Music Distribution: Ditto Music - thumbs up

Ditto Music

www.dittomusic.com 

Already many years ago I had tried Ditto Music, but I had not been impressed then, as there were many shortcomings and bug in the upload process.

But now I decided to try them again. Their interface is sleek, and they offer more than 150 music distributers. 

New Release: Karelia Suite by Jean Sibelius

I decided to use them with my new release of the "Karelia Suite" by Jean Sibelius, which I recently had completed to record. Here is my experience with that.

Release Type

First question: Standard release or electronic/dance release? Why would there be a difference? Should this not be taken into account with the Genre? I chose "Standard release".

Genre

Next problem: what genre? there is no "classical". The genre classification at Ditto seems to be very woke: there are 3 African and 7 Afro genres, and something exotic like "Original Pilipino Music", but nothing at all relating to classical music: no string quartet, no solo piano, no orchestra, no symphony, nothing. Quite disappointing... that is just an indicator of the slow death which classical is currently suffering.

So I chose "Instrumental", and as second genre "Easy Listening". I will classify all my classical music recordings with this. Because it is easy to listen to, much easier to the other crap that is out there.

Composer?

So where do I add the composer, Jean Sibelius? There is no provision for this... But the release should mention Sibelius somewhere - I am not the composer of this wonderful music. Since Sibelius died in 1957, he is not yet 70 years dead now in 2024. Therefore, his music composition is still under copyright, and I have to give him credit somewhere, so that royalties would go to his estate. I might add his name to the release title. something like "Sibelius: Karelia Suite". But that would not be correct. I noticed that on Spotify, the composer is often noted as the first / primary artist. That might be an option.

But I decided to add "Jean Sibelius" as "featured artist" of the release.

Artist

There is an option to check if this is the first release of an artist. And yes, this is the first release of "Studio Philharmonico", so I did check it.

Language

Language? Why are those music distribution systems only addressing "songs"? What about simply addressing "music"? I do not have a "song", nobody is singing there. It is "just" classical orchestral music. The real music, the only music I accept as such. And now I have to select a language... They mention if there are no lyrics, then one should address a language-specific audience. OK, so I chose "English (American)". 

Audio Files

Ditto Music accepts WAV and MP3 files, WAV being preferred. No indication of quality. File size limit: 200 MB. I upload my 48k 24bit versions.

Track Names

The track title of the first track of a new release is originally set to the release title. Once additional tracks are added, that track title becomes editable for a specific name. There is the usual guidance on how the track titles are. I gave them the names of the 3 movements: Intermezzo, Ballade, Alla Marcia.

Image

Each release needs an image. Ditto Music wants images of at least 3000x3000 pixels: I used a picture of a lake in a forest that I had taken myself. Then I added the text with the online tool PizAp. 

The uploader is quite picky - the image needs to be exactly square. For some odd reason the PizAp download was 3000x3001px, even though I had selected 3000x3000px. So I had to manually edit the image file down to exactly 3000x3000px. Then the upload worked OK.

Track Pricing

No concrete amount for track price can be specified, only "low", "medium", "high". I set the price to high, because these are high-quality tracks with excellent music. But I think that pricing only relates to downloads, not to streaming.

Additional Release Options

One can choose for a quick release within 72 hours, for 40 pounds. Sounds fair, but I can wait the standard release time of 10 days.

One can also add the release to charts, for an additional fee. I did skip that - not sure that Sibelius would climb up in the charts a lot...

Selection of Stores

Ditto Music has more than 150 stores to offer, which is quite a lot. 

In their guidance and Q&A they talk about "cover songs", to which my release also belongs, because the music composition is still under Sibelius' copyright. Cover Songs are "songs" which are not composed by the performer, but by another artist. For offering music downloads of such a Cover Song, I would need to obtain a "Mechanical License". I am aware that they are quite expensive and may eliminate all the earnings I would get... Such a license is not required for streaming-only.

Which means I will have to chose only the stores which do not offer downloads but solely streaming. In that case, no further mechanical license is necessary. This means, my recording of the Karelia Suite will not be on iTunes, Apple Music, Amazon, Napster, and several others. Their loss.

These are the stores which Ditto Music offers, and the ticks are showing my selection of streaming-only sites:

Conclusion

Overall I am quite satisfied with how the publishing of my first release with Ditto Music went, and can give a Thumbs-Up.

I will report in another post about my experience with Ditto Music after the release.