When I was reading this, I was asking myself the same questions. Unbelievable that a musician can't just upload a song to iTunes. I thought that was one of the huge driving factors of digital music distribution, breaking down the old barriers? I don't use iTunes, but apparently I missed something - sounds like the music industry hasn't changed much after going digital.
I think Apple was/is scared of "unprofessional" music. Apple doesn't want to be the YouTube of music. Not allowing shitty (or pirated!) music is a hard problem to solve. A bunch of suits and contracts does a decent job because not many people are going to take the time if they just want to troll.
So, how does Distrokid factor in to this? After reading, I had the impression that anybody with $20 could upload their music via Distrokid... is the idea that the annual fee is supposed to be a filter to prevent shitty music? Pirated music is one thing, but 'shitty music' seems a bit tougher to police.
> As others have said, shitty is entirely subjective.
I strongly disagree that shitty is entirely subjective. Contextually, "shitty" could mean music recorded on a cell phone, or tracks that were 2 seconds long, or tracks that have been transcoded 7 times and sound like they're being played from a walkie-talkie at the bottom of a well.
I can understand why a music platform might want to enforce some standards of professionalism or technical competency, even if they didn't want to do so for matters of taste.
or tracks that are actually completely stolen. this is a HUGE problem on BeatPort. DJs take 90s house records and just change the speed do a small edit and then release it as their own production. and BeatPort releases it. I have many friends who are furious because their music has been blatantly stolen.
initially it was very difficult to get on iTunes unless your label was big enough for Apple to deal with. or if your indie label could work with their own indie distributor (Caroline etc.) to do a deal with Apple.
then came TuneCore which became the middle man to make it easy for both sides. this was great and empowering. but they have a big yearly fee.
it is possible to deal directly with Apple but its actually a significant value add to go through a middleman and reduce the labor and billing complications.
