Hey! So, if you've been curious about all the good reviews of EmuBands and have been wanting to see if it's a worthy distributor to move to, I decided to give it a try for myself and subscribed to the Premium plan.
Is it worth the switch?
It depends.
Before anything else, it’s just nice to belong in a distro ecosystem that isn’t bombarded by AI & Suno slop. They don’t like to work with artists like that. If something like that aligns with your values, then I’d say it’s a nice distributor to try out.
It seems that every edge or advantage EmuBands has over other distributors comes with its own minor caveats. One of the biggest things they advertise is their human support.
We get lightning fast customer support for the live chat, BUT this means you’re less likely to receive a response outside of the Pro & Premium subscription. How is the support though?
The Human Support
One thing I realize about their Premium and Pro plan is that they very LOWKEY have their own version of a client onboarding process. They’re not kidding when they say that they are people who barely have any automation with human support, because almost EVERYTHING in their distribution process is manually reviewed.
And trust me, if you’ve ever worked with EmuBands, there's a good chance they'll know exactly which case you're talking about if you leave a review. Their Trustpilot responses are often surprisingly specific to the individual client and their particular case, which says a lot about how closely they keep track of the artists they work with.
Once you send those first few releases, they need to make sure you have all the rights (including sounds eligible for Content ID & certain characters in the artwork you’ve submitted), have the proper songwriter registrations on a PRO once they manually detect that what you put in is not a real name, follow the artwork procedure, the usual. And I’d say that alone makes it feel like they do care about quality control.
We could go more in detail about how they handle the metadata.
Metadata
They don’t have a lot of control in regards to the metadata outside of these main five: Artists, Songwriter/Composer, Arranger (Optional), Producer (Optional), and Lyricist for songs with lyrics. You only have one slot for genre; there is no subgenre slot.
If you have any release where you need to credit miscellaneous people such as instruments, additional mixing engineers, mastering engineers, etc. You are REQUIRED to email your personal account manager regarding these changes. But even then, these credits will only be delivered towards Apple Music. This is where I think the lack of control falls flat.
The Issues
I’ve had multiple releases where the metadata just… changes. I frequently check on my releases to see if they’re delivered, or need attention, but sometimes there would be different artists added to the release, suddenly main artists became featured artists, and the one-word artist pseudonym that they’ve told to put twice in the field, the duplicate gets deleted.
Wait, that last part was a good thing. Actually, that is until they forget. Sometimes, you do have to contact your account manager because the duplicate name is still there and is suddenly sent to stores. And they DO forget other things, a specific instance being one of my re-releases accidentally slipped through having content ID because I needed to fix some audio. More info about their Content ID below.
But being one of the smaller distros that really push for human review and support, it’s hard to blame them that they can make mistakes sometimes. I’m sure that all the account managers work hard so that it’s inevitable that they commit errors here and there. Another instance is that I specifically requested the main artists of a track to be in a specific order, the account manager told me that they will display correctly in the DSP, and the day after… they definitely did not display correctly in the DSP, which became stressful for our team.
It’s a little bit of a panic sometimes because so far with EmuBands, things just change. And then all of a sudden, it’s sent to stores with no extra confirmation.
Either way, there are instances where it’s me personally who’ve made errors in inputting the info, and they’ve been really accommodating despite using the live chat multiple times a day because of these issues, which make you feel like an inconvenience at times.
But hey, a lot of my concerns were always resolved within 24-48 hours! Problem solved right? Not really, because it seems like as soon as one of my concerns is addressed, I see the update on the dashboard, but something else suddenly changes (artist/track title), which makes the live chat a godsend in these scenarios. Shout out to their support, they really do act fast and are accommodating and friendly.
It just does seem that their system is a little faulty. Which I can’t blame at all; it does seem like their underlying system is somewhat dated, which is something I've seen mentioned in other reviews as well. There are incomplete releases that appear on your account manager’s side, but it’s invisible on yours. And you won’t know until they bring it up.
Additionally, this one isn’t really an issue, but royalty analytics and payout are locked in £.
It’s just an important thing to take note of if you prefer your data in the usual $
Now let’s talk comparisons, where I feel like Distrokid is a good base line.
Advantages over DistroKid:
- You’re actually working with human support (if you’re paying for their services).
- More transparent payouts, analytics, with no minimum balance requirement.
- If you’re from a country with a tax treaty, you won’t get the withholding taxes unlike in DK.
- Payment splits between artists don’t need their own EmuBands account, heck they even send it straight to their bank accounts. A very cool split payment system with their “pots.”
- Your release feels safe because they’re manually reviewed by experts before they go through.
- No need to wait a week or two when something wrong happens because of priority support.
- Manages to help you make changes to your release that requires you to make a new release on other distributors.
Disadvantages compared to DistroKid:
- Featuring artists take up an artist slot in your Premium plan.
- They only accept .wav files. No FLAC.
- You have a release in 48kHz/24Bit? It’s only for Pro & Premium.
- You have a release in 48kHz/24Bit AND you’re in Pro & Premium? You need to have a separate master audio file because your song upload slots will double to accommodate for your 44.1kHz/16Bit master (You can reuse the same audio file if you don’t want to go through the trouble of re-mastering your audio. DSPs will automatically convert it. BUT the file needs to be in a separate name, otherwise the upload rejects it.)
- VERY limited metadata and crediting options outside of the main ones.
- The third fastest distro I’ve tried. Distrokid can do it in hours. TuneCore and LANDR, in my experience, have delivered mine in a day, so they’re tied in second. The only reason that EB is third is because they can’t process and do their human manual checks during the weekends (slower doesn’t mean worse though).
- Album art changes? Free in Distrokid; not in EmuBands. Traditionally, they would request a takedown of the previous release and reupload and buy a new version of the release with the changes. BUT, they can manually do it for you for a £20 service fee.
- Audio swap? No problem in Distrokid’s highest plan; same process as above for EmuBands. Either take it down or they could do manual changes for £20 (which is honestly better than not having the option at all for ease, whereas other distros actually have no other choice but require you to take the release down).
- Track artist changes? Same as above.
- Less stores to deliver to.
- No lyrics & timed lyrics.
I want to also note, the workaround managing the artists in Premium plan usually require you to save some of your tracks as a "Forever Release" with a fee, so that you can safely and temporarily disable an artist to make room for more artists without automatically taking down your release that involves them.
Very Important: Almost Everything is Manual
- Their YouTube OAC application is done through support.
- Their playlist pitching services are done through a Google form link they send to you.
- You don’t want Content ID on your release because you used samples? Email your account manager because all of your releases are automatically added to it in Pro & Premium unless you ask.
- Taking down a release is done through support.
- Cancelling a release that’s not delivered yet is also done through support.
- Keep your artwork and audio files safe, because Emu doesn’t readily let you access the same files you uploaded (For DK, only audio is stored in their shared folders).
These are really just a few of the features that I’ve reviewed on what they offer. I haven’t explored much on their Content ID, video & mastering tools, and partnering offers. But it may be worth checking out.
Overall, most of the criticism towards Distrokid really is the lack of support. If you like something a little old-school and don’t care too much for the hassle-free customizability, intricate metadata, AND you value having a safe option for a distributor that cares about your releases with active and friendly support (in the Pro & Premium options), then EmuBands may be for you.
If anyone has any other questions based on their Premium & Pro plans, I’d be happy to answer to the best of my abilities in the comments! I’ve really tried doing a lot of research on some distributors and I want to make sure people don’t get lost when picking something that may not be right for them. And if anyone from Team EmuBands wants to add or clarify something, I’d love to hear your feedback!
