E‑commerce & retail
Permanent-Catalog Music Distribution
Distribution for independent artists: keep the catalog live forever and pay 0% on every revenue stream, for one flat yearly fee.
Founder thesis
The self-serve category already sells the pieces separately, so the bet is that artists will pay a flat fee to get them together. Permanent catalog, 0% on all streams including Content ID, and a human on support. The timing works because TuneCore and Amuse still take 15% to 20% of social and Content ID money, and DistroKid, the biggest player, pulls your catalog when you stop paying.
What others got wrong
TuneCore charges 20% of TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube earnings even on its paid unlimited plans, so a trending video costs the artist a fifth of that money.
Amuse advertises that your music stays live when you downgrade, then takes 15% of YouTube Content ID and 15% from collaborators who are not Amuse subscribers on its base plan.
DistroKid sells $24.99 a year and keep 100%, but only on streaming. It keeps 20% of YouTube Content ID and removes your music when you do not renew, with per-release retention sold as a Leave a Legacy add-on.
CD Baby keeps roughly 9% forever and charges per release, so an artist pays again on every album and still gives up a cut.
What should work
Sell one flat annual membership near the pack, at $29 to $49 a year, and take 0% of every stream. The percentage fees are where the money leaks, not the headline price, which is already compressed to $9.99 to $59.99.
Make permanent catalog the default. Amuse and CD Baby sell it today, so it is provable rather than a new promise, and it answers the artists whose releases vanished on non-renewal.
Add human support and an originality review so honest artists are not swept up in blanket AI and copyright flags. UMG, Capitol Records and Capitol CMG sued DistroKid in September 2026 over AI and copyrighted uploads, so risk cover is becoming a selling point.
Show a buyer the arithmetic they can check. An artist earning $500 a year from social and UGC pays TuneCore about $100 on top of $24.99, and your flat fee charges $0 of it.
What kills it
- A flat fee has to cover delivery, human support and originality review, and none of those costs are public. The math may not close.
- The bundle is the only novelty. Every piece already exists somewhere: permanent catalog at CD Baby and Amuse, 0% on streaming at DistroKid, one-time fees at CD Baby.
- Distribution is an operations and rights business, not pure software, and running it solo is heavy.
- The UMG, Capitol and Capitol CMG suit against DistroKid cuts both ways. It shows demand for safer distribution and adds legal risk for anyone in the same seat.
What users want
4My catalog to stay up even if I stop paying.
One artist wrote on r/DistroKidHelpDesk that all their music was gone from DistroKid and from every streaming service, with no message explaining what happened.
A human to talk to when something breaks.
A competitor-published review of DistroKid says support on all base plans runs through a chatbot named Dave with no human to escalate to.
Not to lose years of releases to a billing lapse.
A thread on r/MusicDistribution is titled DistroKid removed my full 52-song catalogue.
To keep what my music earns on social.
TuneCore's own pricing page states a 20% fee on money earned from TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.
- Sources
- 13
- Checked
- 11
- Competitors
- 4
- Gaps
- 6
- Page checked
- 11 · 85%
- Snippet only
- 2 · 15%
- Documented
- 8 · 62%
- Interpreted
- 5 · 38%
- pricing4
- complaint4
- market3
- playbook1
- revenue1
Competitors
4- DistroKid$8.25/mo
Parsed from public pricing blurbs (entry paid tier when available). Max in set: $8.25/mo.
| Competitor | From | Free tier | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| DistroKid | $8.25/mo | Yes | distrokid.com✓ |
| TuneCore | See notes | — | tunecore.com✓ |
| Amuse | See notes | — | amuse.io✓ |
| CD Baby | See notes | — | cdbaby.com✓ |
What customers complain about
6| Gap | Src |
|---|---|
DistroKid says in its help center that if you do not renew, your music is removed from services. A competitor review says there is no grace period and the only way to keep a release is the Leave a Legacy add-on at about $29 per release. | |
TuneCore takes 20% of social and UGC revenue on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, even on paid unlimited plans. | |
Amuse's base plan takes 15% of YouTube Content ID and 15% from collaborators without an Amuse subscription, so the cheapest permanent-catalog option still taxes some income. | |
DistroKid has an F rating at the Better Business Bureau, 352 complaints closed in three years and 38 customer reviews, with no individual complaint narrative available. | |
Artists report wrongful artificial-streaming flags and full-catalog takedowns with no human help, including an r/DistroKidHelpDesk post saying all their music was gone with no explanation and an r/MusicDistribution thread titled DistroKid removed my full 52-song catalogue. | |
Base-plan support is chatbot only, per a competitor-published review that says there is no human to escalate to without upgrading. |
Documented Interpreted
How competitors find customers
3| Tactic | Src |
|---|---|
| DistroKid pays a flat $10 for every paid signup a member refers, and its partner page links the affiliate program to Impact and the influencer program to Creator.co. | distrokid.com✓ |
| DistroKid was seeded from the founder's Fandalism music community instead of launching cold, and grew from 25,000 artists in 2015 to over 2 million by 2020. | en.wikipedia.org✓ |
| CD Baby runs an owned content engine, the DIY Musician blog, a podcast and free guides, as top-of-funnel, with no published conversion number. | cdbaby.com✓ |
Your angle & pricing wedge
| Piece | Claim | Src |
|---|---|---|
| Angle | A distributor that keeps the catalog live permanently by default even after a lapse, charges 0% on every revenue stream including social, UGC and YouTube Content ID, and gives human support plus originality review so honest artists are not swept up in blanket AI and copyright flags. Each piece exists somewhere today, so only the bundle is new, and it is unproven. | |
| Wedge | Sell a flat annual membership and take 0% of all revenue, funded by the fee instead of a percentage spread. An artist earning $500 a year from social and UGC pays TuneCore about $100 on top of $24.99, pays Amuse about $30 on $200 of Content ID on top of $23.99, and pays DistroKid about $40 on the same Content ID on top of $24.99, so a flat $29 to $49 a year charges $0 of those fees. |
How others got traction
4| Move | Why | Src |
|---|---|---|
| DistroKid sells one flat $24.99 a year for unlimited uploads and takes 0% of streaming royalties. | The flat unlimited price and no streaming cut let prolific producers treat distribution as a fixed cost, which plausibly drove growth from 25,000 artists in 2015 to over 2 million by 2020, though the 0% stops at streaming and the growth link is not proven. | distrokid.com✓ |
| CD Baby has survived since 1998 on a one-time per-release fee plus about a 9% cut, while keeping the catalog live. | Permanent retention plus a one-time fee is a trust anchor for artists who fear a lapse, and the 9% cut leaves room for a 0% entrant. | cdbaby.com✓ |
| Amuse makes permanent catalog a headline feature. | It answers the subscription-removal problem directly, but bundles it with a 15% YouTube Content ID fee, which a 0% entrant can attack. | amuse.io✓ |
| DistroKid runs a member referral program paying a flat $10 per paid signup, plus affiliate and influencer programs. | A cash bounty turns every artist into a recruiter and is repeatable, though the partner page publishes no volume or conversion number. | distrokid.com✓ |
Market heat
DistroKid had over 2 million artists by 2020 and was distributing at least 30% of new songs, after starting as a feature inside the Fandalism community and reaching only 25,000 artists by 2015.
More ▾GetLatka estimates DistroKid at $97.2M revenue for 2024, up from a $59.8M 2023 estimate, with about 1M customers. GetLatka states it did no management interview, so this is a third-party estimate, not self-reported.
More ▾CD Baby self-reports paying over $1 billion to independent artists since 1998 and sells one-time distribution at $9.99 a single and $14.99 an album.
UMG Recordings, Capitol Records and Capitol CMG sued DistroKid in September 2026, alleging it distributed AI-generated content and copyrighted music without permission, per Bloomberg Law. The article is partly paywalled.
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Revenue signals
5| Signal | Src |
|---|---|
DistroKid: GetLatka's third-party estimate of $97.2M for 2024 and about 1M customers, made without a management interview and neither self-reported nor audited. | getlatka.com✓ |
DistroKid: a $1.3B valuation in its 2021 round from Insight Partners, a press-release figure, showing the category can produce large outcomes. | en.wikipedia.org✓ |
CD Baby: self-reported over $1 billion paid to independent artists since 1998, company-reported and not independently audited. | cdbaby.com✓ |
Category pricing is tight: $9.99 to $14.99 one-time at CD Baby, or $23.99 to $59.99 a year at Amuse, TuneCore and DistroKid, so a flat $29 to $49 a year 0% offer has little room to undercut on headline price and must win on fees and catalog terms. | tunecore.com✓ |
Whether a flat-fee, 0% distributor is profitable depends on delivery and payout costs and on the cost of human support and provenance review. None of that is public. |
Should you build this?
The category makes money and the pain is on competitors' own pages: TuneCore takes 20% of TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube revenue on paid plans, Amuse takes 15% of YouTube Content ID while advertising permanent catalog, DistroKid keeps 20% of Content ID and removes your catalog on non-renewal, and CD Baby keeps about 9%. Complaints are real, with an F rating and 352 complaints closed in three years at the Better Business Bureau and reports of unexplained full-catalog takedowns and chatbot-only support. But the wedge is only partly open. Permanent catalog is already sold by CD Baby and Amuse, 0% on streaming is DistroKid's core pitch, and this is a bundle bet in an operations and rights business, not pure software, so it may not be profitable on a flat fee. Test it before building: recruit 30 artists already on one of the four, at least 10 who lost a release or let a subscription lapse and 10 who earned social, UGC or Content ID income in the last year, have each add up the fees and percentage cuts they paid, then ask for a paid annual pre-order at $29 to $49. Kill it if fewer than 8 of 30 can show a real loss or threat, fewer than 10 paid a social or Content ID percentage, or fewer than 5 pre-pay.
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All sources
13| Source | Kind | Status | Accessed |
|---|---|---|---|
| pricing | page checked | 2026-09-18 | |
| market | page checked | 2026-09-18 | |
| pricing | page checked | 2026-09-18 | |
| pricing | page checked | 2026-09-18 | |
| pricing | page checked | 2026-09-18 | |
| playbook | page checked | 2026-09-18 | |
| market | page checked | 2026-09-18 | |
| revenue | page checked | 2026-09-18 | |
| complaint | snippet only | 2026-09-18 | |
| complaint | snippet only | 2026-09-18 | |
| complaint | page checked | 2026-09-18 | |
| complaint | page checked | 2026-09-18 | |
| market | page checked | 2026-09-18 |