Distrokid vs. RouteNote Comparison
Distrokid seemingly offer a standard yearly plan to get your music to stores and streaming services, but basic features offered by RouteNote are hidden behind extra fees.
For $19.99/year, Distrokid will send your music to stores and streaming services such as Spotify, iTunes, Amazon, Tidal and YouTube.
They offer features such as ‘splits’ to share percentages of revenue, distribution of cover songs, Spotify and Apple Music verified artist pages, YouTube artist channel and Spotify pre-saves. All of these features and more are offered by RouteNote at no extra cost.
Distrokid Accounts
Musician
- 1 band/artist, $19.99/year
- 1 artist/band name
- Upload unlimited songs
- Spotify verified checkmark
Musician Plus
- 2 bands/artists, $35.99/year
- All above, plus:
- Customizable label name
- Customizable release date
- Customizable preorder date
- Customizable iTunes pricing
Ultimate
- 5 bands/artists, $79.99/year
- 10 bands/artists, $139.99/year
- 20 bands/artists, $239.99/year
- 50 bands/artists, $599.99/year
- 100 bands/artists, $1199.99/year
- All above
Before even visiting the site, Distrokid require a yearly payment be set up, with no free trial available. Because of this, additional feature pricing info is limited.
Hidden Fees
As stated in a previous article, many basic Distrokid features are priced on top of the base subscription.
- Shazam & iPhone Siri – $0.99 per song/year
- YouTube Money – $4.95 per single/year, $14.95 per album & 20% revenue: Upload your music to YouTube’s Content ID system
- Store Maximizer – $7.95: Automatically deliver music to new stores and streaming services
- Leave a Legacy – $29 per single, $49 per album of 2+ tracks: Distokid never delete your release, unless you ask them to
RouteNote
- Split revenue
- Cover songs
- Spotify & Apple Music verified artist pages
- YouTube artist channel
- Spotify pre-saves
- Unlimited artists/band names
- Upload unlimited songs
- Customizable label name
- Customizable release date
- Customizable preorder date
- Customizable iTunes pricing
- Shazam
- YouTube Content ID
- Your music is sent to new stores and streaming services as and when they’re added at no extra cost (unless you opt-out)
- Your music will never be deleted, unless you ask us to
All of these features and many more are offered by RouteNote for free, with no hidden fees or recurring cost. Artists keep 85% of revenue, or choose Premium Distribution to keep 100% of the revenue.
Asking for $19.99 upfront without clearly laying out the features and limitation is an unfair business model for small artists and labels.
Many labels manage upwards of one hundred artists. $1200 per year for this benefit is unsustainable for independent labels.