LANDR, the platform that first appeared to do automated online mastering, is now distribution, too. And they’ve added online giant Beatport as a partner.
That news came quietly earlier this week, but it demonstrates LANDR are serious about making a turnkey solution for distribution as well as mastering. The deal is, if you aren’t a label big enough to work with Bandcamp directly, and/or if you don’t have your own distributor, you can’t just send music to online stores.
LANDR offers to entirely streamline the process. If you trust their algorithmic approach to mastering, all you have to do is upload and hit release. Your music is mastered (with some minor, simplified ability to tweak the results), and off to Beatport – plus Apple Music, Spotify, Tidal, Google Music, and some others.
The pricing is certainly aggressive. Distribution is bundled in with the mastering fees at no additional cost. And in an unprecedented move, LANDR give you 100% of royalties and charge you nothing. The whole system is based on explosive growth. To master WAV files, you have to pony up for the 25EUR/month fee (for unlimited tracks, if you’re a heavy user). But it appears even the lowly 4EUR/mo track does WAV distribution.
There is a catch, of course. First, I’m not entirely convinced by LANDR’s algorithmic mastering. Mastering with a human actually isn’t all that expensive, depending on who you use – and tests I did with LANDR’s system were compelling, but only on the level of what you might get with a preset in a good mastering plug-in. I know – I’m going to get in some trouble with the LANDR folks for this. But my thought is this: some of what mastering engineers do is based on taste, not just on something that could be derived from a large sample set. I rely on a mastering engineer to catch little mistakes and ask questions. Now, maybe people don’t want to pay extra for that, but – then I’d ask if they really want to do a proper digital release, or if they might as well just stick stuff up on SoundCloud and not overthink it.
I’ve confirmed with LANDR that you don’t have to opt into their mastering scheme just to use distribution. You can subscribe to the distribution only – which is even more affordable than mastering with distribution built in. (This also comes with some cute apps and stats and stuff that can be frankly a bear to navigate on big distribution platforms.) As it’s subscription-based and there’s no contract, you do have to keep paying the subscription to keep your music out there. (On the other hand, there’s no exclusivity, so your label could move on to another distributor later with new music without any hassle.)
There’s a second factor to be aware of here: just dumping music on distribution often isn’t effective. Having a human to pitch music makes a difference.
That said, even given my reluctance there, this distribution offer seems terrifically competitive. If you’ve finished an EP, and you just want to make sure people find it whether they type something into Spotify or follow your artist name on Bandcamp, this looks cost-effective and easy. There are other entry-level distribution services that don’t require contracts, but they tend to either charge big fees or else they lack stores like Beatport.
Revised: that pricing is insanely low, like too-good-to-be-true low. 10 tracks cost $1 a month. 30 are $2 a month. Unlimited is $4 a month. There are discounts for paying annually that get it even lower. Now, some distributors charge nothing, but they take more than 0% of your royalty. So this is impressive.
LANDR have posted on the topic:
https://blog.landr.com/everything-musicians-need-know-digital-music-distribution/
It’s worth doing some homework; we can cover more on distribution soon. (While I work on that, let us know how you’re distributing, as it’d be great to get some notes!)
Anyway, my kneejerk opinion:
Mastering, worth a try, but it’s still worth finding a solid mastering engineer if you can.
Distribution: this is so insanely affordable and easy, you’d be crazy not to at least look. (I’m exclusive with my distributor, so I’m out!)
For more:
https://www.landr.com/en/digital-distribution
Oh great, now everyone who is too cheap to pay for proper mastering is going to have their naff tracks shoveled onto Beatport. Can’t wait.
Agree with this. Where’s the quality control on what gets released?
Well – there isn’t much now. There’s already a huge volume of tracks monthly on Beatport… I can’t remember the stat. It was huge. I can look it up. 😉 (huge enough that this wouldn’t make so much of a difference to you as a consumer, I don’t think…)
I modified this post and forgot to post it, oh well, I must have been just DEVASTATING, I’ll try and approximate…
Distrokid lets you do the distro thing for less money, and all you lose is the shitty mastering.
Distrokid.com
There are some limitations (like being unable to handle various artists releases) and you still have to do your bandcamp release separately but on the whole a really good company. Cheaper and less bull-crappy than Tunecore as well.
Point taken re: Distrokid… looks decent. Not a great solution for labels or aliases, though, because of the one artist.
Labels have to be willing to establish a more formal business, and can either deal directly with the streaming services or sign up with someone like Tunecore. They also take care of publishing, sample clearance etc.
The target demo of this Landr deal are definitely not professionally run labels.
DistroKid do have plans for labels with more artists, staggered pricing based on number of artists.
I can’t see Beatport ?
https://www.landr.com/es/digital-distribution
Think they haven’t updated the Spanish-language page. The news came from Landr.
LANDR is a sure sign that the heat death of the universe is nigh.
Pretty sure the Distrokid sub is cheaper, would love to see that comparison. My approach is: if the artist is prolific (many tracks/albums per year) go with Distrokid and if the artist is more in the old model (one or two “albums” per year) go with CDBaby.
There’s essentially no profit in streaming outside of the larger acts so revenue cuts don’t mean much, it’s all marketing loss leader anyway.
In the article it keeps referring to being “big enough” to work with Bandcamp—I’m not very big and I distro with Bandcamp no problem. Is it a typo in the article?
Definitely looking forward to reading what you come up with re: distribution.
Traxx.space is still cheaper than them. They charge just $1/track/year and you still keep 100% of the royalties. Or for $25/year, you can upload unlimited tracks/artists. Distrokid’s $20/year plan is limited to one artist name. Which was a pain for me. Traxx.space tends to be a little slower than other distros to get your music out there (5-10 days instead of 1-2 days) but the royalties still come in on time.
Ah, that one artist name is a dealbreaker for anyone running a label…
Does Traxx.space support Beatport?
(there are other stores relevant to electronic music, too…)
They don’t do beatport right now. I emailed them about when I signed up a while back and they said they didn’t because beatport was really bad about paying royalties. As in being 7-10 months late or just not paying at all.
The Traxx thing looks useful re: multiple names. I have the individual and get a handful of names but could use more and I’m not ready to move up to the label prices on Distrokid.
I love the sound of unlimited upload for 90% royalties on Traxx, I don’t make any money on the streams and not-Bandcamp stores anyway; I only upload to streamers/itunes to be findable for people. Being able to stop paying for that would be great.
I’ll check out Traxx.
One thing distrokid recently introduced that might be helpful for beat-driven music is an easy way to split income with collaborators (“N feat. Y,” music splits for N and Y). I think there’s a blog post about it but haven’t checked it in detail because it’s not very applicable for the kind of stuff I do.
I started with the 90% plan and upgraded a few months in. I have over 40 tracks under 3 different artist names on there so, for me, it was cheaper than distrokid. I’m not making a killing but I am always surprised at the number of random streams I get each month. Some months it’s 10 and another month it’s 6,000. Lol! I don’t know what changed. I assume a song would get put on a playlist or something. I guess i should sign up for spotify for artists to find out.
Ive uploaded 2 tracks. Both are free of copyright samples. In fact all originals material save single shot percussion. And both tracks were flagged with their automated copyright infringement. I have replied to both emails with no response…
Can you use their distribution service WITHOUT using their mastering service ? That would be interesting if they do.