You’ve finished a track. It sounds the way you want it to sound. Now you need to get it out there — and someone in a Facebook group told you to use DistroKid, your producer uses TuneCore, and your friend swears by CD Baby.
Here’s the reality: the differences between these platforms matter more than most artists realize, and the wrong choice can cost you money for years — not just upfront fees, but in royalties you never collected, publishing splits you didn’t set up right, and catalog rights that got complicated when you tried to leave.
This isn’t a surface-level comparison. Here’s what actually separates them.
The Core Difference: How Each Platform Charges You
DistroKid charges a flat annual fee ($22.99/year for Musician, $35.99/year for Musician Plus, with higher tiers going further). For that, you can upload unlimited songs and keep 100% of your royalties. The trade-off: if you stop paying, your music comes down.
TuneCore moved to a percentage model for new users — you keep 100% of streaming revenue, but TuneCore takes a cut of publishing admin revenue if you use their publishing admin service. For distribution alone, they historically charged a flat annual fee per release ($29.99/year per album, $9.99/year per single). Pricing has shifted over time, so verify current rates before signing up — but the model has traditionally been per-release rather than a blanket subscription.
CD Baby charges a one-time fee per release ($9.95 for a single, $29.00 for an album at standard tier). In exchange, your music stays up even if you stop paying. But they take a percentage of your royalties — typically 9% of streaming revenue — in perpetuity.
The math matters: if you’re releasing a lot of music, DistroKid’s unlimited model wins on cost. If you’re releasing slowly and want your catalog to stay up without ongoing payments, CD Baby’s one-time fee has real appeal. TuneCore sits in the middle depending on how you use it.
What You Keep: Royalties, Fees, and What Gets Skimmed
All three platforms claim “100% royalties” in their marketing, but that phrase needs translation.
With DistroKid, you do keep 100% of streaming royalties. The subscription fee is the only take. But you need to actively check your account to verify royalties are being paid out correctly — streaming income sitting in limbo isn’t money you actually have.
With CD Baby, you keep 91% of streaming royalties (they take 9%). That sounds small, but on a catalog that performs for years, it compounds. A track that generates $10,000 in streaming revenue over its life gives CD Baby $900 of it, regardless of when or how you earned it. They also charge 9% on neighboring rights income if they collect it for you.
With TuneCore, the distribution-only tier keeps you at 100%. But their publishing administration service — which is a separate product — has its own fee structure, typically taking a percentage of publishing royalties collected. If you enroll in their publishing admin service, understand exactly what percentage they’re keeping before comparing it to standalone publishing admin options like Songtrust.
Neighboring rights is where things get genuinely murky. This is the royalty paid to performers and sound recording owners when their music plays on certain digital platforms and broadcasters — not Spotify or Apple Music, which flow through SoundExchange. All three platforms offer some version of neighboring rights collection, but the fees and coverage vary. If you have meaningful international streaming activity, verify exactly how each platform handles neighboring rights registration before you choose.
Publishing Admin: The Most Overlooked Part of This Decision
Distribution gets your music onto platforms. Publishing admin collects your songwriting royalties — the performance royalties, mechanical royalties, and sync royalties generated by your compositions.
These are completely separate income streams, and most artists conflate them.
CD Baby Pro (their publishing admin add-on) has historically been one of the more accessible publishing admin services for independent artists. They register your works with PROs worldwide and collect on your behalf, taking a commission — typically around 15% of publishing royalties collected, though you should verify current rates.
TuneCore Publishing operates similarly — they register works and collect royalties globally, with their own commission structure.
DistroKid is primarily a distribution platform, not a publishing admin service. They have some publishing-adjacent features but are not a full publishing administrator. If you use DistroKid for distribution, you’ll need a separate publishing admin solution — Songtrust, CD Baby Pro, or your own publishing company setup — to maximize publishing royalty collection.
This gap matters. Artists who distribute through DistroKid and don’t set up separate publishing admin often miss mechanical royalties and international performance royalties that their PRO doesn’t catch on its own. The difference between writer’s share and publisher’s share is something every independent artist should understand before making this decision — it directly affects what income you’re able to collect and from where.
Catalog Ownership: What Happens If You Leave
This is where artists get caught off guard.
With DistroKid, your music is up as long as you’re paying the annual subscription. If you cancel or your payment lapses, your music comes down from stores — streaming revenue stops and links break. You can always re-upload, but your streaming history and playlist placements don’t carry over seamlessly. If you build a catalog of 40 songs on DistroKid and then decide to leave, that transition has real costs.
With CD Baby, your music stays up after you pay the one-time fee, regardless of whether you maintain an ongoing relationship with them. They continue taking their 9% cut, but the music keeps streaming. This is a meaningful advantage for artists who want their back catalog to keep earning without any ongoing platform dependency.
With TuneCore, music stays available in stores for the period you’ve paid for, but similar to DistroKid, if you stop paying annual renewal fees for a release, it can come down.
Switching distributors is not painless — there’s often a gap period where income is in transit, and getting downstream rights and data aligned between your old distributor and new one requires real attention. Plan this well in advance if you ever need to move.
Which Platform Fits Your Situation
There’s no universal right answer. Here’s a realistic breakdown:
DistroKid makes sense if:
- You’re releasing a lot of music (multiple singles or projects per year)
- You want to keep costs low and don’t mind the subscription model
- You’re already set up with a separate publishing admin service for royalty collection
- You’re comfortable staying on the platform long-term, or managing the transition if you eventually leave
CD Baby makes sense if:
- You release music infrequently and want a one-time fee per release
- You want your catalog to stay up without ongoing subscription risk
- You want publishing admin bundled into one platform (CD Baby Pro)
- You’re okay with giving up 9% of streaming royalties in exchange for simplicity
TuneCore makes sense if:
- You want distribution and publishing admin in one platform
- You prefer an established platform with long international collection relationships
- You’ve evaluated the per-release fee model against your output and it works out cheaper than a subscription
Whatever you choose, don’t let the distribution decision distract you from collaboration documentation. If you’re working with producers, co-writers, or featured artists, your distribution platform does not handle split agreements — that’s entirely on you. A platform can deliver your music to 150+ streaming services, but it cannot protect your ownership rights on a song with three writers if you haven’t documented the splits properly before the release goes live.
The One Thing Most Artists Miss Before They Sign Up
Every distribution platform asks for your metadata before delivering your music to stores: artist name, song title, ISRC code, release date, UPC. Most artists fill this out quickly and don’t think twice.
The metadata you enter here gets used for everything downstream — royalty matching, playlist pitching, licensing identification. Metadata errors are one of the most common reasons independent artists have royalties sitting uncollected, and fixing them retroactively is significantly harder than getting them right before you distribute.
Before you upload your next release: verify your IPI number, make sure your PRO registration matches the name and writer credits you’re using on the platform, confirm your ISRC is either self-generated or platform-assigned correctly, and have your collaboration split documentation finalized before the release is live — not after.
If you’re working with other writers or producers on the track, that documentation is what locks ownership in before the music hits stores. Once a song is out on platforms and royalties start flowing, disagreements about ownership become significantly more complicated to resolve.
Get a music split sheet ($7) before you distribute — or pick up the split sheet and letter of direction bundle ($12) if you’re working with a producer who needs to direct their royalties to a specific account. It’s the fastest way to make sure everyone who contributed to the track gets paid correctly, regardless of which distribution platform ends up delivering it.