Anyone who wants to release their music independently today thinks first of Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube. Understandable – these are the platforms where music gets heard. But releasing music means more than uploading a recording. There are two fundamentally different routes – and most musicians only take one of them.

This article explains both. Without promoting any specific services – and with an honest look at the route that gets overlooked most often.

Releasing music means making a work publicly accessible – so that it can be heard, played or purchased. How that happens depends on the form in which the music appears.

Two forms are available: as a recording (streaming, download, physical release) or as a sheet music edition (to play, for ensembles, for teaching). Most musicians know only the first route. Yet the second is just as real – and opens up entirely different markets and revenue streams.

The best-known route. A finished recording is passed on to streaming platforms and digital stores through a music distributor – also called an aggregator.

How does it work? The musician uploads their recording to the aggregator and the music appears on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Deezer, YouTube Music, TikTok and further platforms. No label needed, no record deal. Releasing music independently has never been more accessible.

These services are so-called DIY distributors – meaning the artist handles everything themselves while the provider supplies the technical infrastructure. In contrast to this, there are managed distribution services that actively support marketing and artist development – but that is a topic of its own.

Well-known DIY distributors internationally: DistroKid and TuneCore are the dominant international players with millions of users worldwide. CD Baby has been one of the longest-established independent distributors and is particularly strong in North America. Amuse offers a free tier and is popular with emerging artists. Songtradr focuses on sync licensing in addition to distribution. In the German-speaking market, Recordjet from Berlin (founded 2008) and iGroove from Switzerland have built strong reputations for personal support and transparent pricing.

For artists who want to distribute both recordings and sheet music from a single platform, Soundtribution (soundtribution.com) offers an integrated solution – more on that below.

Which cost model fits? Distributors differ fundamentally: some charge an annual fee and pay out 100% of revenues, others are free but take a percentage of earnings. Which model is cheaper depends on your streaming numbers. A detailed comparison of the main providers and pricing models will be covered in a separate article.

What streaming generates: The payout per stream is low – typically between €0.003 and €0.005 depending on the platform. Meaningful income only starts at hundreds of thousands of streams. For most independent musicians, streaming is therefore less a revenue source than a visibility tool: the recording makes the music discoverable and audible.

What you need for a streaming release: A finished recording in sufficient quality (WAV or FLAC), cover artwork in the correct format, and registration with your national performing rights organisation (GEMA in Germany, PRS in the UK, ASCAP or BMI in the USA, SUISA in Switzerland) if you want to collect streaming royalties.

What streaming cannot do: Streaming reaches listeners – but not players. Anyone who wants not just to hear music but to play it will not find what they need on streaming platforms. For that, a second route is needed.

Alongside recordings, there is a second way to publish music independently: as a sheet music edition. A professionally typeset score sold on sheet music platforms – as an instant download, a printed edition or both.

That sounds like a niche audience. It is not.

Sheet music platforms such as Musicnotes, Sheet Music Plus, notendownload.com and Alle Noten have millions of active users between them – piano students, choir directors, guitarists, music teachers, ensembles, church musicians. All of these people are actively searching for sheet music of pieces they want to play. And they pay for it: typically between €3.99 and €9.99 per edition.

What sheet music editions generate: The return per sale is significantly higher than from streaming. Anyone who sells a sheet music edition for €4.99 keeps around €2.50 to €3.50 after platform fees – per sale. Selling ten editions a month generates more than ten thousand streams.

On top of this come performance royalties when choirs or ensembles perform the piece publicly, and copy licence royalties through the relevant collecting society when institutions make copies. A newer addition are sheet music subscription services such as nkoda – platforms that give libraries and institutions subscription access to sheet music catalogues and pay royalties based on usage duration. The streaming model for music – applied to sheet music.

What you need for a sheet music release: A professionally typeset sheet music edition – created from a recording, a MIDI file or a handwritten sketch. Anyone who cannot write notation can have it created professionally. More at soundnotation.com/en/sheet-music-creation.

Streaming and sheet music do not compete – they complement each other.

The recording on Spotify makes the piece audible and creates interest. Anyone who hears it and wants to play it searches online for the sheet music and lands on a sheet music platform. Someone who finds a professional edition there buys it.

This is not a theoretical scenario. It is the journey millions of sheet music buyers take every day: listen on Spotify, buy the sheet music on a platform. Anyone present on both routes participates in both parts of that journey – with the same music, without double the effort.

Anyone who wants to publish both recordings and sheet music has a particularly smart option in Soundtribution and Soundnotation – because both services share the same database.

This means: artists and works are set up once – and are immediately available in both systems. No duplicate data entry, no manual transfer of metadata. Anyone who creates a sheet music edition on Soundnotation already has the artist available on Soundtribution – and vice versa.

For musicians active in both areas, this is a genuine advantage over using two separate unconnected services. One platform world instead of two parallel systems.

For recordings: soundtribution.com For sheet music: soundnotation.com/en/distribution

Anyone pursuing a record deal or publishing contract can do so alongside the routes described above. Labels handle production, marketing and distribution – but retain a significant share of revenues and often require rights transfers.

For most independent musicians, direct digital distribution – both for recordings and for sheet music – is the more flexible and usually more profitable route. Anyone who wants to retain full control over their music and their pricing is better positioned without contractual rights transfers.

Anyone who only streams reaches only listeners. Anyone who only publishes sheet music reaches only players. Anyone who does both – and uses the shared data infrastructure of Soundtribution and Soundnotation – opens up both markets with minimal additional effort.

Why sheet music editions generate more for musicians and producers than most people expect is explained in the article Why Sheet Music? What Musicians and Producers Should Know About the Value of Sheet Music Editions.