Amazon Music: How to upload your own music to the Amazon service

As an artist, there are several major music streaming platforms on the market, including Amazon Music. With over 82 million users worldwide, the platform has become one of the most important providers behind Spotify and Apple Music.

However, if you want to be featured on Amazon Music, you cannot upload your songs directly to Amazon. This only works via a small detour that has to do with so-called distributors.

1. What are distributors?

2. Upload music to Amazon Music: How it works

3. Advantages and disadvantages of distributors

What are distributors?

In business administration, “distribution” means the distribution or sale of commercial goods. This is roughly how you can imagine this concept in relation to distributors in the music streaming sector: They are distributors who distribute your music to the individual music streaming services such as Amazon Music and Co.

For a long time, music distribution was only possible through the major music labels, but later independent artists were also able to offer their music through music distributors. The catch: This cost a lot of money – with no guarantee that the music would be well received.

Thanks to globalization and the Internet, you as a private individual can now offer your music on various music streaming services. The best thing about it is that you don’t need a large budget for distribution. What was hardly possible in the past has become increasingly easier in recent years.

But why do you actually need distributors? Why not upload directly to Amazon Music or Spotify? There are two reasons for this: firstly, many services don’t even offer such a service, and secondly, distributors actually take a lot of work off your hands. Just imagine if you had to upload your songs individually to Amazon Music, Apple Music, Deezer, Tidal, Spotify and more each time, and maybe even make special adjustments for optimal quality. Distributors do this for you.

Another important point is that the distributors collect the royalties (income) from the streams of your music for you. Depending on the provider, these are then paid out monthly or quarterly. The distributors also ensure that you get paid for your streams. Although you usually have to give a portion of your income to the distributors.

Upload music to Amazon Music: How it works

In order to upload your music to Amazon and other platforms, you have to choose a distributor. Once you have done that, you can upload your music there so that the distributor can take care of further distribution from that point on. To ensure that everything runs smoothly, you should first meet a few requirements:

• Your song should be finished and ready for distribution.
• You have already chosen a distributor and created an account with them.

If you can tick these points off, then you can get started. Your distributor gives you the option of sending your songs to music streaming services. This usually happens directly on the company’s website. During this process, you have to specify several things:

• Songtitel
• Name of the artists/bands
• Release date
• Single or album cover
• desired music streaming services where your song should be uploaded

In practice, this looks like this:

Once you have entered all the information and added a suitable single or album cover, you can complete the process. The distributor will then send your song to the various music streaming services.

Most providers give you the choice of which streaming platforms you want to use. This ensures that your music is distributed to Spotify and other important providers in addition to Amazon.

Always up to date: Amazon Music for Artists

After you’ve sent your music to the distributors, you may be wondering when your music will arrive. Although you set a release date when you upload it, there is also a period of time in between. After all, the distributor also needs some time to distribute the music to the various platforms. To keep an eye on this period, there is the Amazon Music for Artists app.

With Amazon Music for Artists you can manage your artist profile and get access to important statistics and features. These include:

• daily streaming figures
• Number of followers on Amazon Music
• View the status of your songs (published songs and planned songs)
• Possibility to offer your own merchandise via Amazon
• and much more

With Amazon Music for Artists you get an app that keeps you up to date and never loses track. If you haven’t released a song yet, you can’t claim your profile. You can only do that after a song has been released and your artist profile has been automatically created.

If you use one of the following distributors, your artist profile will automatically be claimed for you:

• CD Baby
• DistroKid
• TuneCore
• TuneCore Japan

If you used another distributor, you can request your artist profile in the Amazon Music for Artists app:

1. Search for your artist in the app and select them.
2. Now click on “Request”.
3. Now fill in the required fields for verification and follow the instructions.

Advantages and disadvantages of distributors

Nowadays, there is a large selection of music streaming services. If you combine all providers, no matter how big or small, you end up with a total of 150 different music streaming services from all over the world. There are certainly some that are not relevant to you, but the selection is still huge.

A huge advantage is that the music distributors do the work for you and send your music to all the platforms you want. It would be hard to imagine having to upload individually to all the many music streaming services. This means you can concentrate fully on what is most important for artists and bands: the music.

The biggest disadvantage is probably that it can be a hassle if you want to switch from one distributor to another. Unfortunately, not many music distributors offer a complete switching service, which is why you often have to upload your songs individually to your new distributor.

If you have already released songs and want to change distributors, you can transfer your collected streams with the ISRC number (International Standard Recording Code) for each song. This way, your songs won’t start from scratch again when you upload them again. You can usually find the ISRC number at your current distributor under “Releases”. If you can’t find your ISRC number there, you can use a free service like the ISRC Finder to use.

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When you upload again, you must enter the ISRC number of the respective song and the distributor will directly transfer all metadata such as streams or other registered contributors.

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