Atmos for Indie Artists

This blog is an extension of the Ten Top Music Distribution Services blog post but focusing on services that offer distribution for immersive audio formats, like Dolby Atmos.

Once your Dolby Atmos mix is finalized and mastered, the next crucial step is selecting a distributor that supports immersive audio formats. Not all digital distributors accept Atmos files, so it’s important to choose one that can deliver your music to platforms like Apple Music, Tidal, and Amazon Music in its full spatial quality. Factors to consider include pricing, platform reach, ease of use, and additional promotional tools. Below, we break down some of the most popular distributors that support Dolby Atmos and what they offer.

AvidPlay

The first DIY distribution service supporting Dolby Atmos Music is AvidPlay. They have an annual subscription plan that allows for  unlimited Dolby Atmos and stereo singles and albums for $49.99/year. This plan is to be associated with 3 primary artists or bands. This service also lets you keep all of your earnings and automatically share revenues with contributors at no extra cost. Once you stop paying the annual subscription your music is taken down.

DistroKid

DistroKid is a popular choice for independent artists due to its affordability and ease of use. They offer Dolby Atmos distribution through an add-on service, allowing artists to upload Atmos files for an additional fee. Their subscription service for one artist is $22.99/year and the uncharge to add Dolby Atmos mixes is $26.99 for each track(song).

TuneCore

TuneCore offers Dolby Atmos distribution as part of an album or single release. They offer subscription pricing along with their per-release pricing, both are annual fees. The pricing varies and would depend on how much music you release to see where the best value lies, but they have albums at $39.99/year, singles at $22.99/year, and unlimited plans starting at $22.99/year up to $49.99/year with varying features. They can do Dolby Atmos for new releases at $16.99 USD per track. It is not currently possible to add Dolby Atmos to existing releases, but it will be possible in the future.

Symphonic

Symphonic bills itself as completely independent. They have subscription plans starting at $19.99/year for each primary artist on the account and allow unlimited tracks for release each year. Dolby Atmos is an add on charge of $24.99 per spatial audio track. They also offer several other services like a record label might like royalty collection, playlist prmotion, and other services.

UnitedMasters

UnitedMasters supports the delivery of Dolby Atmos audio files to Apple Music for their mid and top tier plans. This feature is currently a manual process, but they say an artist can contact support for help. Their mid-tier plan is $59.99/year and they do not specify if there is an additional charge. They also advise on planning for a three week lead time on releasing spatial audio due to the manual process and additional time that may be needed.

Comparing Dolby Atmos Costs

Each of these distributors have a slightly different cost structure. So, in order to compare costs, I think it is good to find an example. My example is an artist that has one album with 10 tracks. We will explore the cost to release this project for three years on each platform to compare the total cost.

1 album for one artist for the first 3 years with 10 songs

Two main takeaways here are the per-track fees from most of the distributors make this very expensive very quickly. They also don't specify if this Atmos per-track fee is a one-time fee or a recurring annual fee. UnitedMasters didn't even mention a fee, but assuming their higher yearly fee they may (unconfirmed) include this in their service.