: YouTube only accepts material the owner holds exclusive rights to. DistroKid’s rules name beats, loops and free sounds from GarageBand, Ableton, Logic and FL Studio as disqualifying. If every sound in a song is yours, compare the two fees for the number of songs you’d monetize. If it isn’t, Content ID can’t pay you on either service.

The prices, from each company’s help center: UnitedMasters charges $4.99 per release to opt in to Content ID, or $7.99 per release as a bundle that also covers Meta and TikTok. DistroKid’s Social Media Pack is $4.95 per single or $14.95 per album, every year. On a song you keep monetized for years, DistroKid’s yearly charge adds up and UnitedMasters’ opt-in doesn’t appear to.

The eligibility rule is the bigger deal. YouTube’s eligibility page says copyright owners “must have the exclusive rights to the material that’s evaluated.” A beat you leased on non-exclusive terms fails that, because the producer sold the same beat to other people. Register it anyway and Content ID can start claiming other creators’ videos that use the same beat, and those disputes land on you. DistroKid’s eligibility page spells out the beats-and-loops rule in detail.

Before you pay for Content ID on either service, go track by track:

1. Did you record or build every sound yourself?
2. If there’s a sample, a loop or a beat, do you have an exclusive license in writing?
3. Has anyone else released a version that uses its parts?

A no to the first two, or a yes to the third, means leave that song out.

Content ID pays for the recording. Sync and publishing pay in other ways.

Sync deals and publishing

UnitedMasters offers sync licensing and brand deals on its SELECT plan, while DistroKid offers publishing administration through DistroKid Publishing to artists with 5 to 50 songs distributed through DistroKid. On SELECT, you can submit music for placements in TV, film, games and ads, and apply for brand partnership opportunities. DEBUT+ doesn’t include either. UnitedMasters also runs publishing administration, but it’s invite-only for artists it distributes. DistroKid Publishing registers your songs with a performing rights organization and collection societies and pays into the same account as your streams. Neither feature is a reason to pick a distributor for your first single. Both are reasons to think about where you’ll be two years in.

UnitedMasters’ sync FAQ is worth reading before you upgrade for sync alone. Some placements pay you a pro rata share of a company’s licensing subscription rather than a one-off fee, and some are promotional placements that pay nothing, including anything tied to UnitedMasters’ own marketing. Payment arrives within 30 days after the month your song was licensed. A placement can still be worth more than the money, but go in knowing the check might be small.

The SELECT plan page lists what the upgrade adds. If you’d pay the difference over DEBUT+ for one shot at a sync pitch, it’s a fair bet. If you’d rather keep that money for mixing, it can wait.

DistroKid Publishing keeps your copyright with you, and the 5 to 50 song rule means it’s for artists a few releases in. UnitedMasters’ publishing admin only comes to you if UnitedMasters reaches out.

If you want the full picture on DistroKid before you commit, our DistroKid review covers the upload flow and support. If neither of these two feels right, the roundup of the best music distribution services and the rest of our distribution guides cover every option we track.