Free tool
What your distributor actually costs
Comparing $24.99 against $24.99 tells you nothing, because the sticker price is almost never what decides it. What decides it is whether a percentage cut costs you more than a flat fee, and that depends on how much you earn and where you earn it. Put your own numbers in and the ranking sorts itself out.
1. What you put out
2. What you earn
Spotify, Apple, and the rest. Before anyone's cut.
TikTok, Reels, YouTube Shorts. This is the field that changes the answer.
One-time fees look better the longer you hold.
3. What it costs you
Total cost over the period, cheapest first. Cost means fees paid plus royalties taken.
How this is worked out
Nothing clever is happening here, and that's deliberate. For each distributor the tool adds up the fees you would pay over the period, then adds the royalties they would take from what you earn. Subscription services charge every year. CD Baby charges once per release and then keeps a percentage forever, which is why the number of years matters so much to how it ranks.
A few things it does not model, because pretending to be precise about them would be worse than leaving them out. It assumes you stay on the entry plan of each subscription service, since that covers one artist and unlimited uploads and is what most people are actually choosing between. It ignores add-ons, publishing administration and sync, which are separate products with separate cuts. And it ignores the single biggest real-world cost, which is letting a subscription lapse and having your catalogue taken down.
The number that isn't here. CD Baby publishes its 9% distribution commission plainly, but does not state its cut on social and UGC monetization on the pricing page, and it is reported elsewhere as considerably higher than 9%. Rather than invent a figure, this tool applies 9% to CD Baby's social earnings and flags the result as a best case. If your money is mostly short-form, treat CD Baby's number here as a floor rather than an estimate.
Sources
- DistroKid pricing, official. Musician $24.99/yr, unlimited uploads, one artist.
- TuneCore pricing, official. Rising Artist $24.99/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. $59.99/yr at 0%; the free tier keeps 10%.
Pricing changes and tiers get renamed. Confirm on the distributor's own page before you sign up, and if you find something out of date here, tell us and the page gets corrected and dated.