Glossary · Distribution
Aggregator
An aggregator is a company approved by streaming services to deliver music into their catalogues in bulk on behalf of many artists and labels. DistroKid, TuneCore and CD Baby are aggregators; independent artists cannot upload directly to most services without one.
Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music do not take uploads from the general public. They ingest content through approved delivery partners who meet their technical, metadata and rights-representation requirements, and those partners are the aggregators. "Aggregator" and "distributor" are used interchangeably in practice; the word aggregator emphasises the bulk-delivery relationship with the stores, while distributor emphasises the service sold to artists.
What the aggregator relationship buys you is access and accountability. The aggregator warrants to the store that the rights are cleared, formats the delivery to each store's specification, transmits artwork and audio at required quality, assigns or carries identifiers like the ISRC and UPC, and receives usage reports and payments back. When a release gets rejected for a metadata problem, it is the aggregator's ingestion pipeline that surfaces it.
There are exceptions to the no-direct-upload rule. Bandcamp and SoundCloud accept uploads directly because they are not operating on the same licensed-catalogue model, and YouTube accepts uploads from anyone — though monetising a recording properly through Content ID normally still involves a partner.
The misunderstanding: thinking that because an aggregator represents your rights to the stores, it also administers those rights everywhere. It does not. Aggregation is a recording-side delivery function. Your compositions still need registering with The MLC and with ASCAP or BMI, and your recordings still need registering with SoundExchange, and the aggregator does none of that as part of standard distribution.
Written from the artist's side of the pipeline; each store's requirements are theirs to publish.
Related terms
- Music distributorA music distributor delivers recordings to streaming services and stores on an artist's behalf and collects the recording…
- Store deliveryStore delivery is the process by which a distributor transmits a finished release — audio, artwork, metadata and rights…
- DSP (digital service provider)A DSP, digital service provider, is a streaming service or download store that licenses and delivers music to consumers —…
- MetadataMetadata is the descriptive and rights information attached to a release: titles, artist names, writer credits, ISRCs, the UPC…
Definitions on this site describe the United States system. I am an artist who has been through this, not a lawyer.
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