Premier Rock Forum

Anyone have any experience doing digital distribution for a cover song, or series of cover songs. i.e. uploading the stuff to: TuneCore, DistroKid, CDBaby, I heard of this site called "Sound Drop" etc?

This has some info: https://routenote.com/blog/upload-cover-songs/ and I've done some preliminary research, but I'm posting this topic to see if there is some piece of critical info someone else has already figured out, so I can benefit from their actual experience.

If one doesn't get the license to cover a song, it can potentially be taken down from a platform at the rights holder's request. This is probably less of an issue if the music is being offered for free than if the potential to generate profits is somewhere in the equation. I put out a release a while back that featured a cover from a well known musician. To be on the safe side, avoid future hassles, etc. I secured the rights for the song through an intermediary, what was then Easy Song Licensing and is now known as Easy Song (link HERE). Had to account for how many physical copies would be manufactured (200) plus projected digital sales (roughly 100) and the total, according to an old email, was a little less than $60. Took half a week. A whole album or EP full of covers would cost more, and more copies being made/digital sales projected would add to that somewhat. Probably, just throwing something up on Bandcamp or YouTube, for free, one might not need to bother with any of this. Other platforms, for something with a wider potential reach/profits, it might be best to get it sorted first.

Have only added a few releases to Spotify and used CD Baby for it. They have to vet your release before it's added to this and other platforms. The process isn't that taxing, usually takes a few days to approve something once everything is ready. The cost is around $70 for an album, closer to $15 for a single (IIRC). It's best to have the rights for covers if you go this route, as it'll speed up the process/prevent snags.

I haven't used DistroKid for this specifically, but it looks like they will handle most of the work for you (for a fee of course). They'll get the appropriate license(s), pay the original song writer, etc. Other companies may too, but you'd have to look into them.

https://support.distrokid.com/hc/en-us/ ... ver-Songs-

This page seems to cover a lot of it:
https://support.easysong.com/hc/en-us/a ... 0039408054

I guess some of the major digital distro platforms are handling the licenses for you at this point, I know YouTube handles it through some automatic recognition software.

Downloads-- You definitely need the license and you are earning 9% royalties maximum. I guess you have to ballpark the amount of downloads you plan to sell, which seems kind of silly. How can you know? But it makes sense that it's capped at 9%, whereas an original composition earns you 73% royalties on bandcamp, for example (less with Apple Music).

Streaming is a more realistic use case.

For example if you put it on YouTube Music, they handle the royalty distribution. I'm going to try it for a pretty popular artist, and I could cross the number of streams where small, albeit real money is transferred between hands. I just recorded a full EP of just cover songs of an artist who gets multi-million streams.

Example: Royalty per stream on YT is $.004 and mechanical license streams are capped at 10k per license at $15 a license. That's a $40 profit, minus the license fee of $15, so you'd make $25 per 10,000 streams?? Can't be right, but if it is... So at 1,000,000 streams you're making $4000, minus the license fee you'd have to re-up 100 times at a cost of $1500, so that's $4000-$1500, or a total of $2500 per 1 million streams. That's a royalty percentage of 62.5% which seems wrong.

I doubt they'd cap your royalties at 9% for downloads but offer you 62.5% royalties off streams. This is where I'm getting lost.