Thoughts On Distrokid
And putting my music out to the world
Last year I released my first album of original music on Bandcamp. A few people listened to it, and I’m grateful for them. But it never made it onto the big music services. At the time I wasn’t interested in going that far with it.
Time passed and I decided to put Morning Worship 1 out to the larger world. There are a ton of different services out there for it, but I settled on using Distrokid.
It’s basically $20/year to let me publish my music on all the major online stores and streaming services. The service has been around for a long time and well, it seemed like it was worth a try.
The initial experience was good. The user experience is pretty nice. No major complaints. After all, it’s a service to fill out a bunch of digital paperwork and upload a few files. At least they didn’t make it crazy!
One important thing Distrokid does is collect the money from all these services to pay me. So far I’m just uploading my first thing and I have zero audience, so I can’t speak much to the getting paid part of Distrokid. I assume it works fine. They have a good reputation from what I’ve seen online.
The one bit that is somewhat annoying is the upsells. There is a bit of a “nickel and dime” thing going on where they’d like to sell me additional features, upsells, add ons, and more services. That’s great for other people I guess, but I am avoiding all of that.
I wish they didn’t have so many upsells, but I guess I’m grateful for the option to be on the cheap plan that just gets my music to a larger potential audience. Which brings me to my larger point.
Uploading Music To The Planet!
It is amazing that we live in a time where someone like me can just create music in my house, record it on some cheap gear, and publish it to the entire planet of billions of people. Sure, not everyone is going to listen, but that’s still amazing. Even 30 years ago that kind of potential reach was impossible unless you were a signed artist somewhere.
Distrokid isn’t alone in their ability to provide this service, but when you really consider it, it’s mind boggling.
Now, I don’t believe I’m going to find fortune or fame with my music. That’s not really the point in this exercise. (In fact, there is no money in music, but that’s another rant)
The purpose of doing this is to share my art. This is an album of Christian worship music. The music came to me as part of my own spontaneous morning worship sessions. Perhaps that will help other people worship God too. There is no great plan beyond that.
And for that end purpose, Distrokid I believe was the right choice. Once the album is live on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, etc. I guess I’ll know more about how well Distrokid works.
That’s all for now!
-Brian