Sell Your Music Online: Viberate Digital Music Distribution

Miha Prebil

Jun 26, 2023

Introduction

You did it. You made music. It doesn't matter if you made it in the comfort of your bedroom, or your band recorded it in a studio. It’s here and ready to get out there. Most likely, you feel accomplished, which you definitely should, but at the same time you might feel that the hardest part is yet to come. Sending demos to labels and waiting for a response that might never come, waiting for months to see how your music did and collecting that 30%, waiting for a slot to release your next album, and having no control over the music you just made. That is definitely not how you should feel, and now you don’t need to. Being an artist in the digital age allows you to take matters into your own hands, forget that record deal and make it independently. But should you?

📌 Viberate for Artists: Unite every tool an independent artist needs to maximize their career in one hub – including a free website, music distribution, advancing, playlist & festival pitching, and analytics.

Indie vs. record deal

The indie vs. record deal debate has been the talk of the town for some time now. While the success of artists who are doing it themselves might be tilting the scales towards going indie, this doesn’t necessarily mean a record deal won’t work for anyone. However, a viable record deal requires a sufficient level of artist’s autonomy, which, especially at the very start of your career, might not be realistically achievable.

What does it mean to do it yourself

With physical song distribution on its way out of the picture, getting your music out there basically means delivering it to the relevant DSPs. Don’t let the platform count fool you - 6 biggest platforms, namely Spotify, Apple, Amazon, Tencent, and YouTube, hold more than 80% share of the global music streaming market. We’ll deliver your music to 34 most relevant DSPs, including the big 6. This will enable you to reach your existing fans regardless of their platform preferences, and expand your fanbase by introducing your music to a worldwide audience. All you need to provide is music and artwork. We strongly recommend submitting your release at least 2 weeks prior to your intended release date. This gives enough time for us and the DSPs to ingest your release and make it available on release date.

No marketing team, no problem

Release promotion has always been considered as a prerogative of record labels, but with the options now available to artists, release campaigns have become much less scary and much more manageable. By maintaining a strong social media presence and utilizing a few accessible tools, artists can promote their music with the genuineness and authenticity that can never be matched by any marketing team. And with DSPs opening their channels to receive direct promotional pitches, there’s very little that can’t be done by artists themselves in terms of release promotion. To make targeting the right audience easier and your promotional efforts more efficient, our song distribution dashboard will provide you with a detailed fanbase breakdown, as well as free promotional tools such as pre-save and share links. 

Unlock the power of data

Every 3 or 6 months, a label will equip you with a .csv file that you can upload to a service that might be able to tell you which tracks did the best, which platform yielded the most listeners and where your fans are located. You might even find out you’ve been shoveling money through the window by targeting the wrong markets for the past 3 months, but unfortunately, only after the damage has been done. Our song distribution dashboard enables you to monitor your track performance in real time. You’re able to break down your streams and downloads by platform and country, get a detailed insight into your royalties, compare your tracks, and get a listener breakdown by country.

You get paid as soon as we do 

With Viberate for Artists you get to keep 100% of your royalties. Everything your tracks make goes straight to you and anyone you appoint as collaborator. Royalties can take 3 to 6 months to be processed from the end of the actual month of sale. This is due to the fact that distributors need to wait until the music services process and audit all their sales figures, until they can process these statements themselves and attribute the royalties to artists. As soon as this is done, you can access your money from the payments page and request a withdrawal.

Full transparency with no hidden fees

The entire distribution cost is covered by your Viberate for Artists Premium plan. There are no hidden charges for distributing multiple tracks or assigning splits. You can distribute as many releases and tracks as you like. If your tracks are a team effort, you can assign royalty splits to different collaborators, who’ll be able to claim their royalties directly from the platform. There are no fees for withdrawing royalties, other than the ones that might be imposed by the payment provider (Wise or PayPal).

Whether you want to do it on your own terms all the way, or just until you get that perfect record deal, Viberate for Artists can help you get your music on every platform that matters. You decide where and when you want it, and who gets paid. You can see how your music is doing in real time, who’s listening to it and how much you’re earning. With us taking care of all that, there’s nothing else for you to do other than what you should - and that is to make music.