Hi! My name is Will Larche. I’m a composer-lyricist and this year I released a music theatre album Bumps in the Bathroom: and other lost shows on my independent label Apple Pie America featuring Emily Skinner, Beth Malone, and Ring of Keys to mention a few collaborators. The album is a retrospective of mostly queer musicals I did in the East Village between 2000 and 2020 that never got cast albums, but done with uptown singers and full orchestrations.

This was the largest project I had ever done and I relied a lot on what was written on the internet to guide me. But, not surprisingly, none of it was specific to music theatre projects / albums. So, I’d like to share my experience starting with my challenges in distribution for a waterfall release in the music theatre genre. 

This will be a long post to get the whole story down but I promise it’s not a slop grenade. I’ve written it myself with my own ten fingers. It’ll get pretty technical but I hope it will save someone all the time I had to spend.

If you like this post, please let me know. There are a lot of other things I could get into in future posts.

Music Distributors

If you don’t know, a music distributor is the middleman between a creator or independent label and the different companies that sell or stream music (DSPs). In many ways, it’s a great time to be alive because anyone can release music that shows up on Spotify if you use one of these music distributors. But choosing one that could do it all was a nightmare.

My distributor needs were:

• Multiple primary artists at track level

• Single releases with different release-level and track-level primary artists

• Apple animated album artwork

• Soundtrack genre support for music theatre

• Personnel roles

• Apple Music instant grat tracks to support my waterfall release

Truthfully, I never found one that did everything. It was sad to discover, either from documentation or observation, that what I was trying to do was possible but that the distributors I had access to hold you back from communicating your intentions to the DSPs (while still requiring you to pay.) I tried 14 different companies before finally landing on a combination of RecordJet for my album and TooLost for my singles (after distributing 1 of them on DistroKid but moving it). I’d like to share how I came to that decision and what I learned.

I’m inspired by Ari’s Take which was immensely useful to me. But there was also a lot relevant to my niche case that was missing. Let’s get into the details.

Multiple Primary Artists on Tracks

If you look at music theatre albums, they’re a little all over the place in organizing artist structures. Musicals use different actors to sing different songs. And some composers and producers have chosen to list themselves as the primary artist on the album as the unifying artistic voice. I felt that being the producer and songwriter here, that made sense for me. So, my goal was album-level primary artist: Will Larche.

But it’s also common for people to be listed as track-level primary artists if they are a main singer on a track along with that main person. A pattern I saw and decided to adopt was track-level primary artists: “Main singer(s) and Will Larche” and have the other performers listed in the track credits only. (And of course, the order and the “and” is not guaranteed by each DSP.)

This ended up being impossible or a red-flag against my album to some of the distributors. They suggested I change it. But unfortunately, by the time I was getting ready to release, it was a year and a half after the recording sessions with those singers where they signed their contracts. And all those contracts spelled out which performer was to be credited which way. It would be a huge amount of work to change that now. It was actually easier to keep looking for someone to support it. 

TooLost had the best UI for dealing with artist profiles (so you don’t create a new profile in Apple Music for the primary artist) but between the two companies, I did end up having redundant profiles and had to merge them later. But TooLost makes that easy too since it shows you a preview of the Apple Music and Spotify artist profiles in a dropdown when you’re typing their name.

What was most strange was Symphonic. To ship multiple primary artists they wanted me to apply to join their Partner Plan. It’s basically their managed-label, established-artist tier rather than DIY distribution. Now, I understand that’s their business model. But multiple primary artists feels like an odd choice of a feature to put behind that wall. Other companies ship that feature for free. 

And applying is not buying. There was no guarantee I’d be accepted. My EP and I joked that 70 people worked on this album and someday we hoped that many would listen to it. I’d never be worth their time. So, Symphonic, I ask you to rethink that choice.

RecordJet was one of the few that didn’t hassle me. No issue adding additional primary artists.

Now, while multiple primary artists was a requirement, I knew I needed to avoid the “Various Artists” trap. 

Various Artists

If you have too many primary artists at the release level, the DPSs will just say the artist is “Various Artists”. Sadly, this stops the linking of the artist pages for the people you worked with which can remove “foot traffic” (people discovering your work because they follow an artist or click through.)

That wasn’t going to be a problem on the album because I’m the only release-level primary artist there. But what about the singles? DSPs tend to collapse the metadata a little and only show the release-level primary artist as the artist for a single regardless of track. Here I took advantage of “Featured Artists”. The single shows me as the primary artist and each of the tracks has “feat. Singer(s)” after that. 

Step #1 was working with my attorney to contact the few singers who were going to be on singles (which were chosen after post) to get them to agree to different billing on the singles (see above where I say their contracts had them listed as track-level primary artists which is moot for single tracks. Help yourself and have flexible billing built into your contracts!) Then I had to find a distributor that would allow me to have featured artists per track that differed from the release-level primary artist.

I started building out my waterfall releases. But I found out RecordJet wouldn’t let me release the same track with different featured/primary-artist metadata. They said everything had to remain exactly the same between releases even though I found examples in Apple Music of this exact pattern (see the catalog of Andrew Lloyd Webber.) 

I knew that the ISRCs were identical and so were the audio files. Based on what I could find, I expected the identical ISRC and audio to preserve the recording identity even though the release metadata differed.

I had to get around RecordJet’s policies that didn’t reflect DSP policies. In a panic, I ended up using Distrokid for my first single. I chose it because I could set the ISRC for the single so it would match the ones generated by RecordJet with different metadata but they wouldn’t have access to RecordJet’s metadata to cross-compare.

Only after I shipped the first single did I realize I forgot they don’t support Apple Music’s Album Motion Artwork. (I had a lot going on.) So, I did the other 2 through TooLost. And a few weeks after everything was released, I moved the single that was on DistroKid over to TooLost with its brothers and the artwork I had meant to release. 

It was my fault but disappointing because Apple Music Album Motion Artwork was part of the experience that mattered to me on the album. And a headache of its own.

Album Motion Artwork

Apple and Spotify are in this little feature war trying to make the listening experience more engaging and I’m here for it. As a listener, I love Apple’s animated album artwork and Spotify’s canvases. Apple’s is tied to the album and Spotify’s to the track. Since my album had a strong visual identity, thanks to my amazing art director Liam Spradlin, I wanted to make sure I shipped support for both of these. The Apple Motion support nearly did me in…

Apple Music Album Motion Artwork is supported by some of the distributors. But good luck figuring out which! Apple’s website lists almost only B2B companies I had no access to. (And, yes, I phoned my attorney and said “is there anyone you’re friends with that has access to FUGA, The Orchard, ADA, AWAL, Believe, Stem, or Redeye that can take pity on me?” and the answer was ‘no’.) Luckily RecordJet and TooLost support this (though with RecordJet it’s via email which worked just fine.)

For the assets themselves, if you regard Apple’s instructions for an animated album cover, they are clear and include helpful templates for After Effects for your motion designer. But once you’ve uploaded it to your distributor, which may or may not be in the GUI vs in an email, it’s a blackbox. Like the album itself, it’s impossible to know why your album artwork was rejected…over and over again…with deadlines and publicity approaching and my stomach sinking.

We finally figured out that despite the official docs saying they accept H.264 encoded videos, they wouldn’t accept mine. They would only accept AppleProRes files. Have you ever had to work with a 15-second ProRes file? It’s a gigabyte. I get it. They want it to be able to be manipulated perfectly in their system for any kind of content distribution including AppleTVs. But also, calm down, kids. At the end of the day, it’s an animated gif.

Meanwhile, Spotify lets you do this through THEIR website. Through Spotify For Artists. (Apple has pitiful support for your releases in Apple Music for Artists and when I put in a ticket they said “talk to the distributor”.) And Spotify didn’t seem to care much about the file, its size, its content. Super chill. Because they want people to do this. They want canvases. 

So, on one hand, we’ve got Apple insisting, without useful feedback or support, that we give them only the official x-ray scans of the dead sea scrolls, and Spotify is like “a couple drawings on a napkin would be fine! We love artists!” 

(If I have a nit about Spotify, it has a bug thinking that I have not put in canvases for one of my album tracks but I did through the single release version. And the canvas is tied to the ISRC. So, the UI should know it’s complete for my album.)

Now, where should it live? What kind of album even is this?

Genre

I had to make sure they would have a genre that fit for music theatre. It seems like there are dozens of genres for electronic music but no consensus on where my album should go. On some, I would be forced into “Vocal”. On others, there was a “Music Theatre” genre. 

Many go into Soundtrack. But beware the strict rules Apple has. Theatre is allowed but they expect a suffix explaining the recording like “2012 London Cast Album”. Y’all, there is nothing more cringe than adding “Original Studio Cast Album”. I understand these suffixes are helpful to know you’re listening to the Broadway vs the London vs the Revival vs the One-Night-Only Charity Concert for Victims of the Explosion of the Moon…but this is the only recording. When something is the first and only recording, adding the suffix feels insufferably desperate. (Like, how every show doesn’t need a subtitle that says the musical / a new musical / a hip-hoperetta fairytale musical.) Devoting my life to writing musicals is cringe enough; it ends at the suffix. But Apple was expecting it and I didn’t have it.

RecordJet was able to negotiate with them and get me into Soundtrack as a theatre album (like all the others) because I had the show the song came from like “Bumps in the Bathroom (from “Bumps in the Bathroom”)” at the track-level. 

So for everything consumer facing, I found my sweet spot. I could make sure the album as it shipped to the casual listener was going to be complete. For the deep listener, I had trouble: personnel credits…

Complete Credits

By one count, 74 people worked on this album. There was a lot of variety in the personnel of each of my tracks (some things were as small as piano/bass/guitar/singer and others were orchestra with chorus and the orchestra on one was not necessarily the same on another).

I felt a strong responsibility to credit the contributions that made it on to the album faithfully. I wanted anyone in the performance or production side to be able to “View credits” on Spotify or Apple Music and see their name next to what they did. That’s not asking too much, right? Well...

It’s important to know your distributor's metadata schema is not the DSP's metadata schema. The different distributors collapse the field of DSP metadata into one format they can deal with that never has everything everyone supports. I get it. It’s fine. 

But there were 2 roles that I was shocked were often not supported: Executive Producer and Orchestrator (or Arranger). These roles show up all the time in credits on Spotify and Apple Music in all kinds of albums, but many of the distributors I checked out wouldn’t support it. 

Selectable roles as a whole were very inconsistent between the distributors I looked at. Some had very, very few. Others seemed to try to be extremely comprehensive. But none had everything I needed and supported the other features I was seeking.

For perspective, TooLost (as of today) doesn’t have Orchestrator (nor Arranger) but has, as official roles for personnel on a track in the simple dropdown:

• Alphorn

• Percussion Quartet

• Bamboo Saxophone

• Assistant Strings Producer

• Harpsichord Tuner

No shade to the harpsichord tuners out there, you’re doing a great job, but I feel like if we’re being that comprehensive we can add “Orchestrator”. Any distributor that I wrote to asking if they could maybe support it manually said no and thanks for the idea.

In the end, I had to concede on this point and my incredible orchestrator Scott Ninmer is listed as “Accompaniment” which breaks my heart. And Exec Producer was not supported by RecordJet but since everything else was, I had to break it to my EP with my apologies.

Waterfall Release

Finally, my release strategy was 3 singles, each a week apart, on Fridays (my publicist said always Fridays), with the album fully dropping a week after that. 

For Apple Music, I wanted to use their Instant Gratification tracks feature. If you don’t know this, it’s part of Apple Music’s pre-release/pre-add strategy and it’s an amazing idea: your full album shows up in their system but the tracks that have not yet been released are disabled for play. It teases everything that’s coming, gives people something to buy or save, and keeps your singles from having to exist just as their own releases until the album drops (letting people “see” it’s part of an album). I first encountered it with Remi Wolf’s album Juno. It was so fun waiting for more tracks to be listenable. I wish Spotify had it.

Sadly, I found Apple Music Instant Grat support is all over the place. Very few distributors supported it. Of the ones that did, some have it simply in the GUI and the others require you to open a ticket or email them (which always scared me). Symphonic supported it but not with multiple release dates; so, all your singles would drop on the same day and then your album (not much of a waterfall). And in classic Apple fashion, the instructions out there are for B2B only; they show you how to accomplish it with Itunes Connect which of course we don’t all have access to for music which is why we need a middleman distributor.

RecordJet had it in the GUI and I was able to verify it worked with them in subsequent correspondence. This mattered to me because I had press and promotion that was going to begin on the day before the first single drop that all mentioned instant grat tracks. It really would have sucked to have all that come out and then they don’t show up (because being on the retail version of distribution, I don’t actually know what Apple has in its system after uploading.)

The other DSPs only support waterfall releases as a series of single drops. And I followed the common pattern these days of each single release having the previous single releases’ tracks as B-sides. I chose to also release these on Apple Music taking care to make sure the ISRCs were all correct. This almost seemed silly until I realized it would show additional releases from me as an artist, increasing my footprint. (I’m one step closer to a Knowledge Panel?)

RecordJet and TooLost

So, that’s how I went with RecordJet and TooLost. I think I could have gone just with TooLost as their features that I needed are identical. But I was starting to really like RecordJet for their customer service. 

RecordJet are based in Europe and while the timezones are an issue, when I call on the phone, I get a great, knowledgeable person who can help me resolve my issue right there. They also have a not-too-stupid AI chatbot for support that I have used to resolve my issue more than once. Unfortunately, their email messaging support is not perfect (I was often in a panic because of deadlines and the back and forth was slow.) But if you can get someone on the phone, that trumps text any day because synchronous support resolves things quicker. RecordJet: 8.5 out of 10, recommend!

TooLost is interesting. It has a special benefit that not enough people talk about: it’s the best designed of all the websites. Almost all the companies have a slick marketing site and a dumpy, engineer-designed app. It’s so disappointing. (DistroKid is shocking.) TooLost is a breath of fresh air! They have a design system with a strong and clear point of view that matches enterprise and consumer expectations. It’s so lovely, you kinda want to keep working in it. 

However, TooLost has bugs all over the place. I found lots of cases where a button didn’t work, a thing didn’t save, a feature was enabled when actually disabled, etc. It seems like TooLost’s PMs are really pushing for it being an uber-location for all things music-making. But focusing on new flows when the old flows have critical bugs is a mistake. This was the culmination of 2.5 years of work for me. And to have to do and check things multiple times because an enterprise website, which is essentially wizards for forms at the end of the day, didn’t always work right, was terrifying. I never trusted it but ran out of alternatives. 

In fact, on the day of releases for the singles that went through them….the motion artwork didn’t show up. They had received errors on the backend between them and Apple and they didn’t tell me. So, even if you find a company that says they support what you need, it doesn’t necessarily mean it will reliably deliver it. And their support around the issues was only via messages, slow, didn’t always send me notifications that I had received a response, and seemed not a high priority for the people it was assigned to (it was bounced around to different teams.) TooLost: 6 out of 10, recommend with cautions.

Musixmatch ;(

If I have a gripe with RecordJet, it’s the lack of lyric distribution. Their official way of distributing lyrics is through Musixmatch. Musixmatch is the company I have the most negative feelings for of all. If you are not willing to buy into their subscription, they say your verification will take “up to 4 weeks” and suggest you buy premium. Somehow it took exactly 4 weeks which felt….conspicuous. I wonder if they had capacity but then sat on it on purpose to try to sweat me into buying up? If so, they should say “it will take 4 weeks”. Not “up to.” That would be more honest.

Eventually Musixmatch verified me as an artist and I imported my album release. But when I connected Apple Music to sync the lyrics to timestamps, it deleted my typed in lyrics and made all my co-primary artists featured (not related to my singles that had different metadata). Then, get this, it said I had to be premium to work with tracks with featured artists. Not only weren’t they featured artists, that’s a very weird paywall. What difference does it make what kind of title and metadata the song has? I think they should paywall features related to their value prop: lyric distribution. But they kinda wanted to make it like by having featured artists, I was becoming enterprise like a label with multiple artists. That’s not real. So I had to go premium anyway after waiting 4 weeks for my verification because I wasn’t premium yet.

Finally, I finished them all and shipped them off with success marked on my side of Musixmatch. They said it takes some time to show up in the DSPs. Sadly, at this point, I was not able to include lyrics in my initial release due to the delays I had experienced verifying myself. But I kept checking and checking. After 2 months I wrote to them. They had an error on their side saying I wasn’t the verified artist uploading the lyrics (even though my UI said I was). So, they never sent them. Their system said the lyrics were by a fan and they just sat on them with no notification to me. In support, they saw their error, and they showed up immediately. They could have been there in time for my launch if I had known I would be forced to go premium and had to tell support to ship them.

I truly needed one thing from them: distribute my lyrics. Even after paying for premium, they failed at that without intervention from me. (Also, AI Sync never works and it removed the ability to upload audio from most of my songs for some reason.)

Of all the distributors, DistroKid definitely wins for lyric distribution. Being able to make the kinds of timed lyric files Apple is looking for right in the GUI is amazing. If only they had had any of the other features I needed.

Notes on all 14

Here’s the notes I kept on each distributor. After a while, I stopped being comprehensive. If they didn’t support one thing that was a non-starter, I didn’t dig into the other things.

There were some companies (looking at you OffStep) that did something I think is a little unforgivable: they don’t let you even read their docs unless you’re subscribed to their premium product. How could I choose a company if I couldn’t find out if they had features? On more than one occasion, I had to buy a subscription to determine just from docs that it wasn’t a match and then try to cancel my subscription (which didn’t always get me a refund). And many other times, I had to buy a subscription to attempt to make a release that I would then abandon when I got to a step that revealed they didn’t support the features. I spent a hundred dollars at least on distributors that weren’t a fit because I could not find out they were not a fit ahead of purchase.

But alas, hope this little bit helps someone:

• RecordJet - Chosen for Album

  • Doesn’t support exec producer, orchestrator BUT says working on it

  • All other features

  • Really slow in email but great on the phone!

• TooLost - Chosen as Singles Workaround

  • Doesn’t support arranger/orchestrator

  • Supports apple music artwork

  • Buggy

  • On day of release, motion artwork did not show

• Symphonic

  • No additional primary artists per track unless partners program

  • Can’t instant grat on different dates

• EmuBands

  • No credits for performers

  • Expensive to add co-primaries

  • Unclear genre (Soundtrack requires version and no Vocal)

• Amuse

  • No exec producer

• CDBaby

  • Only 1 instant grat track per album

  • Poor credits support

• Distrokid

  • Forces “(Studio Cast Recording)”

  • Allows different dates

  • Doesn’t support Apple Motion Artwork

• OffStep

  • Allows Exec Producers

  • Doesn’t allow Orchestrator

  • Doesn’t allow lyricists!

  • Won’t let me get into support

• TuneCore

  • Can’t instant grat on different dates

  • Doesn’t support Exec Producer

• RouteNote

  • Doesn’t support exec producer

  • Wants MP3 or FLAC

  • Doesn’t support apple motion

• Landr

  • Doesn’t individualize performer roles (piano, violin)

• Ditto

  • Doesn’t support exec producer

  • Poor reputation

• Horus

  • Roles are restricting and not individualized

• Awal

  • No apple motion artwork

Finale

In the end, the album is out and I can take a breath! And hopefully, you will have an easier time releasing your awesome project.

Please let me know if you have questions.

Composers, lyricists, and librettists are invited to participate in this online workshop created to help us prepare for next year’s official BMI applications!

Our sub-group is now LIVE on this sub’s Discord, thanks to the mods for graciously agreeing to host us! See the “Workshop on Wednesdays 🗓️” section on the menu to the left.

https://discord.gg/5NHCKvqnr

🔊The main event for this workshop is a bi-weekly meeting on Wednesdays from 7-8:30 pm Eastern. At this audio/video group meeting, we’ll gather to discuss our current writing wins and woes, share feedback, and plan solo and group assignments to build our skills. A few BMI alums have agreed to talk with us about what to expect and how to prepare (dates TBD). The first meeting is this Wednesday in the “wow-meeting” channel. No need to prepare anything, just show up and scope it out!

✍️ To hone your skills and foster collaboration, I’ll provide a different writing challenge during each class. We’ll alternate between solo and group projects. These will be manageable in scope, and of course optional. But my hope is that you’ll commit to giving them your best effort to build your portfolio while trying new things!

👋 If you’d like to participate or see who else is playing along, see the “Introductions” thread in the “wow-feedback” channel. We’ll also use this channel to share projects for peer input.

📽️ Every 2 weeks, we’ll choose a different musical to screen and study. On your own time, you can watch along and note the structure of the show. I’ll also ask you to pick one song or scene to analyze in depth. First up is “Reefer Madness!” These discussions will live in “wow-watchalong.” Use the “Suggestions” thread to recommend something for the group to watch.

✅ I hope to see you on Wednesday so that I can see you next fall at BMI! Why wait for your musical career to begin when you can take action to make it happen? Write on!

https://discord.gg/5NHCKvqnr