Assessment 

Amuse is a music distribution service that entered the market offering unlimited distribution for free. There were no fees attached: no upfront fee, no annual fee, no percentage of revenue, nothing. It claimed that it had a successful music label that provided the revenue to run its distribution service which it used to identify talent it could sign and develop. Effectively, it was aimed at trying to capture artists before their true market value was realized preventing the label from having to compete with other labels in bidding wars for talent. The goal of Amuse was never to be the best distribution service. The whole setup looked great but was functionally basic. The royalty reports were basic and they got you into a basic package of stores. You didn’t pick Amuse because it was the best, you picked Amuse because it was free. Now, Amuse is a more traditional music distribution service and aims to compete with companies like Tunecore, Distrokid, and CD Baby on the merit of its service. I’m not sure if it compares. 

Scale. Scaling a business means growing a company in a way that allows it to handle more business without increasing costs. Amuse invited disaster offering distribution for free. The offer attracted artists with no plans for success but with lots of releases that strained resources and ultimately forced it to adjust. The model was unscalable and unsustainable. Amuse no longer has a free tier, artists on the free tier can no longer distribute releases without upgrading. This isn’t the only change we’ve seen with Amuse as it first tried to get users to pay when it added Amuse Pro naming the free tier "Start", then it added Boost, and then it ditched Start to leave only Boost and Pro. When it added new features, it came with a new tier and higher pricing. The new features were things that came included with other distribution services like Content ID and distribution to Social media platforms. Artists can’t be secure in knowing that they’re going to get what they signed up for when joining Amuse. 

Top Reason to Choose Amuse

Team Management. Amuse allows account holders to add Team Members with Roles. You can allow your Manager to edit and create releases but not withdraw funds which is valuable if that’s something you need to do.

Top Features

Advances. You can get your money ahead of time through Amuse’s various advance payment programs but there isn’t a lot of transparency around qualifications and they all come with fees.

Things to note

Stores. Amuse has a limited inventory of stores so if maximum reach is your focus, you may be dissatisfied with Amuse. Though they’ve done better over the years, they still pale in comparison to the number of stores offered by distributors like Tunecore, CD Baby, etc.

Transaction fees. Amuse doesn’t explicitly state that it caps transaction fees. Instead, it states the usual range of fees artists pay which is subject to the average amount withdrawn and not a cap. For example, their $1 - $8 average rate could be a matter of users withdrawing funds when they’ve earned from $34 - $275 which would put the rate at 2.9% of each transaction. Without it being capped, it means you pay more if you earn more and Amuse doesn’t clarify whether that is or isn’t the case.

Details