Free vs Paid Music Distribution: 6 Costs Nobody Puts in the Quote
Every comparison starts and ends with the fee. That number is real, but it is one line in a longer bill. Here are the other five, and the point where paying per release actually beats giving up 15% of it.
The short version
On RouteNote, the Free plan pays 85% of net revenue and costs nothing, while Premium charges $10 for a single, $20 for an EP, $30 for an album or $45 above that, plus a $9.99 renewal each year, and keeps 100%. The $10 single fee only beats the commission once that release has earned about $67 of net revenue in the first year. Below that, free is cheaper. Above it, Premium wins more every month the release keeps selling.
Cost 1: The per-release fee, which is the one on the quote
Premium on RouteNote is priced by the size of the release: $10 for a single of one track, $20 for an EP of 2 to 6 tracks, $30 for an album of 7 to 18, and $45 for anything from 19 tracks up. The full schedule is on the pricing page, and the same numbers appear in the cost article in the support hub.
What that fee buys is a change in the revenue split, not a change in service. The stores, the metadata, the queue and the payout calendar are the same either way. On Premium the artist keeps 100% of streaming and download revenue instead of 85%, and the platform earns from the fee rather than from the streams.
An honest sentence about the quote: it is easy to compare, it is paid once, and it is small enough that most artists do not think about it. That is exactly why it dominates the comparison.
Cost 2: The commission you pay instead of the fee
Free takes nothing upfront and keeps 15% of the net revenue RouteNote collects. The word net matters. It is not 15% of the listener's payment, it is 15% of what reaches the distributor after the store's own share. That is how the industry works, and it is the only number that makes the two plans comparable.
The comparison is a break-even calculation, and it takes one division. A $10 single fee is equal to 15% of about $67 of net revenue. An EP at $20 equals the same commission on about $133. An album at $30 equals it at $200, and a $45 extended album at $300. Work the other way and a single that earns $30 of net revenue in its first year keeps $25.50 on Free and $30 minus the fee, so $20, on Premium. Free wins that one by $5.50.
Year two changes the arithmetic, because Premium renews at $9.99 per release. Two years of Premium on a single is $19.99, so the break-even moves up to around $133 of cumulative net revenue. A release that earns $40 in year one and $25 in year two keeps $65 on Premium and $55.25 on Free, which puts Premium ahead by $9.75 even after the second renewal.
The line to remember: free is cheaper for a release that earns less than about $67 a year, and paid is cheaper for almost everything above it. That threshold is low, which is why the choice usually comes down to confidence rather than money.
Cost 3: The renewal, and what happens when you stop paying it
Paid distribution is closer to rent than to purchase. RouteNote charges $9.99 per release each year for storage, admin and maintenance, which is a modest number that becomes less modest across a catalogue. Twelve releases renewed once is about $120 a year, paid whether or not those twelve releases earned anything.
The renewal can be cancelled, and RouteNote describes the result plainly: at the end of the year the release moves to the Free plan automatically. Nothing is taken down and the release keeps its place in stores. From that point the artist is back on the 15% commission, which is a fair trade for a back-catalogue release nobody is promoting.
The cost nobody quotes is the admin: a list of renewals, a calendar of dates, and a decision per release each year. For a catalogue of 55 releases, which is where mine stands, that is not a rounding error in attention. The discography is a good place to see how quickly a catalogue grows when every cover is a separate release.
Cost 4: The licence a cover needs, or the listeners you give up
This is the cost that dwarfs the distribution fee and almost never appears beside it. A cover needs permission for the composition, and RouteNote handles some of that and not all of it. Ten partner services accept covers without a mechanical licence: Spotify, Deezer, Pandora, iHeartRadio, Saavn, Nuuday, Anghami, Tidal, Lissen and KKBox.
Everything else in the partner list needs a licence, available through a licensing partner, and without one the territories of the United States, Canada, Mexico, India and Pakistan have to be excluded in Manage Stores. That exclusion is a real cost expressed in listeners, not in dollars: some of the largest streaming markets are simply off the table for that release.
Korean services add a condition that no distributor can work around. Melon, Bugs!, Flo, Vibe and Genie require written permission from the original artist, so a cover of a K-drama theme can be cleared everywhere except the market most likely to want it. If the release is an original, none of this applies, which is the strongest argument for writing one. No Reason is an original and its metadata is a third as long as a cover's.
Cost 5: The cost of changing distributor later
Distribution is cheap to start and annoying to leave, and the annoyance is measured in days. RouteNote's switching guide asks for the same ISRC and UPC as the existing release, identical audio, artwork and metadata, and three to five business days for stores to link the recording back to the artist. Then the old distributor has to be asked to take the release down.
Two rules keep that clean. Never have the same store selected on two distributors at once, because duplicate deliveries are what get a release removed. And keep a written record of every ISRC and UPC, since those numbers are the only handle a new distributor has on a recording that already exists.
The hidden cost is the gap. A release in transit can be down for a week, and any playlist or algorithmic tail attached to it starts from scratch. That is a stronger argument for choosing carefully at the start than any comparison table.
Cost 6: The threshold and the calendar
Free plans are built around small balances, and small balances have to clear a threshold before they move. RouteNote pays between the 15th and the 20th of each month and holds payments below $50. For an artist with one single and a modest audience, the practical effect is a payment every few months rather than every month, and no amount of planning changes that.
Payments also need PayPal configured to receive US dollars, which is not automatic in every territory. On the split side, RouteNote applies its 15% first and then divides the rest, so a 50/50 arrangement pays 42.5% to each artist, and requests have to be submitted before the 20th to take effect in the next cycle. All of it is in the revenue sharing article.
None of this is expensive. It is slow, and slow money is a cost for anyone releasing music with borrowed money or a deadline.
How to choose in about five minutes
Skip the comparison charts and answer one question per release: will this earn more than about $67 of net revenue in its first year? A first single from an artist nobody knows will not. A cover of a theme with a search audience might. A release tied to a campaign, a playlist pitch or a season probably will.
If the answer is no, take Free and keep the money for mastering, artwork or a second release. If the answer is yes, pay the fee and stop thinking about the 15% for the rest of the year. Mixing is allowed and it is the sensible default: a catalogue of 55 releases on Free, with the two or three releases that actually sell on Premium, is cheaper than a flat decision applied to everything.
One last consideration that rarely gets written down: the paid plan buys attention as well as revenue. Paying per release makes an artist look at that release every year, decide whether it is still worth keeping, and either promote it or let it fall back to Free. That annual review is the part of paid distribution I would miss most if it disappeared, and it has nothing to do with the fee.
The step-by-step version of the whole process, including the queue and the payment calendar, is in the RouteNote release guide.
Questions the numbers raise
Which is cheaper, free or paid music distribution?
Free is cheaper for a release that earns under about $67 of net revenue in its first year on RouteNote's single tier. Paid is cheaper above that, and the advantage grows with every year the release keeps earning, even after the $9.99 renewal.
Do I earn less per stream on a free plan?
The store pays the same per stream either way. The 15% comes off the net revenue before the artist is paid, so the difference shows up in the total, not in the rate.
Is there really no charge to keep music online?
On the Free plan, no. RouteNote lists no charge for keeping music online, no charge for content ID and no charge for adding a release to new partner stores. Premium releases carry the annual $9.99 renewal instead.
Can I change from Free to Premium after a release is live?
Yes, per release, and in the other direction too: cancelling a renewal returns that release to the Free plan. The plan follows the release, not the account.
Does a cover song need a separate licence?
It depends where you send it. Several large services take covers without one, and the rest of the partner list needs a licence for the United States, Canada, Mexico, India and Pakistan. The cover formatting article lists both sides.
