Great art is nothing without an audience! In the digital age, musicians could be forgiven for thinking that it’s easier than ever to share their work with the masses and make money from their art by taking it directly to the consumer. And while this may be true theoretically, there is a universe of difference between making your music available in the digital domain and getting your music listened to. Music distribution certainly has fewer corporate gatekeepers than it has in previous decades, and digital music distribution has been a great leveller. It has helped smaller independent artists to stand shoulder to shoulder with bigger acts in a huge global marketplace.

With digital distribution the go-to medium for your target audience since 2015, even if you plan to distribute your music physically, you will need to master digital distribution to help your art to find its audience.

But it’s not enough just to have distribution… You need to have the right distribution. The right distribution can help your music to find the right ears and allow you to get paid for your hard work. The wrong distribution can lead to your music being ignored and undiscovered by the masses.

Here we’ll look at everything musicians need to know about music distribution and how to ensure that they get it right first time…

Cutting out the middleman

The beauty of digital music distribution is that it cuts out the middleman and reduces the role of the label. Anyone who was trying to make a living from their music in the pre-digital era knows how it felt to chase that golden contract and get ‘signed’ to a label. The labels were the gatekeepers; they were the ones who could make or break an artists’ fortunes with a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down.

For decades, the labels were the gatekeepers of distribution, promoting artists and getting their records onto retailers’ shelves, taking a hefty chunk of the artists’ royalties for their trouble. While this system still exists today to a lesser extent, digital distribution has provided artists with far greater autonomy.

In the digital age, artists can now use a digital distributor to get their music in digital stores, As well as earn money for the use of their music in user generated content (UGC) across YouTube.

How it works today

To a certain extent, digital music distribution works just the same as analogue distribution has for decades. It’s just a much more efficient and streamlined process.

Firstly, artists are liberated from the burden of production costs associated with physical products. Lead times are greatly reduced by the loss of a need for manufacturing and transportation of physical goods.

Digital outlets like iTunes, Google Play and Spotify work in much the same way as traditional record stores but with the added advantage that musicians can take their music directly to retailers through digital platforms. These same platforms can also give them the push they need to get get noticed by their target audience.

The net result for musicians? They get to keep their royalties while incurring a fraction of the overhead costs incurred through physical distribution.

The benefits of digital music distribution

In summary, let’s go over some of the inherent benefits that digital music distribution has for musicians;

- Digital music sells better than its digital counterpart with way fewer overheads.
- Many digital distributors do not have exclusivity deals so you retain the rights.
- You can take your music directly to where music lovers hang out on social media. ----.--.Recommendation algorithms can recommend your track to users based on other tracks / artists they have listened to.

How MusicDigi can help you to find your audience

As you can see, there’s an awful lot of upside to digital distribution. However, distributing your music online doesn’t automatically hand you the keys to the kingdom. The key lies in finding the right distribution platform to help you to find your audience. The right distributor can help your music to reach the right ears without costing you a fortune in fees.

MusicDigi can make your music available to all of the biggest online music retailers including iTunes, Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play, Amazon, and many more. MusicDigi also offers musicians unparalleled value for money. Artists pay just $39.99 per year and can upload unlimited albums or songs to over 150 digital stores.

MusicDigi is also the only distribution service that offers artists "Spotify windowing". This feature allows artists to make their music available exclusively to Spotify premium users for a 2 week period ahead of its official release date. This puts you directly in touch with a huge market of music connoisseurs.

What’s more, MusicDigi gets your music into online stores faster than other distributors while also offering a bevy of exclusive features that make life easier for musicians.

Ready to release music and get paid? Sign up for MusicDigi.