iMusician Review: 2023 – 2024

About iMusician Music Distribution Service

Visit iMusican: https://bit.ly/43MTKk0

iMusician is a music distribution service based in Sweden that likes to use the tagline “Truly Unlimited” and claims to allow artists to pay once and keep their release in stores forever. After taking a look at their pricing structure, I find that pitch to be inconsistent with their offer. Remember, the pitch here is unlimited music distribution, pay once, and keep your music in stores forever.

Ok, now that you know the pitch, let’s look at some examples of their offer. First, they have a tier they call free that charges you $20 per album and takes 10% of revenue. Does that sound like free? Their other tiers charge annual fees in addition to a fee per release in addition to a percentage of revenue.

About the keep your releases in stores forever part. If you’re paying an upfront fee for the release and a percentage of revenue, what are you paying an annual fee for? It might make a little sense if their annual fee was optional, but it doesn’t appear to be. You’re required to pay the annual fee so they’re just promising to not remove your releases in the event a payment can’t be processed.

Because iMusician is a Swedish company, they’re not subject to tax laws like other music distributors. If you’re an artist based outside of the US in a country that does not have a tax treaty with the US, you’re subject to a 30% tax withholding by your music distributor. If you’re located in the US but failed to fill out your music distriibtor’s tax form, you’re subject to a 30% tax withholding. iMusician allows you to avoid all of it. They’re not subject to any tax treaties and don’t require you to fill out any tax forms.

As far as their offers go, I can pay one-time fee of $20 for album. On top of that $20, I must also pay an additional 5% commission on sales. And, to round it all out, I pay a $50 annual fee. Saying the quiet part out loud, Distrokid is who they’ve identified as their chief competitor and the reasons artists choose Distrokid are unlimited distribution for a flat annual fee of $23 and keeping 100% of their revenue. Paying for Leave-a-Legacy at $49 per album means their album stays in stores if they stop paying the annual fee and continue to keep 100% of their revenue. iMusician does not allow them to do that because they’re taking 5%. The reason for your release not being removed from stores isn’t because you paid a one-time fee of $20, it’s because they’re taking 5% of the revenue.

iMusican’s Leave-a-Legacy alternative would have you paying $29 less than Distrokid but paying from $27 to $65 more in annual fees for the same level of service. Once you’ve generated $49 on Distrokid, you’ve recouped the cost of Leave-a-Legacy, alternatively, you’d pay $49 in fees every time you earned $980 with iMusician. Every month or year you earned $980, it would be an additional $49 you’d pay as a result of their 5% take. With Distrokid, Leave-a-Legacy is optional. You’re not given an option with iMusician, you must pay per release in addition to all the other fees. CD Baby charges a one-time fee of $10 per release and takes 9% with no recurring fees so if the goal is to keep a release in stores forever, they make more sense than both iMusician and Distrokid.

When it comes to features, iMusican offers the same standard features as every other distributor so there’s no reason to use them over companies like Tunecore, CD Baby, or Distrokid in that area.

iMusician Music Distribution Details