The Sunset Recorder

A distributor takes three things from an artist: a finished master, a piece of cover art, and a spreadsheet describing both. It pushes all three into the ingestion systems of the streaming and download services. That is a narrower act than most people assume when they sign, and every other clause is arranged around it.

Delivery is harder than it sounds, because each store keeps its own specification for audio, artwork and metadata. The fields matter more than the file. Track titles, credits, writer and publisher information, the identifier assigned to each recording, the identifier assigned to the release, genre and language all travel with the record permanently. Errors here are the most common way a release lands wrong. A misspelled artist name creates a duplicate profile. A missing recording identifier breaks reporting later, when royalties are matched back to a track.

Encoding and territory availability come out of the same submission. The distributor delivers a source master and the stores transcode to their own formats, so the audio a listener hears is not the file that was uploaded. Territory availability is one more field, but it usually carries the weight of a sample clearance or a licence granted to somebody else in a market.

Scheduling is what independent artists underestimate. Services need lead time before a release date so the product can be placed, pre-save links generated, and editorial staff given a window in which to consider it. That window is counted in weeks rather than days, and delivering inside it preserves pitch eligibility. A late delivery can still go live, but it risks staggered availability and forfeits the pitch.

What the fee actually buys

Commercial terms come in three broad shapes, and the same company often offers more than one. The first is a flat fee, charged annually or per release, under which the artist keeps all or nearly all of the net receipts. The second is a revenue share, with nothing up front and a percentage retained by the distributor. The third is an advance recouped against income, which resembles a label arrangement in everything but name. Percentages vary between companies and between artists at one company, so the useful questions are structural: what share is taken, is it calculated on gross receipts or on what remains after the store's deduction, how long is the term, and is it exclusive.

Accounting is the other half of the fee. Stores report to distributors monthly, with a lag after the period closes, and the distributor reports onward on its own cadence. Income from a release week therefore arrives a season later, which should shape how a campaign is budgeted. Takedown and redelivery sit in the same queue and both carry a processing delay.

Chart eligibility depends on the release being registered with the relevant chart body and on consumption being reported through recognised channels. Most distributors handle registration as a matter of course. Some require it to be requested.

The layers outside the deal

Content identification on video platforms, which matches a recording against user uploads and collects against them, is generally an opt in. Publishing administration, which collects the songwriter's side, is a separate business that a recording agreement does not cover. Neighbouring rights collection is separate again. An artist can be fully distributed and still leave several income streams uncollected.

Marketing is where expectations break. A distributor may pitch a record to editorial teams and put it in front of partners, but pitching is not placement, and promotional support is discretionary and directed toward releases already showing movement. That is a defensible way to allocate a finite resource, and it is why distribution is not a marketing agreement.

The difference between models is really a difference about risk. Distribution moves the record. Label services adds marketing, radio, sync, press and a project manager, priced as a higher share or a larger fee. A record deal usually involves an advance, ownership or a long licence of the masters, and label control over timing and release. Each step trades money and autonomy for someone else absorbing risk.

Exit terms deserve reading before the first release rather than after the last. Under a fee based agreement the artist normally owns the masters and the distributor's rights lapse at term, but the mechanics are not trivial. Taking a catalogue down and redelivering it elsewhere can reset store side identifiers, drop playlist adds, and split a track's history across two entries, so careful migrations use a transfer process instead. Where an advance is involved, the distributor may keep the right to distribute until it recoups.

■  The Sunset Recorder