How to choose a distributor in 2026: fees, commissions and AI rules, read from their own pages

A distributor is the company that delivers your recordings to Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube and the rest, collects what they pay, and passes it on to you. Almost every DIY distributor reaches the same big stores, so the real differences are in how they charge, what they take from the money you earn, and which music they will accept. In 2026 that last point mostly means AI.

This guide compares four well-known DIY services, DistroKid, TuneCore, CD Baby and Ditto, using only their own pricing pages, help pages and agreements, as we read them on 23 and 24 Oct 2026. Prices change often and many plans run promotions, so check the page itself on the day you sign up. This is not legal or financial advice.

If you are weighing a distributor against a label deal, start with our comparison of 360 deals, distribution and label services first. This guide assumes you have already chosen to stay independent.

Three ways distributors charge you

A yearly subscription, no commission on streams. DistroKid's pricing page lists three plans: Musician at $24.99, Musician Plus at$44.99 and Ultimate at $89.99, all billed annually. All plans say you "Keep 100$19 a year, Pro at $59 and a Labels plan at$109 for up to five artists, with "100% of your streaming income" on every plan. Ditto Pro adds a 15% commission on publishing and sync royalties.

A subscription with fees on side income. TuneCore's pricing page lists Rising Artist at $24.99 a year, Breakout Artist at$44.99 and Professional at $54.99, plus per-release Single ($24.99 a year) and Album ($44.99, then$56.49 each following year) options. The page does not state a share of streaming income you keep. The one percentage it shows is a 20% fee on earnings from TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.

A one-off fee plus a commission. CD Baby charges $9.99 per single and$14.99 per album, once, with "no recurring or subscription fees". In return it takes a commission: 9% of download and streaming revenue and SoundExchange royalties, 15% of anything collected by The MLC, 30% of social video monetisation (YouTube, TikTok and Meta) and 40% of sync placements. Some of those collection services sit in its $39.99 CD Baby Boost add-on.

Work out your break-even

The models favour different artists, and the sum is simple enough to do yourself.

With a subscription you pay the same fee whether you earn $5 or$5,000. With CD Baby you pay a small fee once and then 9% of streaming income for as long as the release stays up. So the question is how much your catalogue earns from streams each year.

Take DistroKid's $24.99 Musician plan as the yardstick. 9$24.99 when that income is about $278 a year ($24.99 ÷ 0.09). Below that, CD Baby's 9% costs you less than a subscription would each year, on top of the one-off fee. Above it, the commission costs more than the subscription, and the gap grows with every stream. Against Ditto's $19 Starter plan the crossover is about$211 a year.

Two more things change the sum:

• How often you release. A subscription covers unlimited uploads on the plans above. CD Baby charges per release, so ten singles a year means ten fees.
• What happens when you stop paying. CD Baby says it has no recurring fees, so a release stays up without a subscription. With subscription services, check what the terms say happens to your catalogue if you let the plan lapse before you rely on it.

Be honest about your numbers. If you have no streaming history, assume you are below it.

The AI question

If you use AI at any stage, the distributor's policy is no longer a footnote. The four services set different tests, and the answer can decide where you can release at all.

• DistroKid accepts music made with AI tools if you own all the rights, do not impersonate anyone, are not mass-uploading spam and do not infringe anyone's work.
• TuneCore only distributes music made with GenAI models trained on fully licensed datasets, and this applies even if GenAI was used at only one point in making a track. It names Google Flow Music as an approved partner.
• CD Baby's rights page says "You will not be able to distribute A.I.-generated content." The Downtown content policy that also covers CD Baby draws a narrower line, at content made wholly or mainly by AI models trained on unlicensed recordings, or that mimics popular artists.
• Ditto: we did not find an AI policy on the pricing page we read, and we have not covered it here. Ask Ditto before you upload AI-assisted work.

How your answers travel from the distributor's upload form to the stores is in our guide to disclosing AI use through your distributor. What to do if a fully human track gets flagged is in our appeal kit, and the wider picture of copyright, PROs and distributors is in how to register an AI-assisted song.

A checklist before you sign up

1. Estimate your yearly streaming income and compare it with the break-even above.
2. Count your releases. Many releases favour a subscription; one album every few years favours a one-off fee.
3. List your side income. If YouTube Content ID, TikTok or sync matter to you, compare the 20%, 30% and 40% cuts, not just the headline price.
4. Read the AI policy against your actual workflow, including which tool you used and how it says it was trained.
5. Read the agreement, not only the pricing page: term, renewal, deductions and what happens if you leave.
6. Do not send the same release through two distributors. CD Baby notes that stores only accept one distributor per release and may take an album down until a duplicate is sorted out. If you switch, plan the move so the old and new versions do not overlap.

What we think

The headline price is the least useful number on these pages. "Keep 100%" and "9%" are both honest, but they answer different questions, and the right one depends on whether you earn more or less than a few hundred dollars a year from streams. For most artists starting out, a one-off fee plus a small commission is cheaper than a subscription. For a working artist with a steady catalogue, the subscription usually wins. Do the sum with your own numbers, not the marketing line.

The side-income cuts deserve more attention than they get. A 30% or 40% cut on YouTube or sync money can cost more than the subscription, and those percentages sit lower down the page than the plan prices.

On AI, the gap between services is now wide enough to be a deciding factor on its own. TuneCore's training-data test asks artists to vouch for something they cannot check themselves. CD Baby's two pages set different tests. DistroKid's rule is the most permissive but leaves the rights question with you. Our advice: if AI is part of how you make music, choose the distributor whose written rule fits your workflow today, keep a record of the tools you used, and reread the policy before each release, because all of these pages have changed in the past year.

Sources

• DistroKid pricing and Distribution Agreement
• TuneCore pricing and GenAI Music Content Framework
• CD Baby: How much does CD Baby cost?, rights page, one distributor per release and Downtown content policy
• Ditto Music pricing
• DistroKid: Can I upload music made with AI tools?