Comprehensive Emubands Review 2024: Pricing, Features & Everything You Need to Know
Assessment
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.
Top Reason to Choose Emubands
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 vs. Distrokid vs. CD Baby vs. Ditto vs. Too Lost Distribution
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.
Top Features
Flexible Content ID
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.
Caveat
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.
Details
Emubands
Price - Annual fee
Price per release
Price - Revenue split
Stores
Beatport is a very important store for EDM aritsts and not all distributors send music to it because of the level of set up. Some distributors charge a monthly fee to send music to the store while others roll it into their standard service. The difference between the two options is that a monthly fee will get you a dedicated Label account on Beatport exclusive to your releases. Distributors that send your music to Beatport as part of their service have their distribution companies registered as Labels with the platform and will list your music under their Label.
Beatport
New Stores
Pre-orders
Digital booklets allow you to add something extra to incentivise sales. You can provide buyers with a PDF document containing images, lyrics, thoughts about each track, etc. The PDF would come attached with downloads on iTunes.
Digital Booklets
Dolby Atmos
Custom Label Name
Some distributors restrict you from distributing music for more than one Primary artist. This is a rule to prevent users from building a distribution service on top of the one they're using. When collaborating with other artists you may want to list them as Primary artists while not functioning like a label where you don't plan to dsitribute music for them, you just effectively want to feature them on the release. You shouldn't have to pay for that, but some distributors will charge you. Make sure you view our blog for detailed reviews
Primary Artist
Content-id is a process where an audio fingerprint is created of your song file and a system is ran that scans YouTube and other platforms for matches. If matches are discovered on YouTube, ads are placed on the content and the revenue from the ads are paid out to the distributor, which pays the artist. It's primarily for third party content that's unauthorized but artists commonly use it to monetize channels that don't qualify for the YouTube Partner Program. Check our guide for the best way to monetize YouTube Distributors normally charge a fee between 20 - 30% of revenue and the feature can discourage the free promotion that you'd get from users sharing your music on the platform so it's arguable as to whether it should be activated.
Content ID
Will the distributor remove your music if you cancel your subscription or no longer can afford to pay?
Music Stays Live
Split Pay
Classical
Music Video
Customer Support
A transaction fee is charged every time an artist withdraws their funds. It's a percentage of the amount withdrawn that's charged by the payment gateway that processes the transaction. Different payment gateways charge different fees. The most common gateway is PayPal which charges 2.9% of each transaction.
ACH direct bank transfers usually have reduced fees or no fees at all. These fees can work out to be an additional subscription fee. For example:
Artist withdraws $1,000/Month
Artist pays 2.9%
That amounts to a $29 subscription fee on top of the subscription fee paid to the distributor.
In this scenario, the artist would end up paying $348 in additional fees.
Capped fees means the distribute imposes a maximum where you'll never pay more than that amount. If the distributor says 2.9% up to $0.25 like Tunecore does, it means you'll never pay more than 25¢ in transaction fees.
Transaction Fees
Payment Threshold
Minimum amount required to receive a payment
Countries without a US Tax-treaty are subject to a 30% tax withholding. View your country's tax status here
Tax-Treaty
Requires taking a photo of your ID + a Selfie (less likely). This positions your distributor to doxx you to DSPs and could result in bans being tied to your personal identity if you're ever accused of streaming fraud or any other violation.
KYC
What you're charged per accusation of streaming fraud
Artificial Streaming Fee
Some distributors have Exclusive agreements in their Artist Agreements. These terms allow the distributor to dictate where you can place your music online and strip away your independence. It's advised you seek to avoid distributors with Exclusive terms.
Exclusivity
Does the distributor have to pay a third party for facilitating distribution? If yes, this means you don't keep 100% of your royalties. Instead, your royalties are split between you, the third party, and your distributor.
Direct Deals
We rate distributors on a scale of 1-5 based on transaparency, customer support, how they handle payment, stores, features, and longetivity.Visit our Blog for all music distributor reviews
Payusnomind Rating
Details
Basic: $0
Plus: $25
Pro: $60
From $0 - $60
Varies by plan
$12.50 per Single
$25 per Album or EP
Keep 100%
Unlimited
Yes
Yes - Manual
Yes
Yes
Basic: No
Plus: No
Pro: Yes + £20 per track
Yes - Varies by plan.
Basic: No
Plus: Yes
Pro: Yes
Yes - Varies by plan.
Basic: restricted to 1
Plus: restricted to 2-5
Pro: 6
1 - 6
Varies by plan.
Basic: No
Plus: No
Pro - Yes & keep 100%
Yes - Varies by plan.
Yes
Basic: No
Plus: No
Pro: Yes
Yes - Varies by plan.
Yes
No
Basic & Plus: Email- General
Pro: Live chat, Video call, & Phone
Requires currency conversion fees
Pays in GBP
2.9% Uncapped for PayPal
ACH
No
No - Not Subject to 30% Tax
No
Yes
No
Undisclosed