Published on Sep 21, 2024
Emubands offers a unique mixed model that gives you a choice of paying a one-time fee or adding a subscription package that would have you paying annually. The subscription packages are added on top of the per-release fees you don’t get to pick one or the other which makes it a bit expensive. What can add value to the price tag is the level of customer support.
Personal customer support through email, live chat, and phone. Pro users are assigned a personal account manager to guide them through their release. Unfortunately, this isn’t extended to non-Pro users.
Keep your music in stores. You can pay once and keep your music in stores without sacrificing a percentage of revenue. The catch is that you’re provided with limited features. No royalty payment splitting, Hi-Res audio submissions, Dolby Atmos submissions, Custom label name, or Content ID. All of those things as well as all other features require a subscription. Their per-release fees are $12.50 per single and $25 per Bundle of tracks from 2 - 20.
Emubands provide you with the least features out of all of your options unless you add a subscription. Adding a subscription would have you paying an annual fee on top of fees per release which can make it the most expensive option. Distrokid allows you to buy out the royalties altogether while paying no subscription fee where you’d keep 100% of the royalties in exchange for paying one-time fees of $29 per single or $49 per album. CD Baby charges a one-time fee of $10 then takes 9% of royalties longterm, which, depending on how much you’re earning, could be more expensive than Embubands but likely not. Ditto will keep your music in stores but you won’t be able to collect any royalties until you reactivate your subscription and they’re not transparent about whether you’ll only be able to collect for the year it’s been reactivated or retroactively for all the years they’ve been collecting, which kind of gives you your answer. Too Lost keeps your music in stores by moving you to a revenue share model where you pay 15% of your royalties which allows you to avoid upfront fees, but like with CD Baby, the more you earn, the more you lose. Whether either CD Baby or Too Lost are better options to keep your music in stores comes down to revenue.
Emubands allows you to choose whether YouTube videos containing your music are monetized or blocked. Most distributors do not give you this option. They force you to monetize. Why would you choose to block videos rather than monetize? If you’ve chosen to sell your music and forgo streaming, allowing it to be available on YouTube will disincentive sales. Outside of monetary matters, maybe you just don’t want people using your music without your permission. After all, it is your music so you should have the right to say no for any reason.
Emubands is a non-US-based company that pays in GBP so US-based artists may be subjected to stiffer transaction fees and currency conversion fees. Additionally, customer support hours could be an issue due to time zones.