Distribution is the plumbing between a finished master and a listener pressing play. A distributor delivers your audio and metadata to streaming services, issues the identifiers those services require, collects the recording royalties, and pays them to you. They do not market your music, and no distributor can get you playlisted by paying for it.
Choosing one is mostly a question of pricing model and what you need beyond delivery.
Does: ingests your master and artwork, validates them against each store's specification, delivers to Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, YouTube Music, Deezer, Tidal, and dozens of smaller services, issues ISRCs and a UPC, reports your streams, collects the master royalties, and pays out.
Does not: collect your songwriter royalties automatically — many offer publishing administration as a paid add-on, and even then the coverage is partial. Does not get you playlisted. Does not clear samples. Does not fix a bad mix.
Two pricing shapes dominate. Some distributors charge a flat annual or per-release fee and pass through all royalties. Others take a commission and charge nothing upfront. Flat fee wins as your streams grow; commission is safer if you release constantly and earn little. Check what happens if you stop paying — with some flat-fee services your catalogue comes down.
ISRC — International Standard Recording Code. Identifies one specific recording. It follows that recording everywhere and is how plays are counted, matched, and attributed. A remix, a radio edit, and a live version are each different recordings and each need their own. If you re-release the same recording, reuse its existing ISRC so the play history stays attached.
UPC — the barcode-style identifier for the release as a product. One per single, EP, or album. Your distributor issues one.
ISWC — identifies the composition, not the recording, and is issued through your PRO. Distributors do not handle this.
Get these right the first time. Duplicate ISRCs split your stream counts across two entries and can leave royalties unmatched.
Metadata determines how you appear, whether your releases group under one artist profile, and whether your royalties find you.
- Artist name spelled identically on every release, including punctuation and capitalisation.
The Ellis Trio and Ellis Trio become two artists.
- Featured artists in the dedicated feature field, not typed into the title.
- Version information in brackets —
(Radio Edit), (Live at the Union) — not baked into the main title text.
- Writer credits and splits entered accurately, matching what you registered with your PRO.
- Explicit flags set honestly. Getting this wrong can cause a takedown.
- Artwork square, high resolution, with no URLs, no social handles, and no logos for services.
Mismatches between your distributor metadata and your PRO registration are the single most common reason songwriter royalties go unclaimed.
| When | Do this |
|---|
| 4+ weeks before | Master finished, artwork done, delivered to distributor with a chosen release date |
| 3-4 weeks before | Claim the release in the artist dashboards, pitch to editorial playlists |
| 2 weeks before | Pre-save link live, press and creator outreach |
| Release week | Post consistently, send to fans directly, check the release appeared correctly |
| After release | Check stores for correct artist profile, register the work with your PRO if not already |
The one hard constraint is editorial pitching: services want the track delivered and submitted before it goes live, and once it is released the window is gone. Everything else is preference, but three to four weeks costs you nothing and removes almost all release-day panic.
Deliver the highest-quality master you have — a 24-bit WAV at your session sample rate. Do not upload an MP3 you exported for a friend. Services do their own encoding, and giving them a lossy source means they encode a lossy file twice.
Do not master extra loud for streaming. Platforms normalise playback, so a crushed master arrives at the same perceived level as a dynamic one, minus the dynamics.
If you produce in the browser, exporting a proper distribution master is straightforward — a DAW such as Veena exports WAV directly, and its mastering assistance is genuinely useful for a final polish. It is desktop-browser only and needs a connection for its AI features, so it is not the tool for finishing a release on a train with no signal.
Check the spelling of every title and name. Check the ISRCs are new for new recordings. Check the splits match your PRO registration. Check the artwork has no text you will regret. Check you actually have the rights to every element, including any sample and any AI-generated component, since platform rules on that are tightening.
Then schedule it, and spend the waiting weeks on the part distributors genuinely cannot do for you.
Related reading: How streaming payouts work, Spotify playlist pitching, and How to export for streaming.
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