Amuse is one of the most popular DIY distributors in the world.
Over the past year, Amuse has expanded beyond its pure DIY distribution services to offer wraparound, label-like support for DIY artists.
Access to these ‘Artist & Label Services’ is application-based and only available to artists with demonstrated audiences (averaging 250,000+ monthly streams). Accepted artists and their teams negotiate a custom fee for a menu of services that includes in-house sync representation, release support, marketing and promotion, end-to-end catalog services, funding, and revenue management, all while allowing artists to retain their master rights.
Amuse boasts that they are in the top 5 DIY distributors globally in terms of volume of releases, working with hundreds of thousands of artists. With the ever crowded space of getting music onto major streaming platforms, this is no small feat.
Other distributors have struggled with customer support and have let go (fired) a lot of their support staff recently. Amuse claims to have invested in support staff: stationing teams spread across multiple time zones including Stockholm, London and Mexico, offering support in English, Spanish and Swedish.
Amuse relayed “Our Support team sits close to the Tech and Product teams, has a seat at the Executive table, and is led by people with extensive industry experience.”
Like most DIY distributors, the support chatbot is powered by AI (for the initial inquiries). This isn’t necessarily a problem IMO. It’s all in the execution. We’ve all dealt with human support staff who we wished were more like AI!
If you can’t get your answer from Amuse’s AI chatbot, you are routed to a human agent and if you’re on the Pro plan, will get a response within 24 hours.
+Music distribution comparison article and chart
I signed up for an Amuse account to poke under the hood and they gave me a demo account so I could get a look at some insights and analytics since I haven’t released any music with them yet.
Because Amuse started as a mobile-only distributor, the mobile experience (primarily on their app) is exceptional. I know artists appreciate being able to get a real-time glance at their royalties, analytics, and artist profiles on the go.
Amuse has changed its business model quite dramatically over the past year
Amuse distribution no longer offers a free tier (which I applaud as this floods the market and pulls resources away from other artists needing support). Like most other distributors these days, Amuse offers unlimited distribution for an annual fee.
The main difference between the ‘Artist’ $23.99/yr plan, the ‘Artist Plus’ $39.99/yr plan, and the ‘Professional’ $59.99+/yr plan is the ability to distribute multiple artist projects and add a custom label name. You can manage one profile with ‘Artist,’ two with ‘Artist Plus,’ and three or more with ‘Professional’ (and add a label name). This is typically an upgraded feature at other similar DIY distributors like DistroKid and Tunecore. The ‘Artist Plus’ plan also supports hi-res audio and fan email collection, while ‘Professional’ gets you autosave functionality and priority customer support. With nearly every DSP offering “hi-res” audio, no one should be distributing music at a lower bitrate anymore.
Amuse’s release timing is a little confusing to me.
Pro users have two options: Release as soon as possible or Select a release date. However to select a release date you must select at least 7 days out. It would make a lot more sense if I could select any date from 2 days out forward without restriction. What if I want to release a song a week? You can’t really do that without planning ahead a bit.
A major hole in Amuse current services is the ability to distribute lyrics.
Most distributors these days have lyric distribution as part of their core distribution service (at least getting lyrics to Apple Music and TIDAL). Amuse has a partnership with Musixmatch – which distributes lyrics to most DSPs and Instagram. Some distributors have this baked into the distribution service so you don’t have to hop over to Musixmatch and create a whole new account. Hopefully Amuse updates this. It’s quite the headache having to create a Musixmatch account just to get lyrics to show up on Spotify, Apple Music and Instagram.
Now that nearly all the distributors (yes even Spotify, finally!) display full credits Amuse has upped its game for credit distribution. Artists can now list their performer credits (including studio musicians and featured artists) as well as songwriting, arrangement, production, and engineering credits through Amuse’s release builder.
Amuse offers free payment splitting for collaborators
Payment splitting has become a deal breaker for me when it comes to choosing a distributor. If they won’t pay out my collaborators automatically, I’m not going to use them. It’s too much of a headache to have to calculate all of this myself. Fortunately, Amuse offers payment splitting, however they do take an additional 15% cut from unsubscribed collaborators if the release owner is using the lowest tier ‘Artist’ plan.
Payment splitting is a free offering for all collaborators when the release owner uses an ‘Artist Plus’ or ‘Professional’ plan or if those collaborators are subscribed to Amuse plans themselves. Other distributors like Symphonic, TuneCore, Landr and Too Lost offer free payment splitting for non member collaborators. What I would like to see from Amuse’s payment splitting is recoupment. Meaning, if my producer is entitled to 20% of my royalties after the $2,500 I spent on the track, I should be getting paid 100% of the royalties until I reach $2,500, then we split the rest 80/20. Other distributors like DistroKid and Symphonic offer this.
Streaming fraud is one of the most serious issues affecting the music industry currently.
I have reported on how innocent artists are being penalized for fraudulent streaming activity that they had no part in. It seems no distributor nor DSP has figured out how to combat this. Too Lost and Symphonic have gotten close by requiring ID verification, but the others have begun passing along the fees and penalties DSPs like Spotify and Apple Music have levied to their artists – whether they are guilty of fraud or not. Amuse has a custom warning system in place they’re calling Stream Check which lets the artist know if any of their songs have been detected for artificial streaming. Amuse says that this will help artists fight streaming fraud proactively.
Amuse has updated their fraud detection protocol and I applaud this move. Amuse will issue 3 warnings with an appeals process baked in – before any takedowns or fines are issued. This is an approach I wished all DIY distributors would take.
Amuse also has a program called “Stream Check” which identifies songs in your catalog that have been flagged as having artificial streaming activity so you can get ahead of a takedown. Spotify also has a playlist reporting tool within Spotify For Artists to report if you notice your songs got added to shady looking playlists.
+How To Officially Report Shady Spotify Playlists
Amuse only distributes music to 53 total outlets. Now these 53 are the most popular ones, but if it’s important to you to have your music in certain DSPs (usually more popular in secondary markets), you’ll want to check to see if Amuse distributes to them. Notably absent from Amuse’s distribution destinations are Luminate and SoundExchange.
Amuse now has forever presave links and fan email collection
This is a huge improvement from their previous presave link maker and puts them at the cutting edge of presave link makers from distributors. You can now capture all of your fan email addresses when they presave your upcoming release and when they do presave it, they will automatically presave all of your upcoming releases. One click and they’re done.
Re-releasing music with Amuse is a lot easier than most other distributors
Like including a previously released single on an upcoming EP or album. Or simply switching from a previous distributor. I appreciate that if the track has been released before the old ISRC is required. This is listed big bold and red so you can’t miss it. Other distributors don’t require this and it can easily be missed. If you don’t use the same ISRC code for the new release, neither your stream counts or playlists will transfer. I appreciate that Amuse holds your hand through this process – which can be very confusing. The fewer decisions we need to make the better!
All in all, Amuse is a legit music distribution service for independent artists with a great reputation.
There are a bunch of features to seamlessly tap into as you grow your music career.
If you’d like to see how Amuse compares to other music distribution platforms like DistroKid, Too Lost, Symphonic, Horus, Tunecore, CD Baby and the rest, check out the full comparison chart and article HERE.
Amuse has distributed some notable releases like: the original upload of Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road,” “YKYIM?” by Yot Club and “eXplosion” by Black Eyed Peas (will.i.am is a cofounder).
Check them out HERE.
Use code ARIS10 for 10% off your Amuse plan.
Questions
Is Amuse a legit music distribution platform?
Yes, Amuse is a legit music distribution platform that distributes to 41 major outlets, such as Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Tidal, SoundCloud, TikTok and more. Many artists praise it for its user-friendly interface and transparent reporting system.
Is Amuse really free?
As of March 27th 2024, Amuse no longer offers a free plan. You can sign up for their ‘Artist’ plan ($23.99/year), their ‘Artist Plus’ plan ($39.99/year) or their ‘Professional’ plan ($59.99+/year).
Can I get advance royalties through Amuse?
If you are already getting a substantial amount of streams on your catalog, you can apply to get access to up to six months of your upcoming royalties with their automated Royalty Advance service. They offer from $10 up to over tens of thousands of dollars per advance, based on your prior streaming data. Anyone who distributes through Amuse can be considered for Royalty Advances.
Does Amuse promote your music?
At this moment, Amuse only does direct marketing and promotion for artists who have applied and been approved for their Artist & Label Services. Artists with demonstrated audiences and ~250,000 monthly streams are most likely to be approved for these services.
+26 Things to Do Before You Release a Single or Album
Does Amuse own your music?
No, artists who distribute through Amuse own their master rights 100%. Even artists who use Amuse’s Artist & Label services retain full ownership of their masters.
Does Amuse offer admin publishing?
At this moment (January 15th, 2025), Amuse only makes sound recording royalty payments directly to artists. Admin publishing for songwriter royalties is available exclusively through their Artist & Label Services partners by invite only.
