DistroKid vs TuneCore vs CD Baby: which distributor should you release through

CD Baby if you release rarely and do not expect much income from it. DistroKid if you release more than once or twice a year. TuneCore sits within a pound a year of DistroKid in the UK, so the choice between those two comes down to small print rather than the headline fee. The real split is in how they charge: DistroKid and TuneCore take a yearly subscription and none of your store royalties, while CD Baby takes a one-off fee per release and 9% of everything that release earns for as long as it stays up.

What each one charges

Prices below come from each company's own pricing page on 13 September 2026. DistroKid's pricing page and TuneCore's UK site both list sterling. CD Baby publishes dollar prices only, so its figures stay in dollars here, with sterling conversions at roughly $1.35 to the pound (Trading Economics had it at 1.351 on 11 September).

DistroKid's middle tier, Musician Plus at £35.99 a year, adds a second artist, synced lyrics on Apple Music, daily streaming stats and the ability to set your own release and preorder dates. That last one is the reason a solo producer might pay for it, since the base Musician plan does not list custom release dates. Ultimate at £71.99 covers up to 100 artists and is a label plan.

TuneCore's tiers are cheaper at the top. Breakout Artist at £35.99 adds Store Automator, which sends your existing releases to new stores as TuneCore adds them, plus a cover art tool and two-business-day support. Professional at £43.99 adds several artists, a custom label name and one-business-day support. Rising Artist support answers in three business days.

TuneCore's pay-per-release prices lose to its own plan

TuneCore still sells releases one at a time: £20.99 a year for a single, and £35.99 for an album's first year then £44.99 for every year after. The Rising Artist plan is also £20.99 a year and covers unlimited releases. So a single on pay-per-release costs exactly what the plan costs, and an album costs more in year one and more than double the plan every year after that. Unless you are releasing under several artist names, there is no catalogue size at which pay-per-release comes out cheaper. If an older guide pointed you at TuneCore's per-release pricing, take the plan instead.

Five years of three release habits, worked through

Headline fees mislead because the costs grow on different clocks. DistroKid and TuneCore grow with the calendar, CD Baby grows with your earnings and your release count. These are five-year totals at today's prices before any commission, and none of the three promise to hold their prices that long.

The 9% is what moves CD Baby's column. For the one album, CD Baby stays cheaper than five years of DistroKid until the album has earned about £990 in store and streaming royalties across those five years, since 9% of £990 is about £89. Against the cheaper DistroKid route of one year's subscription plus Leave a Legacy, the crossover drops to about £500. For ten singles it is about £290 in total. At sixty singles CD Baby is the dearest option before anything has been streamed at all.

Most first releases earn well under those figures, and our guide to making a living as a producer covers why recorded income is the smallest slice for most people. That is the case for CD Baby: 9% of very little is cheap. The catch is that the 9% never ends. A track that finds an audience in year four pays CD Baby 9% of that as well, and every year after it.

What happens to your releases if you stop paying

This is the part the headline prices leave out. DistroKid's help centre says that if you stop paying the annual fee, your releases may be removed from the services they went to. The way out is Leave a Legacy, a one-off extra that keeps a release live after your subscription lapses. It has to be bought for every release separately, and it does not replace the subscription while you are still uploading. RouteNote's September 2026 breakdown of DistroKid's fees lists it at $29 a single and $49 an album. RouteNote runs a competing distributor and DistroKid's help centre would not load for us, so check the price in your own account before relying on it.

TuneCore's help centre is blunter. If a renewal is not paid by the renewal date, TuneCore emails you, allows a grace period, then takes the release down. Once a release is down, the takedown is final, and getting the music back means redistributing it from scratch as a new release. We found no permanent-release option on TuneCore's UK pricing page, so a TuneCore catalogue stays live for as long as somebody keeps paying for it.

CD Baby is the only one of the three built for walking away. Its cost page states a one-time fee per release with no annual fees, so a release stays up whether or not you ever log in again. The 9% is what you pay for that. If the music belongs to a band that has split, or to a project you might leave alone for years, this matters more than any figure in the tables above.

Social video money is charged separately on all three

Store royalties are one income stream. Money from your music being used in other people's videos, through YouTube Content ID and the equivalents on TikTok, Facebook and Instagram, is another, and each distributor charges for it differently. TuneCore's UK pricing page puts a 20% fee on those earnings. CD Baby's help centre says it pays artists 70% of social video revenue and keeps 30%. DistroKid keeps 20% and, according to RouteNote, adds a yearly fee of $4.95 a single or $14.95 an album for the service.

Thirty percent against twenty looks like a wide gap. CD Baby's help centre points out that its share comes out of what the platforms pay after they have taken their own undisclosed cut, and the same is true of the other two. For a producer whose tracks are not turning up in other people's videos, every one of these percentages works out at nothing.

Dolby Atmos, publishing and the other extras

If you mix in Atmos, DistroKid charges $26.99 a track to deliver the file, and it has to go up with the original release rather than afterwards. Velveteen's distributor guide lists TuneCore as handling Atmos self-service on new releases. We found no Atmos price on CD Baby's cost page. Our Dolby Atmos guide works out whether that delivery fee ever pays for itself on a bedroom release.

A distributor collects the recording side of your income. The songwriting side, performance and mechanical royalties on the composition, needs registering separately whichever of the three you use. CD Baby sells that registration as CDB Boost at $39.99 a release, and our publishing deal explainer sets it against Songtrust and Sentric, including why unregistered songs eventually pay somebody else.

Who owns CD Baby now

CD Baby belongs to Universal Music Group. The European Commission cleared Universal's purchase of Downtown Music on 13 February 2026, on condition that Universal sells off Downtown's Curve royalty accounting business, and the deal brought CD Baby, the FUGA distribution service and Songtrust in with it. CMU's report on the $775 million deal quotes the independent label body IMPALA arguing that FUGA, CD Baby and Songtrust hold data much like Curve's, and the Commission's answer that the data on those services is either public or does not concern rivals' commercial terms. None of that changes CD Baby's published fees. It does mean an independent release through CD Baby now runs through a major label group, which some producers mind and plenty do not.

Which one to actually pick

• CD Baby, if you have one album or EP to put out and no plan to follow it, or if the music has to stay up after you stop paying attention. $14.99 an album plus 9% of a small number is the cheapest route on this page.
• DistroKid Musician, if you release more than a couple of times a year. £19.99 covers everything you upload, and Leave a Legacy gives you a way to stop paying later without losing releases.
• TuneCore Rising Artist, if you want Content ID included in the base plan without a per-release fee on top. It costs £1 a year more than DistroKid. Take the plan, never the per-release prices.
• DistroKid Musician Plus at £35.99, if you want to set your own release dates and plan promotion around them, which the entry plan does not list.