Distribution pricing is designed to look cheaper than it is. The number on the homepage is almost never the number you actually pay. It's a starting point — a floor — and the real cost depends on how many little extras get stacked on top.
Let's pull the curtain back and look at what these plans genuinely cost once you add up everything, so you can make an honest comparison. (All prices here are as of mid-2026 — they change often, so double-check the current figures before you decide.)
The headline price is bait
Here's the trick, and once you see it you can't unsee it: distributors advertise a low base price, then charge separately for the things you'll probably actually want. Content ID. Keeping your music up if you stop paying. Auto-delivery to new stores. Pre-save tools. Paying collaborators. Each one is an add-on. Each one has a fee.
So the $24.99 plan becomes $24.99 plus this, plus that, plus a per-release charge — and suddenly you're paying a lot more than you signed up for.
Let's make it concrete.
DistroKid: the textbook example
DistroKid's base plan is around $24.99/year. That sounds great. Here's what commonly gets added:
- YouTube Content ID: roughly $4.95 per single per year — and they keep 20% of what it earns.
- "Leave a Legacy" (keeps your music up if you stop paying): about $29 per single, $49 per album, one-time, per release.
- Store Maximizer (auto-delivers to new stores as they launch): about $7.95 per release per year.
Picture a pretty normal first year: you put out three singles and want them protected and earning on YouTube. Add it up and you're realistically looking at around $147 in year one — not $24.99. That's not a gotcha; it's just what the add-ons cost when you actually use the service the way most people want to.
TuneCore
TuneCore (owned by Believe) runs subscription tiers, roughly $15 to $50 per year depending on plan, with extra charges for additional artist names. They keep 20% of social media and Content ID monetization, and their publishing service runs about $75 to set up plus a 20% commission. Streaming royalties on paid plans are kept at 0% — the cuts come from the add-on services.
CD Baby
CD Baby uses a totally different model: pay once (about $9.99 per single, $14.99 per album) and your music stays up — no renewals. Sounds like the cheap option.
The catch: they take a permanent 9% cut of your streaming and download earnings. Forever. There's no way to remove it short of pulling your music. So if your song does well, that 9% keeps growing — and over years, on a successful track, it can dwarf what you'd have paid in subscription fees. Plus they charge for add-ons (their Content ID cut is 30%, one of the highest around).
CD Baby isn't necessarily expensive — it depends entirely on how much you earn. Low earnings, rare releases? It can be the cheapest. A track that takes off? It can quietly become the most expensive option you could have picked.
A quick tour of the others
- UnitedMasters: has a free tier (but it keeps 10% of your money and is fairly locked to their ecosystem); paid plans run about $20–$60/year.
- Amuse: paid plans roughly $24–$60/year; Content ID cut of 15%.
- Ditto: plans around $19–$59/year; takes your music down if you cancel.
- RouteNote: genuinely free option (they keep 15%, you keep 85%), or pay-once premium plans.
How to actually compare them
Here's the honest framework, because there's no single "cheapest" — it depends on you.
Match the model to how you release and earn:
- You release a lot and keep paying every year? A flat-fee, 0%-commission subscription (DistroKid, TuneCore) tends to win — if you can stomach the add-ons and never let it lapse.
- You release rarely and don't earn much yet? A pay-once model (CD Baby, RouteNote premium) or a free commission-based tier can be cheaper, because you're not paying yearly for music that isn't making much.
- Upfront cost is the barrier? A genuinely free tier (RouteNote, some others) gets you live for nothing, in exchange for a commission cut.
Then do the real math. Take the base price and add: Content ID (fee + their cut), permanence protection (if it's an add-on), store delivery, and anything else you'll actually use. That's your real annual cost. Compare those numbers — not the homepage numbers.
And watch the percentage cuts, not just the flat fees. A "0% commission" plan that takes 20–30% of your Content ID and social money isn't really 0% on the money that matters if those are big income streams for you.
The bigger point
None of these companies are scams. But the industry has settled into a pricing style built to make comparison hard — low headline numbers, costs hidden in a stack of add-ons. The best thing you can do is ignore the big friendly number on the homepage and add up what you'd actually pay for the features you actually want.
When you do that math honestly, the rankings often look very different from the ads.
Outloud keeps it simple on purpose: a flat yearly price, stated up front, Content ID included free on every plan, no per-release add-ons, and your music never removed for non-payment. The price you see is the price you pay.