Article Posted by YR Music

Distribution companies have made life for independent artists and musicians a little easier by taking care of the draining parts of music distribution for you. Thanks to these various services that have arisen over the past decade, the process for getting your music onto streaming platforms is very simple and accessible. I’ve researched and laid out brief steps to help you navigate these sites.

STEP 1: CHOOSE YOUR DISTRIBUTION COMPANY

In a previously published How To entitled “How To: Pick the Right Distribution Company,” I laid out some pros and cons of the most common distribution companies. Based on all the data, pick the company that caters best to you and your project.

STEP 2: CREATE YOUR FREE ACCOUNT

To sign up you’ll need to put in basic info like your name, email and create a password.

Don’t take this step lightly — use an email that you actually check, and a password you actually remember because you’ll be using your distro site to check the stats from your project(s) even after you’ve completed the uploading and publishing steps.

STEP 3: VERIFY YOUR ACCOUNT

Check your email for a verification link and click the link to complete the signup process.

STEP 4: CREATE A SINGLE OR ALBUM

Different distro companies have different options but the most common options for what you can distribute are a single, an album or a cover of an already existing song. Click on the option that best suits the description of the project you’re dropping.

Once you’ve picked what type of content you are distributing, you then have to fill in basic info about the project.

Once this information is complete, it will prompt you to upload the cover artwork for your project. Before submitting it, make sure you have researched what the company requirements are for uploading artwork so you create the art with these requirements in mind.

The final task of the creating a single or album step is to upload the actual music — upload the mp3. or wav. file of your song to the site.

STEP 5: CHOOSE YOUR OUTLETS

You get to pick the outlets and streaming platforms you want your project to show up on.

Major outlets like Spotify, iTunes, Apple Music, Tidal, etc. are popular amongst the public and would be great platforms to gain an audience. Other outlets like Pandora, iHeartRadio, Amazon, etc. are great too, but they’re less popular these days. With that being said — it never hurts to put your music EVERYWHERE. You never know who’s listening!