Ditto Music Review: The Rebels Are in the House!

Ditto Music was created by Matt and Lee Parsons as a way to help musicians avoid their struggles in distributing their own music. Derek Sivers, founder of CD Baby, was motivated similarly. However, Matt and Lee are hungry to prove they can play with the big-time distributors. It’s an attitude I like and it may work for you. Let’s dig a little deeper with this Ditto Music Review.

At first, I was uncertain about Ditto Music’s biz model. But after a little digging, I discovered that their foundation is based upon distributing your music to as many digital retailers as possible. This is what TuneCore and CD Baby do as well, their biggest competitors. The digital retailers they’re partnered with include iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, Rdio, etc. The Basic Service is free – which means you can place up to 10 tracks on iTunes. If you want more stores, you pay $9 for a single, $20 for an EP, and $35 for an album. These are yearly rates – so as long as you want to sell your music through Ditto, you pay that rate. However, keep in mind Ditto gives you 100% of all sales from your music.

At this time, you may be asking how Ditto Music is able to make any mullah. The reason they’re able to offer such low rates is, as they say, they’re more than a “monster truck for distributing music.” Distributing your music is actually the way they develop a relationship with you. If you are happy with their service, you’ll probably be inclined to pursue their myriad of other services such as creating your own record label, a chart breaker package designed to give you a mad-house release for hopefully charging into the UK Top 40, Pre-release selling, video distribution, mixed-media release package for combining multiple medias in your iTunes release, registration for both UK and US charts, as well as royalty registration to make sure you’re getting paid what you’re owed.

Do you live for performing? You’re in luck with Ditto Music because they’ll try and hook you up with festivals. This means live performance venues at SXSW in Austin and Liverpool Sound City. Ditto Music goes to bat for you in seeking out sponsorship, licensing and synching opportunities as well.

I mentioned in both my CD Baby and TuneCore reviews the importance of excellent customer service because stuff will hit the fan sometimes. Both of the aforementioned rank well in this category and so does Ditto Music, winning the 2011 RECS award for best on-line customer support.

That’s a quick rundown on Ditto Music for you. Truthfully, a lot of the services offered by CD Baby, TuneCore and Ditto Music are very similar if not downright the same. Your job is to link up with the company that strikes a chord with what you’re about and what you want to accomplish through music. My suggestion – don’t rush it (don’t take a year either, but ya dig what I mean) and feel out several distributors. After doing so, go with your gut – it’s usually right.