Leaving Tunecore for Distrokid - Part 1
In a recent turn of events, Tunecore, one of the leading independent music distribution platforms, has implemented a new policy that has left many artists and the music community buzzing with mixed reaction. The controversial move involves Tunecore taking a 20% cut from artists who opt for their accelerator program. While such programs are not uncommon in the music industry, the significant percentage has ignited a heated debate on whether this is a fair exchange for the promised benefits.
This post is written to share our first hand experience with Tunecore and why we are encouraging the artists we work with to find a new distributor.
I have been a proponent for Tunecore since leaving my career in the major label system and launching an artist management and marketing company thirteen years ago. Tunecore offered a great option for independent artists and labels and seemed to be committed to helping the independent artists operate on a distribution level comparable to the major labels. While their services didn’t offer all the perks of being signed to a major label, it did offer independents access to the Digital Service Providers at a reasonable cost. Tunecore never really assisted with playlist pitching for the artists we represent but thanks to my relationships from the label years, I was able to pitch the DSPs myself. I’ve worked with a number of independent artists and labels and have always steered them to use Tunecore as their distributor. Many artists that I worked with switched to Tunecore from CD Baby and Distrokid following my advice. Tunecore had live actual people working for them who we could call on for help with issues and questions regarding release strategy. When they were purchased by Believe, everything began to change and live human help became less and less.
The Believe takeover first resulted in staff reduction. There was a deafening silence when we needed help with release issues. New Release setup became more cumbersome. When the pricing model changed to a small yearly fee instead of fees per release, I suspected Believe/Tunecore was setting up artists for something bad. This month, the suspicion became reality with the 20% fee for being a part of their accelerator program.
One of the artists we represent was experiencing great success for an indie. We had built their monthly listenership from 0 to 450K monthly listeners on the Spotify platform. Spotify invited the artist into some of their beta programs. The artist was one of the first to be invited to participate in Spotify’s Discovery Mode. We worked diligently to test out the program and discovered that including the artist’s top selling catalog titles proved to work best. There is a reason titles rise to the top and that would prove to be a reality with Discovery Mode as the catalog was served up to new listeners.
In June of 2023, Believe flipped the switch. We were no longer allowed to select the titles for Spotify’s Discovery Mode as Tunecore claimed their algorithm knew the best titles to include. Over the next few months we watched the artist loose 100K monthly listeners and we begged Tunecore to rethink their title selection. They claimed they were submitting the titles we wanted in the program but we were given no visibility until a couple months after each Discovery Mode month. Once we saw the titles moths later, we discovered Tunecore had abandoned our successful Discovery Mode strategy, causing that particular artist to lose 100K monthly listeners over a few months. Once again, we begged them to reconsider and help stop the hemorrhaging of monthly listener count. We considered switching distributors as we saw Distrokid allowing their artists to choose what titles go into Discovery Mode through the Spotify for Artist portal. But switching distributors seemed like a daunting task and there was the fear of things going wrong during the transition causing even more ground to be lost.
In December 2023, we received the news that in January, Tunecore would begin taking 20% of income from titles included in their self-touted accelerator program. Artist can opt out of the accelerator program but guess what? If you opt out, you can’t participate in Spotify’s Discovery Mode program. So now Spotify takes 30% to participate in Discovery Mode and Tunecore now takes an additional 20% for titles in Discovery Mode. Artists distributed through Tunecore must now give up 50% of income on titles in Discovery Mode and they still have no control over what is included. A program Spotify directly invited this artist to participate in, is now controlled by Tunecore and they take an additional 20% for what? Helping the artist loose 100K monthly listeners? Interestingly, artists distributed through Distrokid can choose which titles they want included in Spotify’s Discovery Program through the Spotify for Artist portal and they aren’t charged the additional 20% of income.
The decision was made. One week ago, we began transitioning the Artist’s catalog from Tunecore to Distrokid. We had a few calls with key Spotify folks who stated “You will be happy you are moving to Distrokid. They are a top preferred Distributor.”
We will be sharing more regarding our migration from Tunecore to Distrokid in a Part 2 post coming soon.