Heya

I'm recovering from surgery on my broken arm at the moment, and with plenty of downtime I figured I might as well put it to good use and finally get serious about finishing and releasing some music!

I’ve got a few cover songs that I’m working on, and I’d love to release them on Spotify and YouTube (as well as other streaming platforms). The part I’m a bit fuzzy on is how YouTube monetisation works when it’s a cover rather than an original.

I know distributors often handle the licensing side for covers when you put them on Spotify, Apple Music, etc., but how does that carry over to YouTube? Does YouTube automatically take care of the rights through Content ID, or do I need to handle that separately if I want monetisation turned on?

Also, I’d love some recommendations on which distributor to go with...ideally something that makes releasing both covers and original tracks straightforward. I’ve heard good things about DistroKid, CD Baby, and Soundrop etc, but would really like to hear from people who’ve used them and can share their experience and if anyone has any other recommendations?

Any advice, motivation, or tips for getting my first proper releases out there would be hugely appreciated.

Thanks in advance

 

These two platforms are recommended.

Beatport --> www.beatport.com
SoundCloud --> https://soundcloud.com [Free an Paid Versions --> Free accounts can upload up to 3 hours of audio.]

Warning: Subscription model, you pay your intermediary, the software, the service, etc. in advance.
How to Get Your Music on Youtube Music --> www.landr.com/get-your-music-on-youtube-music

Keep in mind that the competition is getting bigger every day. Everyone is vying for attention. Sometimes it's better to copy your own music to a CD-ROM or USB drive, distribute it through your own website or YouTube channel, or give it away for free.

 

Last edited: Nov 4, 2025 at 11:18 AM

Maybe this could help…
watch from 4:32 for Youtube

 

So if that’s the case, where does that leave me in terms of income?

 

Last edited: Nov 4, 2025 at 8:08 PM

I would never use SoundCloud again, it didn't do me any good last time just got a lot of of hate and abuse which is why I've not really done anything since in terms of music and releasing it.... It did a lot of damage to my confidence, some of which is still present to this day

 

Income? If you take building your brand and career and royalties seriously I would completely avoid both Spotify and Distrokid (btw Spotify owns Distrokid). the statistics show it to be a total waste of your time, money and energy for no return. You need more than 1,000 streams to get pad $0.003 cents lol. Most songs never even get 1 stream let alone over 1,000! Come up with a new plan man

 

I don't know what kind of music you make, how good it is, how long you've been making music, or how old you are. As you can see, anonymity in forums also has its disadvantages; you don't know the other person personally and can therefore only offer general advice.

On YouTube, for example, you can disable comments altogether.

SoundCloud: If you want to hide or disable comments on your track from the public, there's a mute mode function for that. You can access this with Pro and Pro Unlimited memberships. The mute mode function allows you to:

- Choose whether you want others to be able to read the comments on your tracks
- Select this option to display comments
- Decide whether the track statistics should be displayed

 

Hate and abuse is inevitable with any public activity. The idea is that what you gain through it, the positive side, more than compensates for the negative impacts on your health and your wallet.

It's not easy to make enough money or gain public recognition making music, especially doing cover songs. But creating art in general is a noble endeavour and well worth living for. Not giving up and learning how to become more resilient to malevolent criticism could be the most productive use of your resources.

 

You Tube could destroy you even more, especially if for some miracle you get into algorithm, amount of folks that will hate on your cover will grow exponentially, you are dealing with people who are fanboys of something and they really don't care about your feelings, expect you ruined this song, this is trash and stuff like that.

You can't please everybody, doing covers of popular songs is lowest hanging fruit, I have a channel like that, some videos have over 2M views, amount of everything is there, love, hate, bots, you name it, but I left my ego on login there, I hate when someone ruins a song too, so I get why would someone get pissed off and give me a reality check, they are not wrong, I messed with something and possibly ruined it.

 

Amazingly it wasn't the general public that were full of hate. It came from within the audio industry and forums.

 

That's good news. General public is where your money will come from.

There have been countless famous artists that were/are mercilessly criticised from within the music industry at one point or another. Some of them throughout the career. Laughing all the way to the bank is very sweet.

 

Yeah, we are really bunch of nitpicking elitist sometimes, there's really no reason to promote your music on platforms where none of your target audience resides, it's miracle you get anything positive from it, maybe some mixing advice, but chances some Foster come with some BS is more then expected. So focus on social media for promotion, be consistent in uploads and hope You Tube will pick up on you, they give new channels a chance, I grew from 0 with no social media promotion just by uploading consistently and algorithm picked what's my thing and skyrocketed my views, so there's a chance.