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Landr vs Distrokid quick verdict:
Distrokid is a Spotify preferred distributor, & allows you to release unlimited singles/albums for $19.99/year. Landr costs $89/year for unlimited releases, and the smaller priced plans charge for each single or album released. With Landr, you do get access to free AI mastering, which is something you don’t with Distrokid.
Which is better for you entirely depends on what you need, but we’ve personally used both, and Distrokid is cheaper, faster & one of Spotify’s listed preferred distributors.
On the other hand Landr’s dashboard is a lot prettier than Distrokid’s vastly outdated look, and also comes with a free mastering service (up to 2 tracks/month).
(on a related note, check out our best mixing & mastering services guide).
The mastering on Landr is exceptionally good for AI mastering, but AI mastering really isn’t all there yet, and you should be doing your own masters, or paying a professional to.
Landr also offers a lot of the paid extras that Distro charges a fee for, like YouTube monetisation, Shazam etc. If you use those you may rack up a hefty bill.
When it comes to online music distribution, Distrokid is the better choice for the DIY musician (in our opinion) and we even included it as the #1 distribution service, in our best distribution services 2021 guide.
Table of Contents
Distrokid is a cheap, and fast distribution service that you can use to release your tracks.
You pay a fixed price/year for unlimited distribution, and time to distribute takes anywhere between 3-5 days.
They distribute your music to China, TikTok, Spotify, iTunes, Apple Music and pretty much every streaming service you’d want to be on.
You also get to keep 100% of your streaming royalties, which is not the same for Landr, (unless you pay $89/year).
Distrokid also offers some extremely helpful automatic payment splitting options, that are useful if you’re releasing remixes, collabs, or music with featured vocalists etc.
Personally we’ve never had any issues with them ourselves, but we have heard reports of people having their music taken down, and having issues with naming releases/remixes.
These are few reports, and the general consensus online is that Distrokid is the best value for money distributor to go with for your music releases.
Having had personal experience, we’ve had no issues with anything on Distrokid, apart from the odd track we didn’t make appearing on our profile. This was an issue solve by support pretty quickly though.
One downside of Distrokid is that the entire service is pretty automated, so if you have issues that require human attention (like a track name being rejected), it takes a while for support to get to you, but generally the support are very helpful, & will resolve your issues.
Distrokid has a pretty easy-to-navigate dashboard, but it looks like it’s been made in excel. Nothing you can’t use, but don’t expect any flashy stuff once you’re inside.
It’s also becoming more and more community based as a service. They’ve even got a new social media for the musician, called “Slaps”. It’s pretty much another place to upload your music and connect with other musicians.
Distrokid also makes getting in playlists easy, and one particularly funny service included is the wheel of playlists. You basically spin the wheel and get added to a playlist on whatever position it lands on.
The playlists aren’t the most popular ones, but it’s still extra exposure.
You can also monetise your music on YouTube, but you have to specifically opt-in for that feature. With Distrokid, you’ll also be able to release your cover songs no problem.
With Distrokid you’ll get:
✅ Cheap yearly subscription for unlimited digital distribution.
✅ 0% commission taken
✅ Spotify preferred distributor
✅ Split payments for collab releases
✅ Great customer service
❌ Analytics aren’t precise enough
❌ Charge extra $0.99 for Shazam & other extras
Distrokid has a couple options for pricing, we’ll cover them all here and what they include. We’ll also go over the extras charges that will be added on top if you want to add things like Shazam to your releases.
The fee Distrokid charge, rises from here for extra musicians added to the package. It goes all the way up to 100 bands/artists.
Distrokid Extras pricing:
There are a lot of extras to pay for when using Distrokid. Personally we have never bought anything but the Shazam extra.
Store maximizer seems pointless, and YouTube content ID too unless you’re a massive artist.
The Way that Distrokid keeps its cost so low is by charging for extras. This means you will pay extra for Shazam, YouTube monetisation, cover song licensing & other services, per track, per year.
You can see all the Distrokid extras above.
For a yearly fee of $19.99/year, unlimited releases, good customer support and the somewhat novelty extras, you really can’t go wrong with Distrokid for online music distribution.
They have a fast distribution time, get your music on all major streaming services, and we’ve never had any issues with them.
There are some reports of slow customer service times and issues with track names etc, so that might be something to be wary of, but, for the price, they’re one of the best distributors about.
Landr advertises its online music distribution service as free, but it’s not. It’s free to signup and have an account for their mastering service, but Landr distribution is not free.
It costs $9/single, & is $29/album if you release on their ‘free’ plan.
If you use Landr, they’ll also take 15% of your hard earned money, when releasing with their free option.
For a payment of $20/year it’s 9% commission, and $89/year is 0% commission.
For this price Landr will distribute your music across all major streaming services, including distribution to Chinese music streaming services, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram & even Shazam included in the price.
These come as extras at Distrokid, and can mount up a pretty high bill each year, if you have a lot of releases.
Landr are extremely fast to distribute your music, and will get it to Spotify, Apple Music, iTunes etc, in as little as 5-7 days, competing with Distrokid’s times.
On top of all that they also offer a free AI mastering tool, that lets you complete 2 free masters/month. It’s surprisingly good at what it does, but investing in human mastering is always better.
That’s not to say they aren’t great masters though! If you’re a producer on a budget, Landr’s mastering is exceptional.
Landr also has an incredible, in-depth analytics reporting system. It is the highest detail we’ve seen out of all the distributors, and can be extremely useful.
Alongside all this, you’re able to release cover songs, remixes, and even monetise your music on YouTube.
Landr monetises your songs on YouTube automatically as opposed to Distrokid, which is nice. These have to be originals though, you cannot earn money on YouTube for cover songs.
Another thing included with Landr, is DAW streaming. This means you can collaborate on music with other musicians. This is pretty cool, but sessions are limited to 15 minutes on free plans.
It’s unclear what you get for paid plans, or whether this is included. There’s just an ominous “collaboration tools” on the checklist and nothing explains what they are.
Landr distribution plans include:
✅ Free AI music mastering of 2 tracks/month
✅ Provide the best analytics systems about
✅ YouTube monetisation & SoundCloud monetisation
✅ All stores included, and all services like Shazam, TikTok, Instagram music etc
✅ Option to release covers
❌ Expensive plans/fee(s)
❌ Take commission on lower plans
❌ No publishing team to collect radio/TV money
Landr has 3 different payment tiers for musicicians looking to release their music, on Spotify, iTunes, Apple Music & other streaming platforms.
Landr’s pricing is quite confusing because a lot of articles online have differing ideas about what’s actually included with just music distribution packages.
For this article we contacted Landr directly, to fully understand their currently pricing. Let’s go over their fees.
Landr is great for distribution, but for the price you pay and what’s included there are better options on the market. If you’re looking for specifically distribution, it may be best to look at other options, like Distrokid.
Landr offer a lot more than just music distribution, but they’re not worth it for distributing your music. They’re slightly more expensive than Distrokid, still take commission, and charge for singles/albums on certain price plans.
Landr however provide some incredible services in the music industry. Their rent to own plugins, cloud based sample library, and their new DAW streaming software is amazing.
Landr also offer a wicked network section where you can talk to and hire all kinds of creatives from around the world, from producers, to singers, to graphic designers.
We can see Landr being the #1 place to be for musicians, just right now, there’s better options for distribution.
Distrokid is the best distribution service.
If you’re looking for just music distribution, then Distrokid is cheaper, faster and more reliable than Landr. If you’re looking for more than just that (samples, DAW streaming), Landr will be a better fit.
Distrokid are better at music distribution than Landr are right now. That might change in the future, but for now they’re the best company out there.
Landr offers other services like AI mastering, cloud based sampling, DAW streaming, & more that it performs exceptionally well at. If you want to check Landr out, we would recommend you take a look at their other services.
Landr distribution isn’t bad… it’s just cheaper, and better elsewhere right now.
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Here is our list of the best mixing and mastering services in 2021: Max Honsinger Martin Kano Dominion Analog Mastering MixButton Studios Landr Cloud Bounce
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