Is UnitedMasters a better deal than DistroKid for a first release?

For a first release, UnitedMasters and DistroKid are not two prices for the same thing. They are two yearly memberships with different pitches. At the time of writing, UnitedMasters' own help centre lists a free DEBUT membership, but describes it as a plan for receiving royalty splits from other artists and working on their accounts, not for releasing your own music; releasing starts at the paid DEBUT+ tier, billed yearly, and every paid tier says you keep 100% of royalties. DistroKid runs yearly subscription plans too, and its own pricing page says you keep 100% of earnings on every plan. So for a first release this is not a free option against a paid one. It is one yearly fee against another, and the honest answer to "which is the better deal" is a sum you can do in two minutes: what the plan you actually need costs at each, for as many years as you expect the song to stay in stores.

The sum is not the whole decision, though. Two questions that have nothing to do with price decide more than the fee does: what happens to your release when you stop paying or want to leave, and whether your particular track passes each company's content rules, which matters a lot if any part of it came from an AI tool. This article walks through all three in the order you should ask them. Prices, tiers and policies at both companies change, so every figure below is either a placeholder or a pointer to the page where the current one lives. We are not affiliated with UnitedMasters or DistroKid and we do not distribute music.

Two memberships, two different pitches

UnitedMasters leans on its mobile app ("a record label in your pocket", in its own words) and sells itself on more than delivery: its SELECT tier page talks about brand partnerships and sync deals alongside distribution. At the time of writing its help centre lists a free DEBUT plan that does not include releasing your own music, two paid tiers billed yearly, DEBUT+ and SELECT, which both say you keep 100% of royalties and differ in review speed and brand access, and an invite-only PARTNER tier. The names, prices and features sit on its pricing page and in its help centre, and they have changed before.

DistroKid is a subscription. You pay for a year, you upload as much as you like during it, and the tiers differ by features and by how many artist names you can release under. Some features have historically been sold separately on top of the plan, so read the checkout screen, not only the headline price.

Put side by side, the difference looks like this:

The first row is the one most comparisons get wrong. Some reviews still describe a free UnitedMasters tier that releases music for a share of royalties, while the company's own help centre, at the time of writing, describes the free plan differently. Trust the company's page on the day you sign up, not a review, this one included. Once both options are a yearly fee with all of your royalties, the comparison is no longer a percentage against a fee. It is one fee against another, and what each one buys.

If you are weighing more than these two, the three-way comparison of subscription, per-release and percentage models lives in DistroKid, TuneCore or CD Baby, and the question of whether DistroKid alone is worth it for AI music is in its own article. This page stays on one decision: UnitedMasters or DistroKid for the very first song.

Before either of them: there has to be a song

Neither company makes music. A distributor takes a finished audio file, a cover and a sheet of metadata and delivers them to stores. If you are reading this with no track yet, the distributor is step six of seven, and step one is the words.

That step is what we sell. The lyrics generator at /generators takes a short form brief and returns a title and a full lyric, with [Verse], [Chorus] and [Bridge] style section tags already in place. It does not sing and it produces no audio. The audio happens in a separate tool you pick, most often Suno, which is a different company that we do not resell or speak for.

One generation costs 20 credits, and credits run 100 to the dollar, so a lyric costs $0.20 inside a plan. New accounts start with no credits and there is no free trial, so there are two ways in:

• Monthly, $5 a month: the style catalogue and the prompt generator, plus 500 credits every month, which is 25 lyrics.
• Lifetime, $19 once: the catalogue and the prompt generator stay yours for good, and 1 500 credits come with it once, which is 75 lyrics. The credits do not refill.

A brief for a first single might look like this:

theme      Last night bus home after a friend's leaving party. The driver
           knows my stop. The city looks smaller from the back seat.
POV        first
language   en
structure  classic
hook       title-line
vocal      female
emotion    longing
age        25-34

What comes back is a title and a lyric built on that brief. Edit it. Change the lines that are not quite yours, swap a detail for a real one, cut what you would never say out loud. Then take it to the tool that sings. The prompt generator on the same page builds a style description in Suno's format; if you use another generator, treat that description as raw material and adapt it to that tool's own input.

The edit matters beyond taste. Our disclaimer says it plainly: one model writes for every user, similar briefs get similar answers, and the rights you get in the text are non-exclusive. A lyric you have reworked with your own details is much less likely to collide with somebody else's release. The full walk from idea to release date, with each stage handed to the next, is in how to release a single.

The fee sum you should do yourself

Here is the arithmetic, with made-up round numbers. They are illustrative, not either company's price. Pull the real ones from both pricing pages on the day you sign up.

A  = yearly fee at UnitedMasters for the tier you need, plus extras  (example: 20)
B  = yearly fee at DistroKid for the plan you need, plus extras      (example: 25)
Y  = years you expect the song to stay in stores                     (example: 3)

UnitedMasters over Y years     A x Y
DistroKid over Y years         B x Y

With the examples:
  UnitedMasters                  20 x 3         = 60
  DistroKid, no extras           25 x 3         = 75
  DistroKid, one 10 a year extra (25 + 10) x 3  = 105

With those example numbers the gap is small, and a single add-on can flip it. Put your real numbers in, and price the plan you actually need, not the cheapest one on the page: an entry plan that allows one artist name is fine for a solo first single and wrong for a duo whose members also release on their own.

If an offer in front of you takes a share of royalties instead of a fee (some distributors' free tiers work that way), the sum changes shape. The break-even is the fee divided by the share: against a fee of 30, a 10% share costs less until the release earns 300 a year. Be hard on that guess: a first release with no audience, no playlist support and no promotion budget has nothing pushing it to strangers, so base it on the people you can actually name who will play it, not on the song you hope it becomes.

Three adjustments change the answer:

1. More than one release. At the time of writing, UnitedMasters' help centre lists unlimited releases on its paid tiers and DistroKid's pricing page lists unlimited uploads on every plan, so four singles cost the same fee as one. Compare the fee against what you will actually release in the year.
2. What the cheapest tier leaves out. Entry plans at both differ from the next tier up in things like review speed, number of artist names, analytics and brand access. Read the comparison list, not the headline number.
3. The second year. Both fees repeat whether the song earns or not. So the second-year question is really the exit question in the next section.

The question that decides more than price: what happens when you stop

This is where a first release gets expensive in a way nobody puts on the pricing page. Put these two questions to both companies, in their help centres, before you upload:

• If I stop paying, what happens to the songs that are already live? With any subscription, find out whether releases stay up, come down, or stay up only if you buy something extra. The answer has differed between distributors and has changed over time.
• If I leave for another distributor, can I take my ISRC codes with me? The ISRC is the code that ties a recording to its play count and playlist placements. Moving a song with the same ISRC usually keeps its history; moving it without one starts it from zero. The mechanics are in ISRC codes for AI songs.

A cheap first year has a version of the same trap: the fee looks small today, and leaving later is the moment you find out how easy the exit is. Read the terms on removal and transfer at both, and keep a copy of what you read.

AI content: read two pages, not a verdict

If any part of your track came from an AI tool, the question is not "does this distributor accept AI music". There is no stable yes or no to that, for either company. The question is which of your delivery targets will take this specific track, and on what disclosure.

UnitedMasters keeps help centre articles on whether it distributes music made with AI tools and, separately, on what material is ineligible for Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. Read both, because at the time of writing store delivery and social platforms are treated as different questions. DistroKid publishes its own rules and has its own history of changing them. The practical checklist of what to ask any distributor, and what gets AI tracks pulled after release, is in which music distributor accepts AI songs.

Whatever you learn, keep a short provenance note for each release: which tool made the audio, on which plan, what you wrote yourself, what you edited. If a store or a distributor ever asks, you answer from a file instead of from memory.

This is general information about how these services describe themselves, not legal advice. Rights, royalties and takedowns depend on the law of your country and on each company's current terms.

What "brand deals" actually buy a first release

UnitedMasters sells the idea of a door into brand partnerships and sync placements. It is a real part of the pitch, and for an artist with an audience it may be the reason to pick it. For a first release, weigh it honestly: an opportunity to be considered is not a placement, and a brand looking for music chooses from songs that already have listeners or an obvious fit. Do not pay for a higher tier for a door you have no evidence you will walk through.

DistroKid's pitch is the opposite: a pipe, cheap to use at volume, with extras bolted on. If you intend to release often and your songs earn, a flat pipe is what you want. If you release once and wait to see, it is a fee for waiting, at either company.

Getting the money out

A distributor that pays you in a way you cannot receive is worth nothing. Before uploading anywhere, check three things on both sites:

• which payout methods exist, and whether they work from your country;
• what tax information you have to submit, and when;
• whether there is a minimum balance before a withdrawal is allowed.

None of this is exotic, and all of it is easier to learn before your first royalties land than after. If you release from outside the US, the tax form and the payout method are usually where the friction is.

A decision in five lines

For a first single, this is the order that does the least damage:

1. Do the fee sum with real numbers from both pricing pages, for the tier you actually need.
2. Read what happens to live releases if you stop paying or leave, at both.
3. If the track used AI, read each company's current AI pages, including the social-platform exclusions.
4. Check payout and tax against your country.
5. If all four are close to a tie, take the plan whose exit terms you understand best. You can move later, with your ISRC.

FAQ

Is the UnitedMasters free tier really free? The DEBUT plan costs nothing, but at the time of writing UnitedMasters' help centre describes it as a plan for receiving royalty splits from other artists and acting as a team member, not for releasing your own music. Releasing starts at the paid DEBUT+ tier. Reviews that describe a free tier with a royalty cut may be out of date, so check the help centre on the day you sign up.

Does DistroKid take a percentage of my royalties? Its pricing page says you keep 100% of earnings on every plan. The cost is the yearly subscription, plus any extras you choose to add at checkout.

Can I start on one and switch to the other? Usually yes. Ask the new distributor how it handles transfers, and bring your ISRC codes so the song keeps its history. Expect a short overlap while one takes the release down and the other puts it up.

Which one is better for an AI song? Neither answer is stable. Read both companies' current AI pages on the day you upload, including any rules that exclude some platforms, and see the distributor checklist.

Do I need a distributor at all for a first song? Only if you want it on Spotify, Apple Music and similar stores. The steps and deadlines for that are in how to release music on Spotify. If you are sharing it with a few people, a direct upload to a platform that allows one is enough.

Start with the part you control

Pricing pages change, AI policies change, and none of that is in your hands. The song is. Open the lyrics generator, put the real story of your first single into the theme field, pick a structure and a hook, and get a title and a full lyric back for 20 credits, which is $0.20 inside a plan. The cheapest way in is the $5 monthly plan, 25 lyrics a month. If you are going to release more than one song, the $19 lifetime keeps the catalogue and the prompt generator yours and brings 75 lyrics with it, enough to write the whole first year's releases before you ever open a distributor's checkout.