[Nick Ryder]

Dear friends, I'm hoping some of you good people with be able to offer some advice as I have absolutely no idea where to start here....

I'm almost at a point whereby I'm ready to release some music into the world. I have three albums worth of songs and one of those is an album I have written and produced for a girl singer. The other two albums will be solo albums by myself.

I'm aware there are several services such as DistroKid, Ditto and a new one which has popped up called Anti-Joy. Do any of you have any experience with these platforms and if so, are there any you would recommend?

For the cost, it looks like Anti-Joy may be the best fit for me.

Also, I have to get some album artwork, but I do not know any artists so again, I have no idea where to start and I'm slightly reluctant to use AI.

All advice would be greatly appreciated!!

Many thanks in anticipation,


Nick.

[Sterix]

The bands I work with use Distrokid but I don't know anything beyond that (no idea of costs unfortunately).

[Nick Ryder]

The bands I work with use Distrokid but I don't know anything beyond that (no idea of costs unfortunately).

Thank you, @Sterix

My son's band use DistroKid as well but so far they have only released 2 songs so it's it a bit hard to tell how good it is so far.

[PaulAds]

Hello Nick

I’ve always used “amuse” because it cost nothing and got my albums out onto Apple Music, Spotify and perhaps some others that I can’t remember being interested in. I honestly haven’t any idea of any statistics, numbers of plays, etc, though…and I’ve never received any money via anything other than Bandcamp…and that’s been exclusively from my friends on this very forum.

I don’t let anything like that bother me in the slightest. People can get too hung up on “I’ve had x plays of this song or that song”

David Walliams is a multi-millionaire runaway success in everything he seems to do…and Tony Hancock killed himself in a cheap hotel room because he thought he was a failure. Such is fame and fortune.

I only wanted my songs to be out there just in case anyone ever wanted to hear them. I’m not sure if anyone really has…or how much it would mean to me anyway, without knowing who they were and what they really thought of them.

That’s the beauty of this place…you can get to know who people are, and whose opinions you value. You wouldn’t necessarily give equal credence to the opinion of some deluded bunny-boiling cellar-dweller* unless you wanted to, of course.

Anyway…”Amuse” was perfect for me…and good luck with it…you seem hungry and that’s probably a pre-requisite for success.

*we’ve had a couple of them here too.

[Nick Ryder]

@PaulAds Genius.

I'm laughing out loud as I type this

All points taken and agreed. Although as I've not been doing this long (2 years), I guess I feel I should give it a go, not that I expect any success whatsoever

Amuse.... I'll check it out now. Thank you.

[pompeyjazz]

@PaulAds Fucking spot on

[PaulyX]

Yeah, what PaulAds said...
A friend shared this article with me yesterday... apparently 100,000 songs get uploaded to the streaming platforms every freakin' day!

https://www.pro-tools-expert.com/production-expert-1/who-benefits-from-music-production-democratisation?utm_source=convertkit&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Who+Benefits+From+Music+Production+Democratisation?+🤔%20-%2010929773

It's nice to get a few new listeners and can be fun playing the game, but I agree with Paul that it's more important to get a few whose opinion you value.
For what it's worth I've been using CDBaby to distribute - not free but not too pricey either.
Good luck with it @Nick Ryder .

[kevysc]

@Nick Ryder  I use CD Baby and it has worked pretty well. However, once you get it out there, the real challenge is building an audience

Kevin

[Nick Ryder]

Thanks, @kevysc

I ended up using a service called AntiJoy as they allow up to 5 different artists. Its early days but I'm not overly impressed so far.