The top music distributors have great business models. The thing about business models is this: when they are great, that means when successful, they are making money off of you, the consumer. How much and for how long they make money off of the consumer is a whole different story. With Songflowr, you do not have a yearly reoccurring fee to keep your music on platforms, and you do not give up any royalties. Here is why.
It is safe to say that most independent artists right now will not turn out to be the next Beyonce, Eminem or Lil Wayne, whose net worth ranges from 150 million all the way up to 500 million. However, that does not mean you are not the next Russ, G-Eazy or Jhene Aiko. If you are that artist who is going to reach drastic heights, and turn your music into a profitable full-time career, who is to say I should profit off of that?
For math’s sake, I am going to break a few things down. If a distributor charges $20 a year, and you have your music up for 30 years, you are out $600. In the grand scheme of things, that really is not that much money. As an independent artist, however, the extra few hundred dollars that you could save by not having a yearly fee could go towards your career in more viable or tangible ways.
If instead there is not a yearly fee, but instead a one time fee with a percentage of royalties taken, say 10%, that can really add up if you turn into an artist that receives millions of streams only a few days after dropping a song., never mind a one, ten or a few hundred million. If on Spotify, you receive 5,000,000 streams, that translates to $20,000. If you are using a distributor that takes 10%, your earnings go down to $18,000.
Take attorneys for example. Depending on their practice area, they take a percentage of earnings after you get paid and their work is done. In other areas, they take an upfront fee, often called a retainer, and use those funds to fuel your case until the money runs out.
While this might not seam like a big deal, you cannot forget to factor in whoever else has a percentage of your royalties in your back pocket. As an artist, you want to keep as many royalties as possible, because before you know it you could be shelling out over half of your revenue through streams.
