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.

Get your next album cover for less than $25. Five creative Graphic Artists on Fiverr.com

If you're reading this blog, you are probably a musician like me, that knows exactly how to spend hundreds of dollars on studio gear, instruments and software, but when it comes to marketing, even the expenses under $100 seem to hurt. Have you ever asked yourself any of the following questions or statements?

1. I wish I could find a graphic artist for my new album cover that costs less than $300 and will actually give me something I want.
2. I am broke and I need an album cover, but I don't know anyone.
3. A lot of album covers that I've seen these days look cheap and simple, why is that?
4. I just need a simple album cover for a cheap price, I am broke.
5. I don't know what I want on my album cover, that's why I'm calling you.
6. Why do graphic artists take my deposit for an album cover and then disappear for two weeks?
7. I know I explained to this graphic artist, exactly what I wanted for my album cover, and they made something totally different and now they want to charge me to make changes.
8. I heard that there are people overseas that are graphic artists that will work for cheap, unlike the spoiled local college brats that are over charging me.
9. Hello Facebook friends, can anyone recommend a graphic artist for me?
10. OK, five bucks, I think I can pay $5 to get a cover for my next single, I just need something basic.

Well, I think you've come to the right blog post? Fiverr is an amazing place, where people across the world offer services starting at $5. You can find graphic artists, translators, musicians, SEO web specialists, graphic designers and more. So why did the title of my blog post say “... less than $25?” Because the truth is, at fiverr, the prices for gigs start at $5, but you probably need a few “extra gigs” to get exactly what you need. But before you start comparing fiverr sellers, there are a few things that I recommend you get, no matter who you hire to design your album cover.

• Get a square version of your album cover that is 3000 x 3000, 300 dpi, .jpg less than 15mb.
• Make sure that you either have the ability to resize your own image, or you pay your graphic artist to output different sizes, based on the table above.
• Make sure to get the source file (photoshop, illustrator, or whatever program they used) 

Getting your source files important, because, you may want some small change later on, two years from now and you can't expect your graphic artist to have archived this file. Save yourself from a huge headache later. The following is a list of some of the artwork dimensions that you need for some of the main distributors. You would think that this is an industry standard, but it seems like every distributor wants something a little different.

Distributor	Dimensions	File Types Accepted
Band Camp	700 x 700 minimum	.jpg, .gif, .png
cdbaby	1400 x 1400	.jpg
Distro Kid	Not Published / Public	Not Published / Public
Loudr.fm	3000 x 3000	.jpg, .jpeg, .png
Mondo Tunes	Not Published / Public	Not Published / Public
Reverb Nation	1000 x 1000	.jpg or .png
Symphonic Distribution	2000 x 2000	.jpg, .jpeg, .png
Topspin Media	600 x 600 min - 1200 x1200 max	.jpg
Tunecore	1600 x 1600 min - 3000 x 3000 max	.jpg, .png, .gif

You'll notice, that on fiverr, some graphic artists charge a little extra for each of the three rules stated above, which is why the $5 simple album cover is rarely a viable option. $25 is more reasonable, and depending on the seller, it may cost you up to $50, but keep in mind … most retail graphic artists are charging anywhere from $200-$500 for album covers. Keep your options open.

Here are five great sellers on fiverr that I have found:

Hatimbahia Team from Morrocco

williamw1987

ateljestudio

kidslikefran

jigs33

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.