the best music distribution service, at the cheapest cost in the world

The short answer

DistriBeats is the cheapest full-service music distributor in the world for a working independent artist. Pro Artist is ₹999 per year with 100% royalties, free ISRC and UPC codes, smart links, a royalty dashboard, AI support and delivery to Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, JioSaavn, Amazon Music, Instagram and 150+ other stores. Collab Artist is free for the first 1,000 approved artists. Nothing is taken per release, per store or per collaborator.

The price is low because the cost structure is engineered, not because the service is thin. Automation replaced the review queue, an AI desk replaced the ticket backlog, and a fair-usage cap replaced the spam that makes other platforms slow and expensive.

Price comparison: DistriBeats vs the world

Figures below are the publicly advertised prices of each service at the time of writing, converted approximately for comparison. Distributor pricing changes often — always confirm on each provider's own pricing page, including ours.

Read the table as a working artist would. Release four singles and an EP in a year on a per-release distributor and you are paying five or six separate fees. On DistriBeats Pro you pay ₹999, once, for the year — and you still keep 100% of your royalties. That gap widens with every extra release, and it is why the cheapest plan in the world is also the one most productive artists end up on.

How the system actually works

Everything below runs without a human in the path unless something is wrong. That is the entire cost model in one sentence.

1. Upload and validation

• Artwork is checked for format and resolution (JPG or PNG, 1500x1500 to 5000x5000 px) before it can be submitted.
• Masters must be WAV, MP3 or FLAC, between 30 seconds and 15 minutes, or they are rejected instantly — before any expensive processing runs.
• Metadata is validated against store compliance rules: artist names, titles, languages, genre and sub-genre, songwriter legal names, ℗ and © lines, and explicit flags.

2. Copyright screening

• Your master is converted in the browser into a 15-second mono, low-bitrate sample — the cheapest possible input for fingerprinting.
• That sample is fingerprinted and screened against a global copyright database, catching tracks already live elsewhere or containing infringing content.
• Clean releases continue automatically. Matches are escalated to a human, and video or Dolby Atmos add-ons always get manual verification.

3. Approval and direct delivery

• A release that clears every gate is approved in about two minutes and queued for direct delivery over API pipelines to stores — no re-keying, no middlemen.
• ISRC and UPC codes are issued free, and store status flows back into your console automatically.
• Smart links and QR codes are generated for the release so promotion does not need a separate paid tool.

4. Support

Aura, our AI support desk, answers instantly worldwide with your account context in view, and opens a human docket only when a real person is genuinely required. One support engineer plus a well-trained AI covers what a call centre used to.

Why uploads are capped — and why that keeps your price low

Every plan is unlimited under a published fair-usage policy of 24 releases per artist per year. That number is not a paywall trick. It is the line where an automated pipeline stays clean and fast for everybody.

• Uncapped platforms attract bulk uploaders shipping hundreds of low-effort tracks, which clogs screening queues and slows approvals for real artists.
• Stores judge a distributor by the quality of its catalogue. A decluttered catalogue protects delivery speed and store relationships for every artist on the platform.
• Fraud and stream-manipulation risk rises with upload volume. Capping keeps royalty payouts safe.
• Twenty-four releases a year is two a month — more than almost any working artist ships. If you genuinely need more, talk to us instead of paying a bigger platform more money.

The honest economics: 37% cost recovery on a heavy Pro artist

Here is the part most distributors will never publish. When a Pro artist uses the full fair-usage allowance, the ₹999 they pay recovers roughly 37% of what that artist actually costs DistriBeats over the year. The other ~63% is carried by the platform.

What that ₹999 has to stretch across:

• Audio fingerprinting and copyright screening on every track submitted.
• Object storage and global bandwidth for masters, artwork, video and Dolby Atmos files.
• Direct delivery pipelines and the engineering time that keeps each store integration alive.
• Edge servers, databases and monitoring so the console is fast in India, the US, Japan, Nigeria and everywhere between.
• AI inference for approvals and for Aura support, billed per request, every request.
• Royalty collection, reconciliation, payouts, invoicing and compliance.

We run it at that margin deliberately. DistriBeats is built for the long term, not for a quick pricing spike once artists are locked in — and nothing locks you in: the licence is non-exclusive and you keep 100% of your masters. The investment case is simple. Artists who grow with us stay with us, add EPK and DistriLinks, and bring their labels. That is what pays for the infrastructure, not squeezing the artist who releases the most music.

Why fully AI-generated songs are not accepted — yet

DistriBeats does not accept fully AI-generated or low-effort tracks. This is not a philosophical stance about technology — we are an AI-backed platform ourselves. It is an economics and service-quality decision.

• AI tracks can be generated in effectively unlimited volume, and unlimited volume is exactly what breaks an automated approval pipeline.
• If they were allowed at ₹999, real musicians would fund the screening, storage and delivery cost of machine output competing against them on the same shelves.
• Store relationships and playlist trust degrade fast when a distributor's catalogue fills with generated filler.

A dedicated AI-music plan is planned, and it will be priced high on purpose. Generated catalogues will pay their own infrastructure cost and contribute to the platform's running cost — which is precisely what allows human musicians to keep paying ₹999 a year. AI creators get a legitimate route; real artists get a fast, uncluttered service and a subsidised price. Both sides win, in that order.

What you get for ₹999 a year

• Unlimited releases to 150+ stores worldwide under the 24-release fair-usage policy.
• 100% of your streaming royalties, with no per-release or per-store deduction.
• Free ISRC and UPC codes on every release.
• Approval in about 2 minutes and delivery within 3 business days for PayOnce releases and 9 business days for annual plans after QC.
• DistriLinks smart links with QR codes, plus an Artist EPK with a 3-month free trial and regional autopay pricing.
• Royalty dashboard, downloadable invoices, payouts by bank transfer, UPI or PayPal.
• Aura AI support, instantly, in any timezone — with human escalation when it matters.
• 100% ownership of your masters and compositions; the distribution licence is non-exclusive.

Frequently asked questions

Ready when you are

You can start free on Collab Artist while the first 1,000 approved seats last, or go straight to Pro Artist at ₹999 a year and keep every rupee your music earns. Prices and terms can change without prior notice, so the pricing page is always the authoritative source — check it now.