The Ultimate EDM Record Label Distributor: Labelworx

So you're ready to form a Dance Music Record Label and get your music into the hands of the top DJ's in the world and dominate Beatport? OK, maybe that's an oversimplification of a pretty serious business venture, but then again, with Labelworx and some really solid music this dream could come true.

Labelworx is a service out of the UK that is the ultimate end to end specialty shop for EDM record labels. Not only do they offer music distribution to every Dance Music retail outlet that matters, but they have plenty of other tools and experience to promote your record label brand to the EDM community. With names like Gareth Emery, Richie Hawton, Darude, Nervous Records, Eric Morillo, Harry Romero, Christopher Lawrence, Louie Vega ... you get the point, you can tell that Labelworx is all about the dance floor. More than distribution, they offer the following:

• Promoworx - A service for sending music to DJ's and getting reports
• Royaltyworx - An accounting service to help you pay multiple artists and remixers their fair share of royalties.
• Mix and Master Services - By engineers that specialize in the sound of Dance Music
• Demoworx - A demo management service for A&R
• Web Design Services - The have great web designers that have an eye for the EDM market.
• Vinyl, CD and Merchandise Production and Management

Labelworx covers a lot of ground and is meant for the serious EDM label only. Their main competitors are Symphonic Distribution and MondoTunes and I'll get deeper into those comparisons in future articles. The bottom line is this ...

Labelworx delivers to over 100 retailers. The list is jaw dropping. All of the usual suspects like iTunes, Spotify and Amazon, but the not so common EDM specialists like Juno Download, Beatport, DJshop.de and more. There are no setup fees and you do not pay for UPC or ISRC codes. Labelworx has commission rates as low as 5% according to this document. I've heard that around15% commission is the norm, but Labelworx is pretty mysterious about the percentage, but they encourage you to contact them on a case by case basis.

In future articles, I'll be comparing Label Worx to Symphonic Distribution and Mondo Tunes, a couple of other services that pay close attention to the EDM market.

My first experience with DistroKid, music distribution.

I have used a few different distributors (Symphonic Distribution, CDBaby and Tunecore) for my own original music over the last few years, trying to figure out the best one for me, the pros and cons. I recently came across DistroKid and decided to open up an account and explore some of their features.

The front page of DistroKid is fresh, simple, gives you some info and demands email sign-up to start your distribution. Straight to the point, no messing around.

First of all, DistroKid lists ten big name retail outlets, which is comparable to what Loudr.fm offers, minus Pandora submissions and direct-to-fan sales. DistroKid mentions that they will assist you with cover song licensing and distribution as well, but there aren't a lot of details on the front page. Loudr.fm boasts a very detailed cover song licensing and distribution plan, but more on that in my upcoming Loudr.fm review.

On the surface, it seems like cdbaby (30+), Tunecore (40+), Mondo Tunes (100+), Reverb Nation (30+) and Symphonic Distribution (300+) offer a lot more retail stores. It seems that DistroKid is more focused on dealing with the main distributors and not as many of the smaller companies. I don't mind that philosophy, but not having “Shazam” on the list is a shocker. Shazam is a useful tool that has helped me out. Sometimes people hear a song and just want to identify it quickly with the Shazam app, but if you're dealing with DistroKid or Loudr.fm, you are out of luck. (This blog post is from January 2016, so if this changes, I will update this post.)

The following chart is a brief comparison between DistroKid and Loudr.fm

	DistroKid	Loudr.fm
Amazon	Yes	Yes
Apple Music	Yes	No
Beats Music	Yes	No
Deezer	Yes	Yes
Direct to Fans	No	Yes
Google Play	Yes	Yes
itunes	Yes	Yes
Pandora	No	Yes
Rdio	Yes	Yes
Spotify	Yes	Yes
Tidal	Yes	No
YouTube Music	Yes	No
MediaNet (150+ stores)	Yes	No
Annual Fee?	$19.99	$0.00
Distributor Commission	0.00%	15.00%

DistroKid claims to get your music onto the popular sites 10-20 times faster than others, I guess that's a good selling point, but every company I have dealt with so far is pretty fast.

In order to find out more details about DistroKid's offerings, I went ahead and registered my email address with their site and created a login.

Once I signed in, I was introduced to the three different flavors of DistroKid services. The single artist option ($19.99 per year for one artist.) The Musician Plus option ($35.99 per year for two artists) and the Record Label Option ($79.99 per year for 5+ artists). All of these options are great, depending on what your business model is.

Here is my first impression as of January 2016:

Positives:

• DistroKid covers most of the major places you want your music to be found. (with the exception of Shazam and Pandora)
• DistroKid is affordable. $19.99 for unlimited distribution per year of unlimited tracks is an awesome price for the active musician with a large catalog.
• DistroKid offers package deals if you would like to distribute more than one artist, then there are discounts. Very cool.

Negatives:

• When and if DistroKid ever adds Shazam, then they will be a better value in my eyes.
• Not all tracks make it onto Pandora that are submitted, but there are many other distributors that offer this submission service in 2016 (Symphonic Distribution, Mondo Tunes, Loudr.fm).
• DistroKid covers all of the popular, general distributors, but if you produce Electronic Dance Music you are missing out on some big time sites like Beatport, Djdownload.com and others. This may not be a negative if you do not produce EDM.
• Although it's an inexpensive subscription, some artists may just want to pay a one-time fee and upload their album. For the light hobbyist, producing and marketing more than an album a year is ambitious. Eventually subscriptions could eat up all of your royalties if you produce very little music. Symphonic, Loudr, Cdbaby and others may be better alternatives.
• As far as I can tell, DistroKid does not offer Publishing Administration services and are not partnering with any companies that offer this service. You can lose a lot of royalties for streaming and downloads without a Publishing Administrator. I will blog about that topic soon.