DistroKid Just Sold

DistroKid, the largest music distributor for indie artists, has officially sold to the company CVC Capital Partners uh acquiring a majority stake in DistroKid. There's this company Insight Partners that has been a long-time backer of DistroKid that's keeping a minority stake in the company, and Phil Bauer, the president, will continue to lead DistroKid along the company's existing leadership team. >> [music] >> Recently, like early this year in January, DistroKid was exploring a sale for about $2 billion, which was their valuation time, which I believe because uh back a few years ago, DistroKid was distributing 70% of the world's music, which is just absolutely wild. They dominated music distribution. In a world where it was TuneCore and CD Baby and distribution was kind of expensive, um the whole reason every music distribution platform turned into a annual subscription with unlimited uploads and minimal customer support is basically because of DistroKid. DistroKid's involvement completely flipped music distribution on its head, and every company changed because of it. Now, uh I saw in this uh article that nowadays they distribute 30 to 40% of all new music releases globally, and they have 2 million artists distributing through DistroKid, which is absolutely wild. Um apparently, their their founder name was Philip Kaplan. I I was confused when I saw Phil Bauer originally cuz I was like, I thought his name was different, and it actually was. So, Phil Kaplan, I guess, isn't the president of DistroKid. He maybe he's off doing other things, but but um yeah, this is this is kind of a big deal. I don't know the details about CVC. Apparently, they've been involved in live music, and they have a bunch of other companies in their portfolios. Um they have experience in music and and whatever, and they seem very happy about this arrangement. Um you know, they're saying that we're very impressed by what Phil and the DistroKid team have built. We just basically just want to partner and help enable them to help more and more people, which is all great. And no one knows what's going to happen with this. This doesn't mean anything bad inherently. But, a lot of the times when a big company gets acquired, it it usually isn't a good thing for the users. And I am hoping that I am proved wrong by CV Capital Capital Partners. Um a lot of the times when a company gets acquired like this, the company that acquired it um starts cutting costs, raising prices, etc. to justify the massive investment they just took in their new shiny business that they just acquired. Which means that the customers pay more and they get less in return. Again, I'm hoping to be proven wrong, but history has kind of showed that a lot of the time that's what happens. So, I don't think anyone should go panic. Back in January when this was announced they were still they were planning on selling, everyone was absolutely panicking. And my recommendation now is exactly what it is then, which is um make sure you have all your stuff backed up. You can always move distributors. Whether that's now or whether that's in 5 years or whatever. DistroKid right now lets you go download all your audio files, back up all your ISRC codes. I don't expect that to change, but it it's it's doesn't hurt you at all to go there this week and just back up all your audio files, back up all your artwork, and back up all your ISRC codes. DistroKid, I'm sure, will not ever change that. But, if you're paranoid about what happens if blah, if what happens about this, that essentially protects you from all situations because you can always just cancel your subscription and migrate your releases. And I have videos on this channel, I'll link to one that I've done before, about how to move releases. Essentially, all you do is you just distribute on your new platform, wait till things go live and sync up, and then you go to your old platform and pull the release. So, a lot of people freaking out and panicking and pulling their catalog and jumping to a new thing. Just stop. >> [laughter] >> And take a deep breath. Because that's how you actually mess stuff up. If you go and you just panic and rush everything to move to a new platform because you're paranoid about migratory thing here happening here. Um that can actually mess up your algorithmic traction. Because every time you you move stuff, it can like shake up, you know, are you opted in or out of your discovery mode, for example. Or if you make a mistake, that can really mess things up. So, I'm cautiously optimistic. I am hoping that CVC Capital Partners, which is just such a corporate finance name, uh does the right thing here. There are there are are plenty of examples of companies getting acquired and then doing the right thing. And actually, that extra capital causing them to expand >> [music] >> and provide great new features they could never otherwise do. So, yeah, that's the video. Let me know what you think below in the comments. And if you want to see how you can promote your music, check out this playlist right here to learn all about that. Anyways, thanks for watching, and I'll see you in the next one. Bye.