Music distributor
Also known as Digital distributor, Music aggregator
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Short answer
A music distributor, or aggregator, delivers an artist's or label's releases to streaming services and download stores, and collects the master-side income those services pay, returning it with a statement. Digital distributors typically assign ISRCs and UPCs if the artist has none, and charge either a subscription fee or a percentage of royalties.
Role
Streaming services do not accept uploads from individual artists; they take deliveries from distributors they have contracts with. A distributor takes the audio, artwork and metadata, assigns any missing identifiers — an ISRC per track and a UPC per release — and delivers the release in the DDEX formats each store requires.[1]
What a distributor pays, and what it does not
A distributor collects only the recording's income from the services it delivers to and passes it on, less its fee. It does not collect the composition's income: performance royalties, which go through PROs, and mechanical royalties, which in the United States go through The MLC. Nor does it collect SoundExchange digital performance royalties. An artist relying on a distributor alone is usually leaving those streams uncollected.
Working with more than one distributor
Artists and labels often have catalog spread across several distributors over time, each with its own statement format, currency, reporting period and payment threshold. Consolidating those statements into one view, matched by ISRC, is a common accounting problem for independent catalogs.
Questions
Does a distributor collect publishing royalties?
Not as part of distribution. Distributors collect master-side income. Publishing royalties are collected by PROs, mechanical collectives and publishers, though some distributors also sell a separate publishing administration service.
Can I keep my ISRCs if I change distributor?
Yes, and you should. An ISRC identifies the recording; moving it to a new distributor with the same ISRC keeps its play history and royalty matching intact.
References
- DDEX. “DDEX — Digital Data Exchange.”