Dear Upcoming Artiste… Here are the things to know about Digital Distribution which entails getting your song on digital stores like Spotify, iTunes, Apple, Boomplay, Music Plus, Cloud 9 etc.
I’ve received a number of DMs from Upcoming Artistes about getting their
music on digital platforms like iTunes, Spotify, Apple Music and the likes. It’s hard breaking to them that it’s more than a walk in the park unlike putting songs on Soundcloud, ReverbNation and the likes. This is a lengthy blog, we’d discuss it in two parts.
The importance of having your music on these platforms is unmatched as it’s a crucial part of promotion, helping your music with more reach while you get paid; interesting, huh? Just as the world is now Digital and people spend more time online, having your music on these platforms does aid visibility by probably suggesting your songs to people based on what they listen to. Hence the importance of “Metadata” (I’ll discuss this next). It does ease exposure to potential listeners.
Here’s letting you know that it’s not something you can do your own and you must’ve put in an amount of work in your music and network before your song gets up there unless you can hire and pay a digital distributor to help you out if you want it so bad. Digital channels are the in-thing. They presently generate a good percentage of revenue for the music industry. Before your music makes it to these platforms, it must undergo due scrutiny from the platform. These platforms rely on the network of licensed companies or agents (distributors) to deliver majority of the content as they’re focused on selling the music. The content (music) which is provided by the artiste/record label (content provider). The distributor is the middleman between these platforms and the artiste.
Remember back in the day, the agents ensuring music & albums get to local stores and points of purchase. Now that music is better consumed online, some of these agents have branched into digital distribution while there’s a new set who focus solely on digital music distribution.
Their job is to supply music to different digital music platforms and they can also be called “aggregators”.
These music platforms prefer dealing with licensed distributors for music delivery and their submission requirements differ. The submission criteria for iTunes may not tally with Spotify’s.
It’s a no-brainer that digital distribution has way less operational cost than physical distribution, unlike the later where there’s physical transportation of the copies to music stores and points of purchase. The digital process pretty much involves receiving music and sending out to the online stores, issuance of financial statement to the submitter, receiving the revenue generated through sales or streams and all that jazz.
The biggest cost made during digital distribution are the fees paid on submission to the stores and some recurring costs. The aggregators can have multiple customers (Artistes) they do distribution for however. The distributor makes money either by receiving a flat fee from the artiste for the submitted content or by taking a percentage of royalties on sales.
The said average royalty cut for a distributor is 15%. If the music doesn’t sell, nobody makes money and that’s why some charge an upfront fee to cover the hassles of handling submission of the content.
Spotify is not available in Nigeria so you can imagine how little they would make if they distribute for a relatively known artiste, hence demanding an upfront fee. Do the math.
If they opt for percentage cut, they’re not ‘guaranteed’ to make money though.
Apple and Spotify however pay out about 70% income from streaming while they retain 30% for selling the music. The 70% is then shared between the distributor and the record label.
If the distributor’s percentage cut is 15%, the record label goes with 55% which is then also shared with the Artiste. Now, when 55% is shared based on the ratio of the deal between the Artiste and the label, probably 60:40.
The artiste pays his manager about 15% from his cut of the 40% he receives from the label and that’s just about it.
For Nigerian streaming platforms, we’d talk about that in the second part because it’s maddening.
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