Ditto Music Offers It’s Version Of Label Services
As you may or may not know, all the services that record labels provide are available for hire under the banner of “label services.” That means that if you want the promotion abilities of Warner Music, for example, they can be available to you for a fee with no other contractual strings attached (in other words, the label doesn’t take a piece of your action). Label services are expensive, so not many indie artists are able to take advantage of them, but a new tier from music distributor Ditto Music promises to provide similar services for a lot less.
Ditto Music is a distributor based in the U.K. with 19 global offices that’s sort of the British version of TuneCore or CDBaby. The artist pays a flat rate per year to be able to distribute their music to all the online streaming services, plus receive free ISRC and UPC codes, and sales tracking. There are three tiers that include unlimited music distribution for a single artists for around $25 per year, 2 artists for $38 per year, and a label deal with 5 or more artists starting at $90 per year.
Now the company has introduced Ditto Plus, which will also provide public relations, social media support, creative design, digital marketing, radio promotion and playlist pitching all into one offering, which resembles what you’d receive from a label services deal.
It’s thought that the new offering is a response to Spotify’s new artist direct upload service, which now provides a reason why an artist would opt for a distribution services instead of directly uploading to Spotify.
The company says that its new service is open to artists, managers and independent labels, but no price has been given and you must apply first on the Ditto Plus website.
This is just the first response to Spotify Direct, and we’ll probably see every music distributor do the same soon since it provides another reason to use a distributor in the first place. The only question is the cost involved and if the additional services are actually of any value.