TuneCore vs Make Waves [Honest Review From An Indie Musician]

Making music is one thing, publishing it with the world is another. Spending tireless hours perfecting your lyrics, recording flawless guitar tracks, mixing, and mastering your project can only pay off if you take the right steps toward sharing your music with the world.

One of the biggest steps in your career as a musician is uploading your catalog on major streaming platforms. As you might already know, Spotify and Apple Music do not have portals for independent artists to upload their work directly. Instead, musicians have to sign up with a music distributor to take care of that task for them.

In recent years, many new companies have appeared in this market promising to help independent musicians receive the recognition they deserve. Because of this, choosing the right music distributor that fits your goals and budget can be tricky.

As one of the pioneers of this business, TuneCore has become the primary choice of hundreds of thousands of artists worldwide for sharing music. Another distributor that you might have heard of is Make Waves. Although not as big as TuneCore, they offer interesting services that can persuade artists on a tight budget to choose it over the competition. In this post, I’m going to review both distributors and tell you which one is the right fit for you.

In case you decide to go for one of TuneCore’s paid plans, you can use my referral link to get 20% off on checkout.

What Does Make Waves Offer? (Pros & Cons)

With Make Waves, you get to upload as many tracks as you want, under as many artist names as you wish, to all the major platforms like Spotify, Apple, YouTube, TikTok, Tidal, and many more. Moreover, Make Waves automatically creates YouTube content IDs and ISRC codes for your songs. You can also set a custom label name or keep your artist name as your label.

Make Waves allows you to set a custom release date and set royalty splits for your team, without additional costs for your collaborators. For receiving payments, you can choose any currency you want through bank transfer or PayPal.

To stand out among the competition, Make Waves offers its services without requiring an upfront payment. Instead, you’ll have to share 5% of your streaming revenues with the company. Also, the company will hold back the first 4,000 streams on a yearly basis. It doesn’t matter whether this is for a single, EP, or album.

Here’s the catch: Make Waves mentions this on their website that if you don’t make it to 4,000 streams at the end of each year, “you might have to pay the difference, but this will only be a couple of euros.” They don’t mention how much exactly these initial 4,000 streams cost you. So, if you don’t have an already established audience, you might have to pay up at the end of each year to keep your music on the streaming platform.

Can TuneCore keep up? (Pros & Cons)

TuneCore offers its services in four different tiers. The first one is called the “New Artist” plan and does not cost you anything upfront. With this tier, you can upload unlimited tracks to social media platforms, including Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. In return, TuneCore takes 20% of your revenues generated on these platforms. Bear in mind that TuneCore’s free music distribution plan does not cover streaming platforms.

For $19.99 a year, you can subscribe to TuneCore’s “Rising Artist” tier and submit unlimited tracks for distribution.  With this plan, TuneCore covers both social media outlets and all the major streaming platforms, including Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, iTunes, and many more. Moreover, you’ll get to keep 100% of your streaming revenue.

The “Breakout Artist” tier comes for $34.99/year. Besides all the features mentioned in the previous plan, TuneCore gives you access to an album cover art creator panel on their website. Also, you can take advantage of daily trend reports in order to build your audience.

Finally, TuneCore’s “Professional” tier is designed for labels and industry professionals. It includes all the features from the earlier plans and offers additional benefits such as exclusive brand partnerships with Tidal and Twitch. Users can also leverage promotional tools like Artist Portal, Brand Ambassador, and Store Awareness.

Additionally, you can participate in small-group workshops with TuneCore’s industry experts, customize your label name, use your own UPC, add recording locations for Apple Music and Spotify, and control the countries where your release is available. The “Professional” plan is priced at $49.99 per year, with an extra $14.99 for each additional artist.

Final Verdict: Which Music Distributor Is For You?

If you’re on a tight budget, Make Waves can be an excellent option that won’t cost you anything upfront. However, the features they offer are pretty limited compared to a company like TuneCore. Also, the number of reviews from real customers is few, so it definitely does not compete in terms of reputation and legitimacy against established distributors like TuneCore, DistroKid, and CD Baby.

On the other hand, TuneCore can be a much safer option, with a more responsive customer support team and plenty of extra features. Of course, you’ll have to spend at least 20 bucks a year if you want your music on Spotify through TuneCore, but it is a worthy investment if you’re going to take your career in music seriously.

In case you decide to go for one of TuneCore’s paid plans, you can use my referral link to get 20% off on checkout.