The sites worth having open.
Everything an independent artist needs to release a song and get paid for it, grouped by the job it does. No rankings and no affiliate links — this list makes nothing.
Getting the song onto streaming
A distributor puts your song on Spotify, Apple Music and the rest. You need exactly one.
Getting paid what you are owed
Distribution pays you for the recording. Publishing royalties are a separate pot, and they are the ones most independent artists never collect.
Your own numbers
Free, official, and the only place your real per-stream rate and your actual listeners live.
Making the content
Short-form video is where people find music now. None of this costs anything.
Recording without a studio
The phone is not the excuse.
Keeping it organised
Lyrics on napkins is how verses get lost.
How this list is put together
These are described by what they do, and nothing more. No "best", no rankings, no affiliate links, and no prices or terms — other people's pricing changes, and a stale figure repeated here would be a lie with my name on it. Check the current terms on their own site before you commit to anything.
I have no relationship with any of them and this page earns nothing. It exists because the questions it answers are the ones I get asked most, and pointing at a page is faster than typing the same reply again.
The parts I can help with
Once you have the distributor sorted, the rest is the song. Therelease planner dates the rollout, thestreaming calculator tells you what the plays are worth, and the guides cover finishing a mix and finding your first hundred listeners.
And when you need the beat, Beat Tinder finds ten that fit in about five minutes.