Comprehensive United Masters Review 2024: Pricing, Features & Everything You Need to Know
Assessment
United Masters established itself in the market by selling artists the dream. Founded by music industry heavyweight Steve Stoutte and backed by major corporations like Google and Apple, it made a major splash with a media blitz of interviews promoting the service. Speaking in interviews was, not only Steve Stoutte but also United Masters’ flagship artist NLE Choppa. A core messaging point was artist empowerment using NLE Choppa to showcase how United Masters could help them succeed while they maintained their independence and control. The messaging blurred the lines between what United Masters provided to artists on distribution deals vs what it would provide to artists who signed up for its distribution service. United Masters’ distribution service does not provide marketing support, White-Glove customer support, or anything beyond sending music to stores and collecting, and distributing payments. Yet, I often heard artists citing NLE Choppa as being the reason for United Masters being their choice. The service also offers artists Exclusives which are opportunities to get their music used by the NBA and ESPN in online, offline, and broadcast content. Artists that distribute with United Masters are also provided with a micro-website that features a mechanism for collecting fans’ phone numbers and emails and a mobile app that gives them the power of a "label in [their] pocket".
Scale. Scaling a business means growing a company in a way that allows it to handle more business without increasing costs. United Masters launched its service with a revenue share model where artists paid nothing upfront, only 10% of revenue. The cheapest option at the time was Distrokid’s $20 annual fee for Unlimited distribution but that didn’t beat free. Though attractive to artists, free isn’t scalable or sustainable and that was proven true in this instance with United Masters changing its pricing and offers multiple times before completely ditching its free tier leaving artists with the decision to pay or have their music removed. Transaction fees, originally covered by United Masters, are now charged to the artists. Due to the way it was constructed, it’s almost constantly making changes to drive more profits which means you can’t be secure in knowing that you’re going to get what you paid for.
Top Reason to Choose United Masters
Exclusives. United Masters offers promotional opportunities where, if selected, you could get your music used by ESPN or the NBA. What’s key to note, is that you are not promised anything. You submit music, which the most recent Terms I’ve seen for United Masters stated may not be reviewed, if it manages to be reviewed it has to be chosen to participate. It reminds me of when companies send out emails requesting reviews but instead of offering you compensation for your time, they offer “the chance to win $100” which means you’re doing it for free. This is United Masters’ flagship feature and I can’t say it’s an actual feature because what are you really getting?
There are other United Masters features beyond Exclusives like your own micro-website and the ability to collect fan phone numbers but they don’t carry much value. The micro-website doesn’t allow analytics integrations or the ability to do much of anything you’d need to do to have a website that does anything for you. You can use it to collect phone numbers but there’s no mobile fan club management system so you’re effectively all dressed up with nowhere to go. Lastly, United Masters’ artist agreement contained some seriously worrying terms and their latest Terms of Agreement no longer showcase the actual distribution terms artists are agreeing to, instead, it repeatedly references terms outlined in something called “Additional Terms” which I haven’t been able to locate anywhere.
Top Features
Mobile App
United Masters comes with a companion app you can download on your phone to manage your account on the go. You can view performance stats, royalties, distribute releases, and more.
Micro-website
The Micro-website provided by United Masters is borderline useless. It doesn’t compare to Link Tree or Feature.fm
Mobile Collection
Talk about Peanut butter, no jelly. Ham, no burger. United Masters allows you to collect mobile phone numbers but doesn’t provide a way for you to send messages to mobile phones.
Things to Note
Artist Agreement. The last United Masters Artist Agreement I could locate granted it the right to enter the music of its artists into exclusive agreements while restricting their ability to reject those agreements if they weren’t in their best interest financially. It also included a Right-of-First-Refusal which, to my understanding, restricted artists from signing agreements with any other entity without presenting whatever contract they were offered to United Masters and waiting for them to match or decide to pass. Being chosen for Exclusives of any kind resulted in a 20% revenue split of all royalties after that point for the duration of their agreement with United Masters. In United Masters’ latest Terms of Agreement, there’s barely any mention of distribution. When it comes to distribution, artists are informed that they’re subject to the terms of an "Additional Agreement" that doesn’t appear to be listed anywhere on the website.
Details
United Masters
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
Debut+: $19.99
Select: $59.99
Partner: By Invitation
From $19.99 - $59.99
Varies by plan.
None
Keep 100%
Unlimited
No
Yes - Manually
No
No
Debut+: No
Select: Yes
Yes
Each artist needs their own subscription
Yes +$4.99 per release
No - Removed from all stores
Free
No
No
Email- General
No dedicated customer support rep
ACH
US: $1| Non-US: $4
No
Yes - Subject to 30% Tax
No
Yes
Releases you distribute through United Masters are exclusive to United Masters. You cannot enter into any partnships with DSPs without the express consent of United Masters.
Yes
No
