Money
What music distribution actually costs in 2026
Every distributor advertises a headline price and most of them say "keep 100% of your royalties" somewhere on the page. Both things can be true while you still end up worse off, because the headline price and the royalty split are not the only two variables. There are three:
- The fee: annual, or one-time per release.
- The streaming cut: what they take from Spotify, Apple, and friends.
- The social cut: what they take from TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, which is frequently not the same number, and is frequently not on the pricing page.
That third one is where independent rappers get quietly taxed, because short-form is where rap actually breaks.
The four, side by side
| Distributor | Fee | Streaming cut | Social / UGC cut | Music stays up if you stop paying? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DistroKid | $24.99/yr (Musician) | 0% | 0% on base terms | No, lapses with the subscription |
| TuneCore | $24.99 / $44.99 / $54.99 per yr | 0% | 20% | No, lapses with the subscription |
| UnitedMasters | Free tier, or $59.99/yr (SELECT) | 10% on free tier, 0% on paid | Follows the tier | Depends on tier |
| CD Baby | $9.99 single / $14.99 album, one-time | 9% | 9% on distribution, reportedly higher on social | Yes, no renewal |
Where these numbers come from. Every fee in this table was checked against the distributor's own pricing page on 31 July 2026, and the links are at the bottom. One figure is not from an official page: CD Baby publishes its 9% distribution commission clearly, but its cut on social and UGC monetization is reported elsewhere as substantially higher and CD Baby does not state it on the pricing page. It's flagged amber above rather than given a number. Distributor pricing changes often and tiers get renamed, so confirm before you sign up.
Or skip the arithmetic. The distributor cost calculator takes what you release and what you earn and ranks all four on total cost, using the same verified figures as the table above.
The two break-even numbers that actually decide it
Forget comparing $24.99 to $24.99. DistroKid's entry plan and TuneCore's are the same price to the cent, so the sticker is noise. What separates these services is whether a percentage cut costs you more than a flat fee, and that depends entirely on how much you earn.
Break-even #1: the social cut, at about $125/year
TuneCore takes 20% of TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube earnings, and it does that on the paid plans too, not just a free tier. DistroKid's entry plan is $24.99/year with no percentage.
20% of $125 = $25. So once you earn more than about $125 a year from short-form, TuneCore's social cut on its own costs you more than DistroKid's entire annual fee, and that's before you have paid TuneCore's own $24.99.
$125 a year is not a lot. One song used across a few thousand TikToks clears it. If your music has any short-form life at all, the percentage is the expensive part and the subscription price is a rounding error.
Break-even #2: the royalty cut, at about $280/year
CD Baby's model is genuinely different and genuinely good for one situation: you pay once, the release never expires, and you never renew. The trade is 9% of everything, forever.
9% of $280 = $25. Below about $280/year in total royalties, CD Baby's cut is smaller than DistroKid's annual fee. Above it you are paying more every year, permanently.
So which one
Reduced to the four situations that actually occur:
| If you are… | Then | Because |
|---|---|---|
| Dropping regularly and earning something | DistroKid | Flat fee, no percentage anywhere. The more you release and earn, the better it looks. |
| Putting out one thing you want online in ten years | CD Baby | One-time fee, no renewal. The 9% is cheap on small royalties and you can't accidentally let it lapse. |
| Broke and just need it live | UnitedMasters free tier | $0 up front. The 10% is a real cost, but 10% of nothing is nothing, and you can migrate later. |
| Getting real short-form traction | Not TuneCore | The 20% social cut lands hardest exactly where rap tends to break. |
The mistake that costs more than any of this
Letting a subscription lapse. On subscription distributors, your catalogue comes down when you stop paying, and re-uploading is not a neutral act. You can lose the Spotify URI, the playlist placements attached to it, and the play counts that made the song look alive. A declined card in an inbox you don't check can undo two years of slow growth for $24.99.
Whatever you choose: put the renewal on a card that won't expire, and set a calendar reminder two weeks before the renewal date. That reminder is worth more than picking the optimal distributor.
Next: before any of this matters, the release itself has to be properly assembled, see the first-release checklist covers the four things that are painful to fix after you've hit distribute.
This is one part of the process. Choosing a distributor is one decision out of about nine that decide whether a release earns what it should. The Independent Release System is all of it: nine sections and five templates that check their own work, from finished master to registered royalties. Split sheets that total themselves, a timeline generated from your drop date, metadata that flags its own mistakes.
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Sources
Checked 31 July 2026. Official pricing pages first, because comparison sites disagree with each other and, in several cases, with the distributors themselves.
- DistroKid pricing, official. Musician $24.99/yr, Musician Plus $44.99/yr, Ultimate $89.99/yr.
- TuneCore pricing, official. Rising Artist $24.99/yr, Breakout $44.99/yr, Professional $54.99/yr, and the 20% social fee stated on the page.
- CD Baby cost, official. $9.99 single, $14.99 album, one-time, 9% of digital distribution revenue.
- UnitedMasters SELECT, official support page. $59.99/yr, 0% royalty cut; the free tier keeps 10%.
What changed on this page. An earlier draft carried four figures taken from comparison sites that turned out to be wrong when checked against the source: DistroKid's entry plan as $22.99 rather than $24.99, TuneCore's range topping out at $89.99 rather than $54.99, CD Baby's album fee as $29.95 rather than $14.99, and CD Baby's social cut given as a flat 9%. Both break-even figures were built on the DistroKid number and moved with it. Corrected 31 July 2026.
Not financial advice. Break-even figures are arithmetic on the published rates above and assume base-tier pricing; your own numbers will differ.