 So DistroKid has long been one of the most innovative and artist-friendly services in music today. And they have just done a pretty significant expansion into the world of music videos by offering up a new service with the obvious name DistroVid. But the service has been stirring up a ton of talk online with some of it equalling the anger normally reserved for stands defending their favorite abuser singer and the charges they've been found guilty of. So a bunch of you have asked me to weigh in on what I think. So in this video, I'm gonna tell you how you should decide if DistroVid is a service you should be using. Hi, I'm Jesse Cannon, a music marketing nerd who's teaching musicians how to grow their fan base from zero to 10,000 fans, and this is Muse Formation. So what is DistroVid, and what's all the fuss about? Basically it's DistroKid, but for music videos, in that artists are able to upload their music videos and get them distributed to platforms like Apple Music, Amazon Music, Tidal, DistroVid Gallery, and Vivo. An important distinction here, I should say, is this is just for music videos. As they say on their site, no lyric videos, promotional videos, cover song videos, no mashup videos, and what that tells me is they're trying to only have the best content possible onto these platforms because they know that spam ends up ruining them. And there's already a junkyard of tons of superfluous content on YouTube. And like DistroKid, they charge a yearly fee. Instead of charging you every time you upload a song or a video or a record, like so many of the old school con artists distribution companies do. Since it's a singles world, it really isn't fair to do it any other way. But here's where the controversy comes in. DistroKid pricing starts at $20 a year. But with DistroVid in their soft launch beta, artists pay $129 a year while keeping 100% of the earnings. The only time DistroKid takes a percentage is when artists opt into their YouTube content ID service. It's an optional service that finds videos that use your music and tells YouTube to monetize them in your favor. And frankly, if you're the type of artist whose music is often covered or used in videos where people upload your music without your permission, content ID is what allows you to make money off that and it can be useful to you. Though it is available to you in YouTube already if you go through some hurdles to get it set up. Honestly, it's pretty annoying. Anyway, if you use that service, DistroKid keeps 20% of the revenue discovered through the service. And for those of you who have your own label or record under lots of pseudonyms, there's a 50% discount for each additional artist you add to DistroVid. Now, a lot of people are like, wow, that's 6.5 times price increase between the two services feels like a lot in a world where musicians are drastically underpaid. But DistroKid does have an interesting response that all the other services that do music video aggregation cost $200 per video. Which means if you already use those, this is a no-brainer. But that doesn't make this price feel any better when you want your video to be everywhere it can be. Now, I should say, as DistroVid said, this is a beta launch. And they say they can lower the price as this service is adopted by more users, which I know doesn't make sense to people, but you have to remember that the two largest costs of a new platform like this is one, building it, and two, dealing with customer service complaints. And seeing as how many of you use my YouTube comments as a DistroKid complaint box on videos that don't even mention the service, I can't imagine how bad they have it. So with all that said, what are you getting from this money you pay them? Obviously being on Apple Music, Amazon Music Title, DistroVid Gallery, and Vivo sounds like a pretty prestigious since all your favorite big-time artists are gonna be on those platforms. But I know those of you who read your analytics are thinking what I'm thinking, which is that like 15% of less of your streams come from Apple, Amazon, and Title combined, so that could feel like you're not paying for that much visibility. And I should say, Amazon Music is making a lot of traction in the streaming world and picking up a lot of users so that may become more of a viable place to market your music in the future, but you're definitely not gonna be posting up huge video views there right now. So with all that said, what are you getting from this money you pay? And of course, Vivo is basically YouTube, but some people do watch that on their smart TVs, but I can't say I see this helping you much as whenever I'm with anyone who's smart in the music business, we marvel that Vivo still exists. But it is a way for one of the major labels to prop up their RS, so they'll probably keep doing it. Now you've definitely never heard of one of these platforms, which is the DistroVid Gallery. This is interesting in the way that I'd be curious where they go with it, but for now it's just a landing page for your video, which I don't think gives much value right now, but I am curious what they may do with something like this in the future. Now of course, as is always the case with these services, more services get added to these as time goes on, and what's nice is DistroVid never raises the price as they add more services that your song will go to. And you know, I won't be shocked if Spotify ends up here soon, as Spotify has been dipping their toes more and more into video, it will probably be only a matter of time before they're part of the service. So in that case, what are you really paying for? So there's a concept in my book, Get More Fans, Cha-ching. I call ABA for always be available, and what I mean by that is we the artists and the suits behind them don't get to choose where people decide to listen to music. For example, I actually use Tidal when I can listen on a nice system since it sounds really good, but no one uses Tidal, and everyone who markets music hates that since it'd be nice if everyone was just on Apple and Spotify since it takes some of the complications out of music marketing and having to put up links for a million different services. The strongest example of why you need to always be available is so many artists wish they could just get all their listeners on Spotify or YouTube and want to link only there so their view numbers are higher. But the fact is listeners listen where they want to listen to music, and you can't force them to do so since if you take your music off a platform, you're just gonna lose potential fans, and for that matter, your present fans are just gonna build relationships with other artists. We don't get to make these choices, our fans and potential fans get to decide it. All this is to say, you need to be everywhere your fans are, otherwise they're gonna build relationships with other artists instead of you. And if this is interesting to you, you should be subscribed and get notified since this is what we talk about on this channel. So you of course wanna know, do I think DistroVid is worth it? So here's the thing, if you have a roster of music videos where fans and potential fans will build relationships with you, it is definitely a good idea to get your music here, as it could be another needle in the haystack you need to build to make a fan base that supports you. I wanna also say, most of us have had music videos change the relationship we have with an artist. They can really make you feel a song more. They can increase your obsession with an artist. They can make you hornier for an artist, or think they're more intelligent or artistic. They really can give fans a much deeper relationship with you. So for that, I always find them to be one of the most powerful parts of marketing. So making sure those videos are everywhere possible is hugely important if you go hard on them. If you really make great music videos, that's an asset you should exploit as much as possible. Since a music video has some of the greatest potential to convert casual fans into mega fans. So not taking advantage of that would be malpractice. As for the price, well, every single person has a different price point they're offended by. I would like to remind you that paying this money opens up an income stream where not only is your video on these services, but you do get paid when people consume them there. Now, I won't pretend that unless you're getting tens of millions of audio streams already, that this is gonna recoup for you anytime soon. But if you're getting a good amount of streams, this is a great way to continue to promote your music that could pay off hugely as videos grow on all these platforms. Okay, and on the screen now is what I consider one of my best videos on how to make an amazing music video that actually gets plays. It's literally one of the best videos I've ever made and you should really hit play on it. Click and keep learning. Thanks for watching.