TuneCore vs SongTradr [An Honest Comparison From An Indie Artist]

You've landed on this page because you want to know who will win the battle between TuneCore vs SongTradr.

It's a valid question and in this post, I'll help uncover the answers on why you might want to choose TuneCore in some areas but SongTradr in others. But first, why listen to me?

I have hands on experience with TuneCore and SongTradr which gives me a unique perspective. I'm also a full-time independent artist, songwriter, and producer. I've written and produced hundreds of songs, you can find most of them under my own name Charles Cleyn.

I've also had my fair share of experience with many other distributors too, for instance, I've used DistroKid for many releases and have a strong comparison between TuneCore vs DistroKid here. By the way, if you're leaning towards TuneCore, I can offer you a 20% discount when you sign up with this link. I get a small kick back from it, and you get started on the right foot.

Having reviewed many of the other distributors and being an active musician that releases music as well, I have found these six categories to be most important when comparing two distributors. So, throughout the post, we'll be diving into these six categories between TuneCore and SongTradr.

1. Cost

2. Distribution and Reach

3. Features

4. Royalty Payments

5. User Experience

6. Customer Service

Here is a quick glance comparison chart as well to give you a bird's eye perspective on the two distributors and you might be able to quickly find what you're looking for:

Background Information

Let's do a quick background of TuneCore and SongTradr for those who are interested in seeing where each company has come from.

TuneCore was founded in 2005 and was an early pioneer in the digital music distribution space. Remember 2005? Most of us were still buying CDs or starting to burn our own mix tapes with LimeWire or Napster. Over the years, TuneCore has grown significantly, providing artists with a robust platform to distribute their music to a wide array of digital stores and streaming services. Acquired by Believe Digital in 2015, TuneCore has expanded its capabilities and reach, becoming a favorite among independent artists for its comprehensive features and global distribution network plus many of its outstanding features for independent artists. One of those features in TuneCore Music Publishing, which I'll get into in a little bit.

SongTradr, launched in 2014, is a relatively newer player in the music distribution market. Heck, by 2014, I was deep into streaming music already and had already released a few singles of my own on Spotify. SongTradr differentiates itself by focusing not only on music distribution but also on sync licensing, allowing artists to get their music placed in films, TV shows, commercials, and other media. This dual focus on distribution and licensing has made SongTradr a popular choice for artists looking to maximize their revenue streams.

Cost

Let's jump into cost now and look at what distributor has the best bang for buck. Not necessarily, who is the cheapest, but who provides the most value for the best price. Let's talk about TuneCore first.

TuneCore offers four different pricing plans tailored to different stages of an artist's career. At glance, here's what the look like and below I'll talk about the essential features of each. If you want to dive into it even more, you can visit the TuneCore pricing page. 

1. New Artist Plan - Free: This plan allows artists to release unlimited music to social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, keeping 80% of the revenue from these platforms. This is a perfect plan for artists who are not ready to commit to anything but want to experiment with uploading their music to TikTok. For example, let's say you have a full-time job but you're producing music on the side. This plan allows you to have a free distribution plan to test your music on popular social sites. If a song pops off, you can always release it later on Spotify, but if music is just a hobby right now, what's the rush?

2. Rising Artist Plan - $19.99/year: Includes unlimited music releases to all 150+ streaming sites like Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Deezer, and Tidal, with artists keeping 100% of the revenue.

3. Breakout Artist Plan - $34.99/year: Adds features like Store Automator, cover art creator tools, and daily trend reports.

4. Professional Plan - $49.99/year: Designed for labels and industry professionals, offering premium sales reporting, use of custom UPCs and label names, access to select country restrictions, and exclusive promotional opportunities.

SongTradr offers three pricing plans to meet the depends of independent artists. Here is a snapshot of the plans:

1. Starter Plan - Free: This plan allows for unlimited distribution but only keeping 90% of your distribution royalties. You'll have access to licensing and monetization opportunities, basic statistics, and 60% of sync licensing fees.

2. Lite Plan - 19/year: This plans also allows unlimited distribution for one artist, 100% distribution royalties, ISRC/UPC codes included, analytics, trends, and statistics, and 60% of sync licensing fees.

3. Pro Plan - $49/year: This plan of course allows for unlimited distribution for one artist, 100% distribution royalties, ISRC/UPC codes included, advanced analytics, trends, and statistics, and 80% of sync licensing fees and monetization revenue.

Does TuneCore or SongTradr Have More Bang For Buck?

The bang for buck will depend on your situation as an artist. I'm going to give you two scenarios. Scenario one, you're an independent artist, who wants to release a lot of music and collect 100% of your royalties, you're not too concerned about analytics but you want to get paid on time. You're concerned about collecting all the money that is rightfully yours. You're not concerned about synch licensing or getting your songs in commercials.

I fit in this scenario and I would recommend this artist go with TuneCore, by the way, feel free to use my 20% discount. On the other hand, scenario two, you're an artist who creates a lot of music but you're not interested in building a following on the distribution platforms as much. Instead, you want to get your music into TV and commercials. In this scenario, I recommend SongTradr as it has more bang for your buck.

Distribution and Reach

TuneCore distributes music to over 150 digital stores and streaming services, including uploading your music to Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and YouTube Music, as well as social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and getting your music on TikTok. This extensive network ensures that artists can reach a broad and diverse audience. For instance, I've used TuneCore to upload my single 'Sorry', and I'm on all the major platforms. For me, there isn't a platform that I'm missing. However, this is a good question to ask yourself, are you looking for a very specific streaming service to get your music on? Perhaps something very local in a small country?

SongTradr also distributes to all major platforms, including Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music. But more than this, you'll notice as you browse the SongTradr website, it's difficult to find a lot of information for independent artists, right? This is because their main focus is heavily on sync licensing which provides artists and companies with opportunities to get their music placed in various media, which can significantly enhance exposure and revenue potential for the artist or business. So, in a way, they're actually quite different than TuneCore.

Who Wins When It Comes To Distribution?

Both TuneCore and SongTradr offer extensive distribution networks but shall we say in a different way? For instance, they both offer value in the popular streaming sites and you can rest assured that your music will be distributed to Spotify, Apple Music, and all the rest. However, it's obvious that SongTradr doesn't talk about this much on their site and pushes more value at the enterprise level. In general, TuneCore has a slight edge with its larger number of platforms and long-standing relationships with major digital stores. SongTradr's unique focus on sync licensing provides additional opportunities for artists to monetize their music.

Features

The features a music distributor has will be one of the biggest decision making factors when it comes to choosing what platform is best for you. This will be context depending on your needs as an artist. For example, do you need split payments with your co-writers? Do you want access to sync opportunities? What about music publishing? Let's dive in to all of this.

Key Features of TuneCore

• Unlimited Uploads: Artists can release as much music as they want.
• Detailed Sales Reports and Analytics: Comprehensive insights into sales and streaming performance.
• YouTube Content ID and Monetization: Helps artists collect royalties from YouTube.
• Publishing Administration: Assists in collecting royalties from various sources worldwide.
• Split Payments: Split up your royalty payments with TuneCore collaborators.
• Social Media Monetization: Tools to monetize music on social platforms.

Key Features of SongTradr

• Unlimited Uploads: Available with the Pro Plan.
• Detailed Analytics: Provides insights into music performance across platforms.
• Sync Licensing Opportunities: Helps artists get their music placed in films, TV shows, commercials, and more.
• Global Distribution: Distributes music to major streaming services worldwide.
• BandCamp: Easily distribute your music to Bandcamp and get 100% of royalties on music Fridays

Who Has The Better Features?

I know I'm sounding like a broken record but this will depend on you as an artist and what you're specific needs are. For instance, TuneCore offers a robust set of features that cater to both distribution and monetization, making it super valuable for independent artists. I like TuneCore because it ticks off the boxes to my needs as an indie artist. I really love the ability to split your royalty payments with collaborators. There is often times when I co-write a song and split the royalties. I used to have to remind myself to send payments every 6 months to my co-writers.

Now, I can forget about it! TuneCore has this all automated. SongTradr, while slightly less feature-rich in terms of distribution tools, excels in providing sync licensing opportunities, which can be a significant advantage for artists looking to expand their revenue streams beyond traditional streaming. Songtradr could be a game changer for your career if you know you just want to make music and find a home for it somewhere, on TV, or in a commercial. 

Royalty Payments

Let's be honest, we all love making music but it's so much sweeter if you can make some money from it. In a world where margins are razor thin on music, it's important that you have everything covered and you're collecting all the royalties that your music deserves!

Almost all of TuneCore's plans allow you to keep 100% of your music royalties, expect for their free plan which retains a 20% fee. Does that mean you're getting paid the full piece of the pie when it comes to royalties?

No, unfortunately it doesn't.

I don't want to sidetrack this post too much into the world of royalties and publishing but I think it's important you understand this, so, I'm going to lay it out for you in very simple language. Excuse my terrible drawing skills, but here's a little picture I drew for you:

When you release a song with TuneCore (or any distributor), there are these two types that happen. The composition and the recording.

Notice that last level of my drawing, we have these four companies:

1. PRO - Performance Rights Organization. For instance, ASCAP, BMI, GEMA (Germany), or SOCAN (Canada).

2. PUBLISHING ADMINISTRATOR - This is the service TuneCore offers but you can also use other services like SongTrust.

3. SOUNDEXCHANGE - This is a free service that you should sign up for that collects the performance royalties from a recording, I have a deep review of SoundExchange here.

4. DISTRIBUTOR - This would be TuneCore or SongTradr. Or any other distributor you have like Amuse, United Masters, etc.

Notice that the distributor is only collecting some of your royalties. You need the other services to make sure you're getting everything.

So, with all that said, TuneCore is giving you 100% of your recording revenues that happen from streams. They are not touching any of the composition royalties, unless, you decide to use TuneCore Music Publishing. This service is a big plus for TuneCore because it's tied right into your distributor so you can have multiple revenue sources in one spot without having to use another service.

On the other hand, SongTradr, for the most part, also give you 100% of your royalties from recording revenues. Expect for their free plan which has you give up 10% of your royalties. Which is a better deal than the 20% you have to give up to TuneCore but with less distribution in terms of streaming platforms offered.

Both TuneCore and SongTradr can do direct bank transfers or PayPal transfers.

Who Takes The Cake When It Comes To Royalties?

The main difference between the two lie in the commission structure, which is a different of 10%. To be honest, this is really peanuts in the grand scheme of things. I will crown both of them as great platforms when it comes to royalties.

Customer Support

I never thought customer service was something you should keep in mind with your music distributor but after my first few release. I realized how important it is. Think of your music distributor as your partner in the music space to get your music out in the world but also be looking for opportunity to help promote your music when they can. Add on features like social media promotion or split payments are all big bonuses! Having the opportunity to reach out with any questions and actually getting a response is something you should look for in a distributor. 

When I released my first EP in 2018, I was shocked to all the things I didn't know. Specifically about starting a Spotify per-save campaign to promote my single before it was launched. I reached out to TuneCore's customer support team for help and they quickly helped me get up and running with a Spotify pre-save campaign. 

When I release music now, I rarely have to reach out to the support team but it's to know that I can if I need to.

TuneCore's customer support is very fast. Even on their free plan you can expect a response with 5 business days. As you pay for your plans, you will get faster customer service as well. Not to mention, TuneCore has one of the biggest communities of artists which means there is a ton of content online that you can learn from. Take me as an example, I have an entire YouTube channel supporting indie artists like yourself. 

Song Tradr's customer support is generally prompt, especially for Pro Plan users. You can expect email support, online FAQ's, and dedicated support for Pro users. I don't have experience with their Pro plan response times and they don't outright say the response times publicly as TuneCore does but I can assume if you're paying for a service that you can expect a response within 1-3 business days.

Who Has Better Customer Service?

From the outside, TuneCore has more tiered customer support options and also has faster response times for the higher-tier plans. On the other hand, SongTradr provides good support, specifically, to their Pro plan users. In general, both are good and I think you'll be happy with either but I have to crown TuneCore as the winner because they even give fast and great support to their free community.

User Experience

The user experience of the platform is something I like to include in my reviews because your music distributor is something you will be using a lot. You don't want it to be painful or frustrating whenever you decide to release a single. You want the experience to be pleasant, quick, and easy.

TuneCore has recently updated their website design and their platform design. It's been long overdue! I really like the new TuneCore design. It's sleek and user friendly and miles ahead from what they had. With their new design, they've also offered many detailed guides and resources too. In general, most users appreciate the new design from TuneCore.

SongTradr, funny enough, almost mimics TuneCore's design a little. Or maybe it's the other way around? I'm not sure who had the sleek black design first. Either way, their site is equally strong. However, I do find it now tailored more to enterprise and business clients with bigger budgets. Whenever I'm browsing their site, I don't feel welcome as an independent artist and I actually find it quite difficult sometimes to find the information I'm looking for.

Who Has The Better Design?

In terms of pure design, I actually think SongTradr is better. However, in terms of the user experience for independent artists, which is what we're all about, TuneCore provides a better experience in my opinion. By the way, if you want to try TuneCore, you can use my link for a 20% discount. 

TuneCore Pros and Cons

PROS:

• Extensive distribution network with over 150+ streaming platforms
• Comprehensive sales reports and analytics
• Robust features like YouTube monetization and publishing administration
• Split payments
• Really nice design

CONS:

• Advanced plans can get costly compared to SongTradr
• Super beginners might find it complex compared to DistroKid.

SongTradr Pros and Cons

PROS:

• Free distribution option with only 10% cut in royalties
• Simple and easy-to-use interface
• Excellent sync licensing opportunities

CONS:

• Not very user friendly to indie artists
• Fewer advanced distribution features compared to TuneCore

Final Thoughts on TuneCore vs SongTradr

Both TuneCore and SongTradr offer valuable services for independent artists, but they cater to different needs, right? We've seen so many examples in this post, for instance, if you're an indie artist who wants to be featured in TV but also wants to build a personal brand, is doing lots of co-writing, and wants to have their music streamed around the world. Then TuneCore is going to be the option for you. On the other hand, if you are a musician producing a lot of music but you don't care to much about building a personal brand, you'd rather release your music and have it be one of the next biggest hits on TV show, then SongTradr is for you.

In general, TuneCore is ideal for artists seeking comprehensive features, detailed analytics, and extensive distribution networks. In contrast, SongTradr is perfect for those looking for a straightforward, cost-effective solution with added sync licensing benefits.

If you've already decided on TuneCore, then feel free to use my link here for a 20% discount. Unfortunately, I don't have a discount link for SongTradr, but I wish you the best if you decide to go with them. Reach out when you've released your next biggest hit!