How to Price Your Own Music Distribution Service
- 12 Nov 2026
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Pricing decides who signs up for your distribution service and how much you earn from them. Copying the lowest price in the market rarely works for a smaller brand. A better approach starts with your costs and your customers.
The common pricing models
- Yearly membership. A fixed fee for unlimited or a set number of releases. Predictable for you and easy to understand for artists.
- Pay per release. A fee for each single, EP or album. Suits artists who release occasionally.
- Royalty commission. A percentage of the artist's earnings. Free to start for the artist, but slow and uncertain income for you, since royalties arrive months after release.
- Free tier with upgrades. Free basic distribution, with paid plans for more releases, extra services or priority support.
- Services on top. Mastering, artwork, promotion, playlist pitching support or YouTube services.
Work out your cost per customer
- your platform costs, including any royalty share your provider keeps;
- payment provider fees on each sale;
- support time per release, often the largest hidden cost;
- quality control time, if you review releases yourself;
- marketing cost to win each customer.
Divide your monthly costs by your expected number of active customers. Your average revenue per customer has to sit comfortably above that number.
Choosing prices for your niche
- Price for the value you add. Support in the customer's language, a curated label community or bundled services justify higher prices than generic distribution.
- Keep plans few and clear. Two or three plans are easier to choose between than six.
- Make the upgrade obvious. More releases, extra label names, priority support or bundled services such as mastering are upgrades artists understand.
- Be clear about royalties. Say exactly what share the artist keeps. Hidden fees are a common complaint about distributors.
- Test before you lock in. Offer early customers a founding price, then adjust after you see real costs.
Beware of the free trap
Free distribution attracts many sign-ups, including spam and fraud. If you offer a free tier, review releases carefully and limit what free accounts can do, or your costs and your reputation with stores will suffer. See quality control for distributors.
How SpaceMedia Whitelabel pricing works
With SpaceMedia Whitelabel, membership and pay-per-release sales go directly to your own PayPal or Stripe account, and you keep 100% of them. There is no recurring monthly fee for the core platform: a card is authorised when you start the 30-day free trial, a one-time €499 activation fee is charged after the trial, and SpaceMedia currently keeps a 15% share of royalties to fund development and maintenance. Set the share you promise artists with that in mind: if artists keep 100% of their royalties, the platform share comes out of your own income. Full terms are on the whitelabel page.
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Register on SpaceMedia
Begin your music publishing journey by signing up and creating a free account on SpaceMedia.
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Choose the plan that suits you best
Select from a variety of membership options to find the one that aligns perfectly with your music distribution needs.
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Submit your music for distribution
Create a new release and upload your tracks to have them distributed across various platforms.
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Quick Review
Our team promptly evaluates your uploaded tracks, ensuring they meet our quality standards before distribution.
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Get Paid
Once your music is distributed and gains traction, we ensure timely compensation for your creative work.
SpaceMedia delivers music to a broad and changing network of streaming, download, social, and music-identification platforms. This can include major services such as Spotify, Apple Music, iTunes, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Deezer, TikTok, Facebook and Instagram, SoundCloud, Tidal, Pandora, Boomplay, Anghami, iHeart, JioSaavn, KKBOX, NetEase Cloud Music, Tencent, Qobuz, and other supported partners.
The exact network can change as platforms update territories, rules, and delivery requirements. SpaceMedia gives you access to supported distribution channels, but no distributor can guarantee that every platform will accept every release in every country.
Most major streaming services do not let every artist upload music directly. A distributor like SpaceMedia delivers your audio, artwork, metadata, and rights information to supported platforms so your release can appear on services such as Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Deezer, TikTok, and others.
Create an account, choose the plan that fits your needs, upload the final release files, review the details, and submit. SpaceMedia reviews Free submissions within 5 business days, Premium submissions within 2 business days, and Label submissions within 1 to 2 business days. Store publishing happens afterwards.
You can monetize eligible music on supported video platforms through Content ID when your plan includes it. Content ID is currently included with Premium and Label, and it is not included with the Free plan.
Only submit music you fully control for Content ID. Tracks with uncleared samples, non-exclusive beats, royalty-free loops used by many creators, public-domain recordings, or disputed rights may be rejected or may cause claims that need to be resolved.
Submit your release through SpaceMedia and choose distribution to social music platforms where available. Eligible releases can be delivered to platforms such as TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and other supported social or short-form music services.
Once delivered, each platform decides how the music appears, how long processing takes, and which features are available in each territory. Use accurate metadata and clean audio to reduce avoidable delivery issues.
Independent music distribution lets artists release music to streaming, download, and social platforms without signing to a traditional record label. You stay in control of your music while using a distributor to deliver it to supported services.
With SpaceMedia, you can manage releases, artist details, earnings, and payout information from your account. All standard plans let users keep 100% of standard store royalties.
The Free plan lets artists release music without an upfront distribution fee and keep 100% of standard store royalties.
This gives new artists a way to start releasing music before paying for a yearly plan. Premium and Label add more primary-artist capacity and tools. All standard plans include 100% of standard store royalties.
Yes. In many cases you can transfer existing releases to SpaceMedia while keeping them live, as long as you submit the same metadata, audio, artwork, UPC, and ISRCs where available.
Keep the old release live until the SpaceMedia delivery is live and matched correctly. Removing the old version too early can interrupt availability or make stores treat the transfer as a new release instead of matching it to the existing one.