RetroSynth Distribution + Artist Benefits

RETROSYNTH / SYMPHONIC DISTRIBUTION

RetroSynth / Symphonic offers many noteworthy features not commonly available with other distribution companies helping artists further their music careers outside of simple distribution. These include preorders for a variety of stores, SoundCloud monetization, and music video distribution. With the new hands-on approach it could be said that our willingness to exhaust resources and help artists even more than before will have increased as well.

Once you are accepted onto RetroSynth’s / Symphonic’s platform, your partnership will see them providing you with more than just distribution. You will be working closely with our team with options for a comprehensive suite of label services including digital marketing, publishing administration, sync licensing, neighboring rights collections, advertising campaigns, physical distribution, graphic and video design, and much more.

Furthermore, RetroSynth’s / Symphonic’s marketing and client team pitches your music to playlist curators and influencers across all of the major digital service providers, crafting a strategy to develop your brand and the music you are releasing. Our Distro Plus Plan is very comprehensive and addition features allow you to choose the option YOU need.

Commission and Distribution Fees

The simple and straightforward approach to pricing makes RetroSynth’s / Symphonic’s plan quite competitive compared to other distribution companies on the market. The pricing structure is a 15% commission on your music revenue from Symphonic distribution sales.

This may seem similar to competitor CD Baby, however RetroSynth artists are not required to make an initial payment for release. In contrast, CD Baby will charge an initial release fee PLUS a 9% commission off what you make from that music. This is in addition to the cuts taken by Apple Music, Spotify, and any other platforms your fans are using to get your music. By the time everyone has taken their share of the pie there will be little left for you, indeed.

Additional Stores and Takedown Costs

The digital music industry is changing all the time and you never know when and where the next Apple Music or Spotify will pop up. Consequently, it makes sense to keep up to date with new platforms as they appear and make your music available there. Keeping up with this task yourself and manually adding new platforms can be quite the chore, and for this reason, Symphonic offers to automatically add the new stores for you. What’s more, adding new stores is free of charge!

You’d think this would be a default feature of all distribution companies, but unfortunately that is not the case. For example, competitor DistroKid makes you pay $7.95 per release for them to automatically add new stores. If you don’t want to pay you have to stay up to date with the newly added stores yourself and add them manually. A real drag if you ask us!

If for some reason you decide you no longer want your music available online, RetroSynth / Symphonic will do this for you free of charge. That’s right – there are no takedown costs with us.

Outlets and Release Options

One of RetroSynth’s / Symphonic’s strongest qualities is the wide reach of online stores, with distribution to over 200 platforms! This includes typical platforms like iTunes and Spotify, but also some other, more-specialized platforms. What if you’re an electronic or hip-hop producer? With RetroSynth / Symphonic you can distribute your music to Beatport, Juno, and Traxsource, all specialized stores targeting your particular genre of music.

If you need help knowing which platforms to send your music to and which ones to leave out, RetroSynth / Symphonic offers a special feature to assist you. All you have to do is simply select whichever set works best for you! You can send your music to all stores or manually select each store you want one-by-one.

Speed To Stores

Symphonic can generally send your music to platforms within 3 business days. To account for unforseen delays however, we recommend a minimum 2-week lead time. Here’s how they explain it:

“We generally approve all releases within 24-48 business hours, not including holidays or weekends, and then it can take up to 24 hours to batch and deliver. Once delivered it can take up to 10 days for the individual DSP [platform] to process the content, which is out of our control.”

Release Dates

We think that everyone should agree that setting a release date for your music is a massively important step that can’t be skipped over. Without picking out a release date in the future – a date with plenty of time to promote your release – you won’t be able to build up any anticipation at all. For this reason, RetroSynth / Symphonic offers the ability for you to set the release date for your music free of charge! This stands in contrast to competitor DistroKid, where you have to upgrade to a more expensive plan for this feature.

RetroSynth / Symphonic recommends allowing at least a 2-week lead time for your release date. But we encourage most artists to schedule 3-4 weeks in advance to allow RetroSynth to properly promote your release through social media and pitch to radio, press, and playlists.

In addition, what if you could make your release available on just one platform only before it then becomes available on all platforms? That would certainly build up some interest! RetroSynth / Symphonic also offers an Exclusive Release feature will help hype your music in a unique and effective way.

Preorders

Another way you can build excitement for your release is through a preorder. Fans can pay for the release in advance and then be the very first ones to receive it when it goes live. RetroSynth / Symphonic includes the preorder feature for free, unlike some competitors. It is available for several different stores including Apple Music, Amazon, and Google Play.

If you decide to make a preorder available on Amazon, you’re given the option to enable audio previews which allow fans to listen to samples of each track before they pay for the preorder. Also, if you use the preorder on Apple Music, you can opt-in to their “instant gratification” download feature. This allows fans that pay for the preorder to immediately download a couple tracks (determined by you) even though the full album is not released yet. A really great incentive, that’s for sure!

Additional Features

YouTube Monetization (Optional)

While not a standard distribution platform, YouTube offers extensive opportunities for artists to make extra money on their music. If someone uses your music in their video, wouldn’t you like the ad revenue that’s being generated from that video? Well that is possible with YouTube monetization!

YouTube monetization is free to sign-up for at RetroSynth / Symphonic, we just take a 30% commission off the revenue that is earned. Once you sign up, RetroSynth / Symphonic will work to locate any videos using your music and make sure you get the ad revenue from them. This ad revenue is paid out quarterly.

They also help to protect your music by ensuring that no one else can monetize it but you.

Soundcloud Monetization (Optional)

In a similar way to YouTube, there are now opportunities for artists to make money from SoundCloud! SoundCloud monetization works from audio ads associated with your songs posted on SoundCloud. There are no sign-up fees and you earn 70% of the royalties which are paid out quarterly.

This is a standout feature from RetroSynth / Symphonic as it is not available from many other distribution companies!

Publishing Admin (Optional)

We think that it goes without saying that everyone is interested in earning extra money from their music. So what about collecting extra royalties then? You can earn royalties from when your music is performed or when your music is played on radio or TV.

To bring you this service, RetroSynth / Symphonic has actually partnered with their competitor TuneCore. The sign-up cost is a one-time fee of $75. After that they take a 10% commission of the publisher’s share. The rest of the publisher’s share and the full writer’s share gets paid to you!

SoundExchange Collection

Not only does RetroSynth / Symphonic offer publishing admin for collecting royalties, they also offer SoundExchange Collection! This service works to help collect royalties paid for the playback of your songs (sound recordings) on Internet radio, in physical venues, and other places. A 30% commission is taken by RetroSynth / Symphonic and the rest is paid to you.

Keep in mind though that this service is a little specialized and is not marketed to the average client. Rather, RetroSynth / Symphonic typically only offers SoundExchange Collection to big labels and other, similar clients. However, if that describes you, this is yet one more tool at your disposal in making sure you get every penny you’re owed!

SoundScan Registration

Do you think you have the next big radio hit? Want to make sure those plays are counted on Billboard’s music charts? If so, SoundScan registration is a necessity for you!

SoundScan is a special system that helps keep track of sales and charts across the USA and Canada. It is available from RetroSynth / Symphonic for a fee of $10 per album or $2.99 per song.

This is a feature that is rather unique to RetroSynth / Symphonic as it is not offered by any of its main competitors such as CD Baby, Tunecore, and DistroKid.

Marketing and Promo

RetroSynth / Symphonic’s list of features continue to add up. In addition to RetroSynths own promotional efforts on social media, YouTube, and the website, Symphonic also can provide their own marketing and promo to help you further market your releases and increase engagement around you and your brand.

Symphonic provides Branding and Design Services

Symphonic also offers a list of Marketing services

Symphonic provide promotional services to radio

Barcodes

An important part of distributing music to sell is obtaining the appropriate UPC and ISRC codes. Fortunately for you, RetroSynth / Symphonic includes UPC and ISRC codes for free! You can get the codes you need through a simple generator online when you upload your music to release.

Cover Song Licensing

Do you want to record a cover song but need help with getting the correct licenses and paying out the appropriate royalties? No worries! Licensing is a simple process with RetroSynth / Symphonic due to their partnership with Easy Song Licensing.

Licensing a cover song will cost you just $14.99, plus the royalties that will be deducted as your song is downloaded and streamed. The process for this licensing takes 1-2 business days. An easy solution for what would otherwise be a real headache of a job!

Piracy Protection

There’s nothing worse than working hard and putting countless hours into your music only to discover that it’s been uploaded to a piracy website. Not only does it affect the sales of your music, it makes it possible for others to then steal the music and use it as their own!

RetroSynth / Symphonic works to stop piracy with an anti-piracy service they call Topple Track. It costs $7.99 per release per month and you can sign up as soon as you’ve submitted your release to RetroSynth / Symphonic.

Once you’ve signed up RetroSynth / Symphonic will work to locate any instances of your music being uploaded illegally and make sure it is removed. According to their website they have a 99% removal rate, with 90% of those removals happening within 24 hours.

Analytics and Reporting

Keeping track of the success of your music online is essential as you build your music career. The data you gather from sales and streaming statistics can be invaluable in learning about who is listening to your music. To that end, RetroSynth / Symphonic offers sales reports and analytics.

Compilation Albums

Let’s say you’ve already put out several releases with RetroSynth / Symphonic… What do you do if you want to follow up those releases with a compilation album? Normally you would have to start from scratch reassembling those tracks to put together a new album. However, RetroSynth / Symphonic offers a streamlined service to help you with this task!

Not only does this tool simplify the process, it’s also more cost-effective because the compilation album only costs $10! More than likely this is a much better deal than paying for a traditional release.

Ringtones & Other Formats

If you’re looking to distribute your music as ringtones, RetroSynth / Symphonic has you covered! They also give you the ability to release your music using the STEM audio format from Native Instruments, a feature useful for producers and electronic musicians.

Music Video Distribution

Why limit yourself to just distributing music when you can also distribute your music videos? This service from RetroSynth / Symphonic helps your music video get far beyond YouTube, including such platforms as Vevo and Apple Music. It even gives you your own artist channel on Vevo! This distribution costs a flat, one-time fee of $95.