TuneCore - Everything You Need To Know

 

Are you looking to releases your new single or album on Spotify? Apple Music? Instagram or TikTok? Or everywhere!

You might already know that you'll need a music distributor to release your music on all the streaming platforms and TuneCore might be the best option for you.

TuneCore is a music distributor that has been around for a long time. There's a lot of advantages going with TuneCore. However, like anything there are some disadvantages too. On top of this, there is a lot of nuance the comes with the relationship between your needs (as an indie artist) and the value of a music distributor.

 

 

My promise to you is that I'll clear the air around TuneCore music distribution so you can find out if it's the right platform for you.

I am an indie musician too and when I first starting doing my research on different distributors, I was focused on learning specific parts to each distributor to help me make my decision. Therefore, I will structure this post to go over these 5 important topics. 

• Distribution
• Cost
• Royalties
• Features / Extras
• Customer Service

Before I dive into all the these topics, let's first get on the same page as to what a music distributor is. If you already know what a music distributor is, which you might, then feel free to skip to the following section where I dive into a background of TuneCore. At the end of these topics, I will share a bit more about my experience as an indie musician and some things to consider for yourself and your career as well, including:

• Your Artist Career - What Are Your Needs?
• Final Thoughts On TuneCore

 

What Is A Music Distributor?

A music distributor is a company that will take a song (single) or group of songs (album) and upload to the streaming service of your choice. For example, let's take Spotify as our streaming service.

Let's assume you'd like to release a single on Spotify and have an artist page that looks similar to mine, Charles Cleyn.

In order to get this verified artist page, you'll need to upload your music to a distributor. The music distributor will take your information, for example, your artist name, your song, artwork, songwriting credits, etc, and upload this to Spotify (or any other platform of your choice). 

In return, you pay them a fee to do this. The fee can range from an annual fee to a fee per song. I'll get into more of fees later when I talk specifically about the cost of TuneCore.

On top of this, which is very important, the music distributor will pay you for the streams you get on each streaming service. For instance, my song Don't Start Now on Spotify has received 118,000 streams (at the time of this post). Based on the current royalty payout on Spotify, which is: $0.004. That means TuneCore will send me $472.

In a nutshell, you give the music distributor your song. They give you your royalties. Think of them as the middleman. 

 

 

Unfortunately, there is no way to go directly to Spotify, or any other streaming service, and upload your music directly to them. Perhaps we'll see this change in the future. Music distribution is a big business and I think it's worthwhile for Spotify to get involved with it.

Now that we're on the same page with what a music distributor is, let's dive into TuneCore.

 

TuneCore Background

TuneCore was founded in 2005 out of Brooklyn, New York. One of the oldest music distributors there is, they started helping artists not only to sell their music but to start getting into online streaming too.

Do you remember 2005? That was a long time ago and iTunes + downloaded music remained King. Remember services like Napster or LimeWire?

 

 

Spotify wasn't even around yet, they were founded the following year in 2006. All this to say, TuneCore has been around the block and they've seen how the music industry has gone from selling CD's to online streaming. That's not to say that experience is everything. Being around too long can some times present problems by being too big and carrying unnecessary baggage. 

 

 

To give you an idea on the TuneCore scale, in the United States, TuneCore claims a share of 10% out of the 20 million songs on iTunes and almost 4% of all digital sales. That's a whopping 2 million songs on TuneCore. That's a lot of artists. Let's find out if you should follow in the footsteps of the 2 million songs from artists already on TuneCore.

 

 

TuneCore Distribution

TuneCore distributes to the most popular streaming services around the world. If you're considering TuneCore as your main distributor then you can be sure it will upload your music to the streaming service of your choice. 

On the TuneCore website, they claim to distribute music to over 150+ stores. I'm sure you'll find the streaming service you're looking for on this site.

 

 

With all this said, it's not like TuneCore has this amazing competitive advantage to all other music distributors. Let's take DistroKid as another example. They equally distribute to all the major streaming services. So does Amuse, United Masters, CD Baby, and most others. By the way, here's a great comparison on TuneCore vs DistroKid.

You're going to find a difference between the distributors when you are looking for a very niche streaming store. For instance, let's say you'd like to distribute your music to a local Spanish music platform. Perhaps you've built a following in Spain. Double check to see if it's on the TuneCore list for available streaming stores.

Last thing I'll mention on distribution is the pricing plan. TuneCore has recently changed their pricing model and now offers a free plan. This is great opportunity if you'd like to distribute your music on social media. However, with this free plan, you cannot distribute your music on the major stores like Spotify and Apple Music. Check out the TuneCore pricing page for more details. If you do want free distribution to the major streaming platforms, here are 5 free music distributors you might be interested in. 

 

TuneCore Cost

Let's get into the nitty gritty of the TuneCore cost. This cost of the distributor should be something important to look at, I know it was for me. In today's music distribution landscape, the trend is to offer an annual fee which includes unlimited music distribution. This is a model that TuneCore follows as well. 

A decade ago, typically you would pay per single or per album for music distribution. Actually, CD Baby, still abides by this pricing plan. However, I do think that is hurting them since the unlimited music model is much more valuable for a modern indie artist releasing lots of music.

Take note of the TuneCore pricing plan below.

 

 

You'll immediately notice from the TuneCore pricing page that there are four options. Take notice of the free signup, that's pretty good!

Free

For cost, this is the best option, you can't beat free. You could also understand that if something is free though that it will come with some limitations.

These include limiting your distribution to social media platforms. These social platforms include TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube. You may have been hoping for Spotify and Apple Music on there but nope, you'l have to start paying an annual fee if you'd like to distribute on these platforms. There is a case though for free distribution that includes TikTok, I make a solid case for this when I talk about uploading music to TikTok. It's definitely a music platform that you don't want to ignore.

 

 

Another big piece to note on the TuneCore free plan is not being able to retain 100% of your music royalties. In return for free music distribution, you'll have to give TuneCore a 20% cut of your music royalties. You give some, you get some.

 

Rising Artist

The rising artist plan is a great option for an indie artist who is just getting started. You will need to pay $14.99 per year for this plan. The big benefits of this plan include unlimited music releases to all major platforms, having the ability to schedule your own release date, keeping 100% of your royalties, and 3 business day response time for customer service requests. If you're just a beginner then this is the TuneCore plan that I would recommend.

 

BreakOut Artist 

The breakout artist is the mid-tier level plan that is "good but not great". It will cost you $29.99/year and you get everything that you would in the rising artist plan.

You'll notice from the pricing grid that you do receive a few more benefits than the rising artist plan though. These include store automator (that will list your songs on newly added music streaming platforms), daily trend reports, and cover art creator.

See what I mean by good not great? For me, as an indie artists, these benefits don't mean that much to me. Of course, seeing daily trend reports is great but you also get this trending streaming data on your Spotify for Artist profile and your Apple Music Artist profile too. The cover art creator is not something I'm really interested in because I prefer to design my own artwork or hire someone else to do it. On the other hand, this could be something you're very interested in. In general, it seems like the artwork created by the generator is also good, "not great".

 

 

Overall, if you're a serious artist and you consider this your career, I would recommend looking at the next level up. The Professional artist which I'll talk about next.

 

Professional Plan

The name is what you get. This plan is for you if you consider yourself a career musician or a professional. For me, at the beginning of my career, I was just testing the waters and I didn't consider myself a professional yet, I also didn't need the bells and whistles that the professional plan offers.

When you're just beginning, it's harder to look into the future. However, when you're a professional, you're committed to the craft and you need a distributor that can support you. The professional plan is going to cost you $49.99 per year. To put this into perspective, that is not a lot of money if you are releasing 1 song per month.

The big benefits of the professional plan to me include promotional opportunities, access to exclusive partnerships, 1 business day response time customer service, and the ability to have multiple artists. Have you thought about starting another side project to release music? Then this would be a good plan for you since you can add an additional artist at $14.99. For example, not only do I have my Charles Cleyn project but I also release music for multiple projects, for instance, Palma, is my side project that I release chill house music. You can do the same. 

On top of this, you can get a turnaround response time of one business day if you have any questions. It's nice to know that you will actually get a response, and quickly, when you have a problem. You might think I'm so passionate about the professional artist plan and I am because this plan fits my needs as an artist. They might not fit yours. It will depend on where you are with your music career and also what needs you have. I'll talk more about this in a little bit.

 

TuneCore Royalties

Let's talk about you getting paid. TuneCore will give you 100% of your music royalties that you earn from all streaming platforms. The only case they will not give you 100% of royalties, is if you sign up to their free plan. In this case, you will give them 20% of the royalties you earn.

 

 

If you're deciding between TuneCore or any other music distributor, it's important to know that not all music distributors pay equal amounts. Most music distributors have their own dollar value per stream. For example, look at the payout per music distributor from Spotify and Apple Music below. This data has been accumulate from Ari's Take. Here is full distributor payout post which has more data on streaming royalties across different locations.

According to Ari's take, this is the Spotify US 2020 average per stream rate. Take note of where TuneCore is.

 

 

 

TuneCore sits in the top position for an average stream payout. Let's take a look at what the average payouts are for Apple Music:

 

 

 

TuneCore comes in at a close second tie with DistroKid only to fall short of Horus Music which posts a 0.008 on Apple Music. What I find also very interesting from these charts is, in general, Spotify pays lower per stream than Apple Music. Call it greed? I'm not sure about all the details under the hood.

Going Deeper On Stream Payouts

Let's ask the more serious question and put some context around these numbers.

Let's take two examples, let's assume you release a song on Spotify and get 1,000 streams, let's also do an example where you get 20,000,000 streams. What's the payout difference if you were to release your music with TuneCore vs United Masters.

For 1,000 streams, the payout on TuneCore would be:

1,000 x 0.04 = $4.00

For 1,000 streams, the payout on United Masters would be:

1,000 x 0.0031 = $3.10

As you can see from the numbers above. Both are nothing to write home about. You can barely get a grandé cappuccino from Starbucks with either TuneCore or United Masters. My point is, if you're just a beginner and you're more curious on testing the waters with a music distributor then the payout per stream should not be a huge concern for you. It starts to become more important on a large scale. Let's take another example below.

For 20,000,000 streams, the payout on TuneCore would be:

20,000,000 x 0.04 = $80,000

For 20,000,000 streams, the payout on United Masters would be:

20,000,000 x 0.0031 = $62,000

If you released the same song on both TuneCore and United Masters with 20,000,000 streams then you would receive $18,000 more on TuneCore. Now that's a difference to write home about.

 

 

Money matters, there's no question about it, but how many streams will your song get? In general, TuneCore has a great history of paying their artists well on both Apple Music and Spotify. If you choose TuneCore, you'll be in good hands.

 

 

TuneCore Features and Extras

TuneCore offers a variety of extra features on their platform and I'll go over the biggest ones that make a difference if you're still deciding on releasing with TuneCore.

 

TuneCore Music Publishing

Music publishing is by far the biggest feature TuneCore offers. However, it's not included in any of their pricing plans. It's a separate paid feature. 

 

 

What Is Music Publishing? 

Music publishing is something universal that most professional musicians would have. Traditionally, publishing would happen in-house by your label or publisher. However, in the modern music industry you can have it done by your music distributor, like TuneCore, or hire out another publisher yourself. 

Music publishers help you collect your royalties for your songs. They have relationships with all other PRO (performance rights organizations) and they work tirelessly to get all the money that you deserve when your song is played around the world. This is considered admin publishing.

Beyond that, publishers are also interested in the success of your song being played in sync. For instance, TV, Netflix, or Movies. Therefore, music publishers will pitch your songs to music supervisors, indie films, or directors, to try and land sync placements.

 

 

TuneCore offers this service and will pitch your song for placements in film, TV, and commercials. It's also in their interest to support you as an artist and make you successful. Keep in mind though, there are millions of artists on TuneCore, therefore, they cannot give everyone the same treatment.

How much is TuneCore Music Publishing?

TuneCore Music Publishing has a one time fee of $75. On top of that there are two types of commission. You have royalty commission and sync commission. Royalty commission is 15%, these are the royalties that they collect from streaming. Sync commission is 20%, these are the royalties that are collected from TV, movies, or commercials. Though, only the placements they help you with.

 

TuneCore Rewards

You can think of TuneCore rewards as a platform to help you with everything about being an indie musician. You can watch master classes, attend VIP sessions, have access to playlist pitching and marketing services, You can earn points through this rewards program too that can give you more access to expert sessions, master classes, and more.

 

 

Here is a great video that talk more about the TuneCore Rewards program. If you'd like to attend the TuneCore Rewards master class, it is included in all of the pricing plans. Even the free plan.

 

TuneCore Artist Advice

The artist advice platform on TuneCore is like an artist hub. To be completely honest, I'm not sure how different it is to their TuneCore rewards service. On both rewards and artist advice they talk about guides, master classes, and help with your music career. Essentially, with TuneCore Artist Advice, you can download unlimited guides and watch tons of videos that would help you with all your unanswered questions.

 

 

If you'd like to be involved in the TuneCore Artist Advice then you must sign up with the Professional plan.

 

Cover Song Licensing

Yes, TuneCore can help you release a cover song. They will help you get the proper license to cover a song and to manage all the royalties that would be collected. You can focus on the song production of the cover and let TuneCore manage all the license work.

 

 

Custom Artist Website

TuneCore has a partnership with bandzoogle that can help you create a website for your career as an artist.

 

 

I recommend building a website that showcases your story, your music, tour dates, and anything else you'd like to share. It will help make you look more professional. If you don't already have an artist website, then TuneCore makes it easy.

 

TuneCore Social

TuneCore also has their own social media management platform that can help you schedule and post content to your social media. It can be a great tool if you'd like to bundle your social media content and schedule it. Instead of trying to remember to do it every day.

 

 

You can learn more about TuneCore social here. You'll notice though that it's not included in any of the pricing plans. However, there is a limited free version you can try.

 

Should You Base Your Decision On Features?

In my honest opinion, this will come down to your needs as an artist. For example, some artists only release cover music. Therefore, the cover licensing feature is super important. On the other hand, you might just care about getting your releases only on Spotify. You don't care about global royalties, publishing, licensing, or any of that. It will come down to what style of artist you are and what is the trajectory of your career. I talk about more about this in my walkthrough video of TuneCore.

 

TuneCore Customer Service

This is a big one for me because it's always nice to know that you can get answers to your questions. Especially at the beginning of your artist career or your first single launch, there's a lot of questions you might have. How do I get a Spotify verified artist profile? When will my release go live? When will I get paid? I misspelled my artist name, what do I do? You see what I mean. Questions will come up for you too.

 

 

One thing that I really like about TuneCore is they guarantee customer service response times. I haven't seen this with many other music distributors. Even with the free plan, you will get customer support. All the way up to the professional plan where you get a 1 business day response time turnaround. That's like having your own personal assistant!

 

Your Career As An Indie Artist - What Are Your Needs

There has been a lot of information in this post and you might even feel more overwhelmed if TuneCore is right for you or not. That's why I wanted to have a section that addressed your needs as an artist. Your career, your music, your needs, will affect what music distributor you should go with. 

 

 

After all, every music distributor will release your music to almost all the same streaming services. You have to ask yourself, what are they competing on? Well, they're mostly competing on price and on features. This is exactly what you'll need to know for yourself.

If price is the biggest deal for you then go with the cheapest music distributor. TuneCore has the free option, that's pretty cheap. If price doesn't matter then you can dig in on the features. What features would be helpful to use an an indie artist? Write them out!

 

 

Here's some questions that you might consider when you're looking at TuneCore or other music distributors:

• Do you need cover licensing?

• Do you need publishing?

• Do you need help with a website?

• Do you need social media help?

• What about playlisting help?

• Or help with creating a landing page for your music?

• Or even help with your facebook on instagram ads campaigns?

• Do you like to attend classes and learn from experts?

You can see where I'm going with this. There are a ton of questions that you could answer while going through all the features that TuneCore offers but do you need all of them? Yes, you might but no you might not. Also, it's totally fine if you don't need them too. I've released a lot of music with TuneCore and I haven't used everything they have to offer. That's okay too.

 

 

The most important part here is, ask yourself, what are the things that are important to you as an artist and what do you need to help support your artist career. Look for the music distributor that can help you with this. I can recommend TuneCore as a good option.

 

Final Thoughts On TuneCore

I can speak highly of TuneCore as a good music distributor that could be a good fit for you. I'm also a realist and I get that not everything is perfect. I can't sit here and say TuneCore is AMAZING and you should totally get it. It's a solid music distributor, they have been innovative over their long history in the business and they've created a strong platform to help indie artists. 

Do your research and feel free to ask me any questions in a Youtube comment. Also, if you want to get started right now then feel free to use my 20% discount link.