Start a Record Label for $0-25 Using These Services

Coming in at a healthy free 99, Amuse starts you out with a free plan if you need that. This is more suited toward independent artists who want to get their foot in the door, nice and easy. With a free release every 30 days, Amuse allows you to release a free track and retain all of 100% of your royalties. That's right. Better than any free plan I've heard, even when some are asking a somewhat reasonable 15% for helping establish your career in the music world.

When you are ready to pay, you can choose to pay just $25 per year and get unlimited releases under your account. If you're a more advanced artist with tons of music in the vault, you might want to go ahead and hit the ground running with their "Boost" yearly package. Maybe you can test the waters with your first release for free, then upgrade as you see fit! Your strategy is your business. Do what's right for your future in music. Read more about their pricing plans on their site.

If you have a crew of musicians, you might find the $60/year Pro package more suited toward your needs. You're granted permission to create multiple artists profiles so unless you're all one band with one sound, you might find the Pro package more valuable.

Perhaps your need more breathing room in your free package. Here's a service that offers you unlimited releases for free and you keep 85% royalties in exchange for the support. For just $10/year you can release unlimited music and keep 100% royalties. This is a price that's really hard to beat. Below is a list of music stores they distribute your music to.

Need more information about their services? Head over to their site and study their offers if this provider stands out to you. This would be a great service for you if you are an individual artist looking to start a label that hosts yourself and perhaps one or two other artists. If you're looking to host a handful of artists, read through the next few services and see which one is right for your business model.

Another platform that offers totally free distribution with an exchange rate of 85/15, with you keeping the biggest portion. If you're going to consider going free in exchange for a bit of your royalty earnings, why not keep your options open? They need only 5 days to release your song on the free plan, and for their paid plan, just 3 days and your song is sent out. This service distributes your music to over 200 stores and platforms combined. Once you're ready to budget in paying for your services to distribute, they offer a paid plan at €60 a year, which is around $64.50 a year in USD.

Their site offers a no BS approach to setup, so there aren't a whole lot of fancy logos paraded up and down their site. So if you're looking for more information, you can start by emailing them directly with your questions or inquiries before you use this site to invest in your music career.

They are also available across social media, including X/Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook, with their email probably being the best way to get in touch with someone at the company. They're based in the UK, so if you're an artist from that region, they might be of better help to you.

UnitedMasters is one of the more recently popular services that independent and individual artists are using to self-start their solo-run record labels. That being said, this is probably one of the services you want to use if you don't plan on serving other acts or musicians and pushing them forward as a label. This is geared more for the standalone solo artist who wants to get out their on their own.

You can join the service on their free plan, affectionately titled "Debut". There is no cost and it works on a 90/10 cut, where you keep the larger 90% of your royalty earnings while they keep the smaller 10% as a way to profit and keep running. If you use their Debut (free) plan, you may only cash out your earnings after you pass a $50 threshold (it costs services a fee to send money which means they lose money on the free plans if it's under $50). You're also limited to just one release per month, just like the Amuse free plan, so keep that in mind. You keep 5% more with the Debut plan at UnitedMasters, than you do at Amuse, just for comparison. But you're only able to distribute to social media platforms Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. It's a pretty basic plan, but if you expect to pay for their service after testing their Debut plan, it might be worth your time, and the 10% in royalties you'll give up in exchange.

If you do plan to thug it out with UnitedMasters Debut plan until you're ready to pay, expect to pay $60/year and perks that come with the membership, titled "Select". On the UnitedMasters Select plan, you can distribute to 35+ platforms and stores online including Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, and the aforementioned social media platforms, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.

TuneCore is one of the most popular services to use in distributing your music to 100s of online music stores across the world. They have a flexible entry to their services, allowing you to pay a yearly price for unlimited releases, or pay per release without an automatic recurring fee. Sound interesting? Check out their prices. Gratefully, they offer a free plan, but they do not explicitly disclose their royalty and profit split rate between you and TuneCore. Not to worry, you can send a professional email to their support team and get more information if their services peak your interest.

TuneCore Pricing for Yearly Plans

They start their yearly pricing at just $20/year with unlimited releases covered in your membership dues. A fantastic entry price for an artist or music businessperson looking to start their label and project the first label's artist into the world. Paying $20/year lets you keep 100% royalties, as to be expected once you begin paying for digital music distribution services. However, this is another service and tool that is better equipped for the solo artist who doesn't have a host of other artists to promote on the same label.

If you do want to use TuneCore to host your label, you will need to first become a member under their Professional plan at $50/year which allows you to then add each other artist on your label for an additional $15 per artist.

TuneCore gives you the ability to release each single and album for free at a decent 80/20 split, with you keeping the majority, while they keep the 20% in profits. While I wouldn't assume, this is likely the same royalty profit split they use for their free unlimited release as well. I would still just give them a professional shout to be sure, if you plan to sign up and use their unlimited free services for any amount of time. You can never be too safe with your work, this is business, of course.

DistroKid is another very popular distribution service, one that's been around for a very long time. DistroKid offers only one tier plan for $23/year, and their claim is that they will get your music sent to their database of digital music stores in a way faster time than the rest of the distribution services on the market. You will also keep 100% of your royalties, as DistroKid does not offer a royalty split, so you take home all your earnings on your music.

For an additional $8.25/month, they offer video distribution services to Vevo, Apple Music, Tidal, and TikTok Music. But that's an additional $99 per year, so keep that in mind when deciding if this extra service is right for your business strategy.

They also offer you a hyperfollow link that keeps your songs and social media accounts in one place with one link and one landing page. They have their own playlisting features up at their office where you submit your music and they vote and create a playlist from their top submitted songs.

Another popular veteran in the game is CDBaby. This one is a bit different from the rest, and here's why. Instead of offering any type of yearly subscription service, which they have never offered since the inception of their company, they instead offer a per-project payment at $10 per project whether it's a single or a full album. They offer over 150+ digital music stores and platforms to send your music to worldwide, including free delivery to any new platforms that they service in the future.

They include their own playlist pitching services and help you claim your own official YouTube Artist Channel on YouTube.com. They also have their own built-in marketing tools that aren't explained in detail on their site, but you can always email their them professionally with your inquiries before deciding to invest. This is likely not a service you'll use to promote a handful of artists as $20 can get quite steep after just 4-5 projects and singles. It's best to consider this service if you are a solo artist looking to run a label that only promotes one artist, act, band, or music group.

In my opinion, I saved the very best for last here. Though I'm not sponsored to write about this service, I did include my referral code which offers you a free 30-day trial for signing up. That being said, I'm a customer of this service, so feel free to ask me anything you'd like to know. It's been an absolute pleasure using DittoMusic to distribute my own music, and it's easy to get feedback if there are any reasons why my artwork or music has any flaws for sending it out to stores. Like for example, you'll need to fade out your music tracks at the tail end to get accepted to most stores, so they tell you this upfront. You can also submit your lyrics when you go to send your music to stores worldwide.

Their pricing starts out at an affordable $20 per year for unlimited releases. They offer pre-save services so you can market your music to your awaiting fanbase and get them hyped for your next release. They also give out smartlinks per each song and album release, which is a landing page with top streaming services for your fans to get to your music instantly, and the link is super short like a bitly link.

Next up is their Pro plan at $60/year which also includes unlimited releases for a second artist, and they help coordinate pitching your music for TV and film for sync deals. Now that's absolutely fantastic for an indie label that puts a lot of hard work into their music. Sync deals can be worth $30,000-50,000 for you to give movie production companies a license to use your music.

Starting at $90/year, you can sign up for the Label service which hosts 5 artists, making their price just $18 per artist per year. The max amount of artists you can have under this impeccable deal is 40 artists at $320/year, coming up to $8 per artist. 40 artists is quite the label, and if you plan to stay independent as a group that makes it's own money and keeps a hold of it's own royalties, this is the direction you might aspire to lead in.

They offer playlisting services, global chart registration, EPK building services, and so much more. If you're interested, I suggest you have a look-see for yourself and get started on your research.