We read the pricing pages, help centres and published contracts of every self-serve distributor we could reach on five continents, on 8 September 2026. Across all of them, not one free distribution tier was verified as free, 0% commission, and not a revenue share. "Free" consistently means "we take 15–25% of your royalties, indefinitely." The second and third costs — what it costs to move the money out, and how much you must accumulate before you are allowed to move it — are where a free tier quietly becomes expensive, and they are the figures companies are least likely to publish.
The percentages, as the companies publish them
These are first-party figures, read on 2026-09-08.
| Free tier | What the company takes |
|---|---|
| RouteNote Free | 15% (artist keeps 85% of net revenues) |
| Madverse Vibe | 15% |
| Indiefy Free | 15%, capped at 1 release per month |
| ONErpm | 15% streaming/download, 30% YouTube, 50% video excluding YouTube |
| FreshTunes Free | 20% |
| RUMEDIA.IO free | 20% (artist keeps 80%) |
| Grootin Rising | 20% (artist keeps 80%), capped at 1 release per year |
| DijitalMuzikDagitim | 20% artist plan, 15% label plan, 0% on video |
| Bandcamp | 15% digital, dropping to 10% after $5,000 in sales; 10% physical; plus 4–6% payment processor |
Paying converts the percentage into a subscription. RouteNote Premium costs $10 for a single, $20 for an EP, $30 for an album, $45 for an extended album, then $9.99 per year to keep the release on Premium — and takes 0%. RUMEDIA Premium is ₽4,500 a year for 0%. Grootin's ladder runs ₹1,299 a year to keep 90%, ₹2,999 a year to keep 95%. FreshTunes Pro is $10 a month or $100 a year and halves the share to 10%.
Two things follow. A revenue share never stops, and a subscription is charged again every year whether or not you released anything. Which of those is cheaper over five years depends entirely on what you earn — and, as covered below, nobody publishes enough for you to calculate it in advance.
There is one apparent exception and it does not survive checking. Turkey's muzikdagitimi.com advertises a ₺0 tier with "%100 Telif Kazancı" — 100% royalty earnings — plus unlimited artists, unlimited songs and Content ID. Its contract page returned 404 on 2026-09-08, its payout claim on the site is a customer testimonial rather than a policy statement, and no threshold or commission mechanics are published anywhere readable. Its sister site, DijitalMuzikDagitim, does publish terms — and those terms take 20% and drop your payout rate to 50% if you stop paying a subscription fee. A 0% claim with no contract behind it is a marketing claim.
What it costs to move the money out
DistroKid publishes its withdrawal fees, charged through Tipalti. Read on 2026-09-08: ACH within the US $1.12; US eCheck $1.69; non-US eCheck, local transfer or SEPA $5.62; paper check $3.37; US wire $16.85; international wire in local currency $21.47; international wire in USD $29.21; PayPal $1.12 plus 2%, capped at $2.25 in the US and $23.59 outside it. On top of that, FX fees of up to 3% on cross-currency payments. Two DistroKid help pages disagreed with each other on the same date — the threshold article quoted $1.07 for ACH and $27.82 for an international USD wire. Both were recorded as read.
Read that table again by geography. A US artist pays $1.12. The same artist in Lagos, Karachi or Moscow pays $21.47 to $29.21 for a wire, or takes PayPal where PayPal works and pays up to $23.59. DistroKid also states that "the payout methods available to you are determined by your location, and not all payout methods may be available in your region" — and publishes no country list — while explicitly refusing "third-party payment providers like CashApp, Venmo, and Payoneer." Payoneer is the standard workaround across Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia and much of the CIS. Refusing it is, functionally, a country restriction that appears at withdrawal rather than at signup.
Too Lost prices the same split even more plainly. Domestic ACH is $5.32; international ACH is $25.00. Domestic PayPal is capped at $2.00; international PayPal is $1.00 plus 2.7%, capped at $22.00. International Stripe is $2.00 plus 2.5%, capped at $22.00, against $2.00 domestically. Two payout methods, Manifest and Venmo, are stated as "only available for U.S citizens."
TuneCore pays through Payoneer and publishes lower numbers: PayPal at $0.25 per transaction in the US, or 2% up to $20; bank transfer and ACH at $1 to $5 depending on country; a prepaid Mastercard at $1 per transaction.
Elsewhere the fee is not a number at all — it is a clause. Madverse's published distribution agreement states that "bank or transfer charges" are borne by the artist. DijitalMuzikDagitim's terms deduct wire fees from the artist and charge 2% on PayPal. Amuse's Fast Forward terms state that "any applicable bank fees, exchange rates etc. in regards to the payout of the Advance to you, shall be paid in whole by you." FreshTunes routes withdrawals through MC Pay and states that you must enter an amount and click "Details" inside the product to see what the fees are — you cannot learn what a withdrawal costs until you already have an account and a balance.
The floor you have to clear before any of this happens
A withdrawal fee is only charged when you withdraw. A minimum payout threshold decides whether you can. Thresholds verified first-party on 2026-09-08:
- DistroKid: $6, and effectively higher, because DistroKid states that "if the transaction fee for your chosen payout method exceeds that amount, you'll need more than that"
- Too Lost wallet: $3; Too Lost international ACH: $100
- TuneCore: minimum withdrawal varies by method and country, $1–$2
- FreshTunes Pro: $10; FreshTunes Free: $25, and in $25 increments thereafter
- SwaLay (India): ₹1,000, paid domestically by IMPS, NEFT or RTGS
- Madverse: ₹2,000 for Indian artists, $50 for international artists
- RouteNote: $50, paid automatically between the 15th and 20th of each month
- DijitalMuzikDagitim (Turkey): $50, denominated in dollars rather than lira
- SongMoney (Russia): €50 / ₽4,000
- Indiefy Free: $100 — against $50 on its PRO plan
The Indiefy figure is the one to sit with. The free tier does not only take 15%; it makes you accumulate twice as much as a paying customer before you can touch any of it. The pattern across the whole table runs the same direction: the threshold is lowest in the United States and highest everywhere else, and highest of all on the free tiers that non-Western artists actually use.
Time is part of the same cost. FreshTunes free users wait 30 days for payouts where Pro users wait 7, and free releases take up to 14 days to go live against 1–7 days on Pro. DijitalMuzikDagitim pays quarterly and then takes 15 to 45 business days to process. Rilis Musik in Indonesia only allows withdrawal between the 1st and 14th of the month, with an invoice. None of that is a fee. All of it is money you have earned and cannot reach.
Several companies publish nothing at all
This is not an oversight on our part. It is the finding.
Payout threshold: not published by RUMEDIA.IO, Soundrop.ru, Grootin, RMX India, MusicPro (Brazil), Fresible (Nigeria), Beatna Records (Egypt), MuzicUp (Egypt) or muzikdagitimi.com. Withdrawal fees: not published by RouteNote, Ditto, Amuse, ONErpm or CD Baby. Payout frequency: not published by DistroKid on either of the two articles read.
Commission: not published for UnitedMasters' free DEBUT tier — the help centre confirms the tier is free and states 100% royalty retention on the paid tiers only, and does not state a percentage for DEBUT. Not published by Fresible, MusicPro, Beatna Records or MuzicUp. Not published, in any readable form, by SoundOn: both soundon.global and its FAQ returned only page metadata on 2026-09-08, which means SoundOn's fee, royalty split, payout threshold and terms are all unverified. Third-party claims about a changed second-year royalty arrangement circulated in search results on that date and are not used here.
No consumer pricing at all is published by Stem, Vydia, Believe direct or Poclanos in Korea. Tratore in Brazil publishes none either. Those are invite or contact-only businesses, and that is a legitimate model — but it means a price comparison with them is not possible, and anyone who gives you one has made it up.
Why we are not going to multiply this out for you
The honest way to end a piece like this would be a five-year total. We can't produce one, and neither can anyone else, because the input does not exist.
Spotify states that it does not pay a per-stream rate: revenue is pooled and divided by streamshare, and per-country differences follow from local subscription pricing and ad rates. No service publishes a per-country payout rate. Any article that hands you a five-year cost in dollars has assumed a per-stream figure nobody publishes and then multiplied it by five.
What you can do is price the structure, using only the figures above. Take the percentage — 15%, 20%, whatever your tier says — and understand that it applies to every payment, forever, and does not stop when the subscription-equivalent cost would have been recovered. Add the renewal, if you are on one, once a year for five years. Add the withdrawal fee once per payout, at your country's rate and not the US rate. Then check the threshold, because it determines how many payouts you will actually take: on a $50 or $100 floor, most artists take one or two a year rather than twelve, which lowers the fee count and raises the wait.
Four of those five inputs are published somewhere. Whether your distributor publishes them is itself the most useful thing you can learn about it before signing up.
Where Mazufa sits
Mazufa is free to release. No upload fee, no subscription, no per-release charge.
Our commission is 0%. We take no percentage of royalties. Royalties received for a release are passed through in full. That is a statement about what we deduct, and it is the only kind of statement we are willing to make.
What we will not tell you is that you will receive 100% of the money that lands in your bank account, because that is not in our control. Your bank or payment provider charges its own transfer fee. Statutory withholding — such as US tax on US-sourced royalties — is set by law, not by us. Those costs are real and you should plan for them. They are not our commission and we will never describe them as a Mazufa deduction, and neither should any distributor that charges them.
Mazufa is invite-only, and every complete application is reviewed by a person. Our tools run entirely in your browser; no audio is uploaded.
Before you sign anything — with us or with anyone — ask the four questions this article is built on. What percentage do you take, and on which revenue types? What does a withdrawal cost from my country? What is the minimum payout, and is it the same on the free tier as the paid one? And what happens to my releases if I stop paying? If a distributor answers all four in writing on a public page, that tells you more about them than any pricing table does. Most of the companies in this article answer fewer than two.
Sources
- DistroKid pricing — https://distrokid.com/pricing/ — read 2026-09-08
- DistroKid, minimum payout threshold — https://support.distrokid.com/hc/en-us/articles/360013648353-Is-There-a-Minimum-Payout-Threshold — read 2026-09-08
- DistroKid, withdrawal fees — https://support.distrokid.com/hc/en-us/articles/360013648853-Is-There-a-Fee-When-I-Withdraw-My-Earnings — read 2026-09-08
- DistroKid, withdrawal methods — https://support.distrokid.com/hc/en-us/articles/360013535074-What-Withdrawal-Methods-Does-DistroKid-Offer — read 2026-09-08
- TuneCore, how to withdraw — https://support.tunecore.com/hc/en-us/articles/115006508087-How-do-I-withdraw-my-money — read 2026-09-08
- Too Lost, payout fees disclosure — https://help.toolost.com/hc/en-us/articles/4670922449812-Payout-Fees-Disclosure — read 2026-09-08
- Too Lost, when and how you receive payment — https://help.toolost.com/hc/en-us/articles/360054816991-When-how-do-I-receive-payment — read 2026-09-08
- RouteNote, what percentage RouteNote takes — https://support.routenote.com/kb-article/what-percentage-does-routenote-take/ — read 2026-09-08
- RouteNote, Premium cost — https://support.routenote.com/kb-article/how-much-does-premium-cost/ — read 2026-09-08
- RouteNote, minimum payout amount — https://support.routenote.com/kb-article/is-there-a-minimum-payout-amount/ — read 2026-09-08
- RouteNote, payment options — https://support.routenote.com/kb-article/how-can-i-receive-payment-what-are-the-payment-options/ — read 2026-09-08
- ONErpm, common questions — https://onerpm.com/onerpm-answers-common-questions/ — read 2026-09-08
- UnitedMasters, membership cost — https://support.unitedmasters.com/hc/en-us/articles/29986962444179-How-much-does-a-UnitedMasters-membership-cost — read 2026-09-08
- Bandcamp fees — https://get.bandcamp.help/en/articles/15263193-what-are-bandcamp-s-fees — read 2026-09-08
- Amuse, Fast Forward terms of use — https://www.amuse.io/en/resources/terms-of-use-fast-forward/ — read 2026-09-08
- FreshTunes pricing — https://f.freshtunes.com/en/ — read 2026-09-08
- FreshTunes, how do I receive my income — https://support.freshtunes.com/hc/en-us/articles/208610365-How-do-I-receive-my-income — read 2026-09-08
- FreshTunes, MC Pay withdrawals — https://support.freshtunes.com/hc/en-us/articles/9953384861852-MC-Pay-Withdrawals — read 2026-09-08
- RUMEDIA.IO — https://rumedia.io/ — read 2026-09-08
- Soundrop.ru — https://soundrop.ru/ — read 2026-09-08
- SongMoney — https://songmoney.ru/ — read 2026-09-08
- Grootin pricing — https://www.grootin.in/pricing — read 2026-09-08
- SwaLay pricing — https://swalay.com/pricing — read 2026-09-08
- RMX India pricing — https://rmxindia.com/pricing — read 2026-09-08
- Madverse Digital Distribution Services Agreement — https://madverse-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/distribution+agreement+as+of+Sept+18+open.pdf — read 2026-09-08
- Indiefy — https://indiefy.net/?lang=ar — read 2026-09-08
- Muzikdagitimi.com prices — https://muzikdagitimi.com/fiyatlar/ — read 2026-09-08
- DijitalMuzikDagitim terms — https://www.dijitalmuzikdagitim.com/terms — read 2026-09-08
- DijitalMuzikDagitim — https://www.dijitalmuzikdagitim.com/ — read 2026-09-08
- Rilis Musik terms of service — https://www.rilismusik.com/term-of-service — read 2026-09-08
- Fresible music distribution — https://fresible.com/music-distribution — read 2026-09-08
- MusicPro — https://musicpro.live/ — read 2026-09-08
- Beatna Records — https://beatnarecords.store/ — read 2026-09-08
- MuzicUp — https://muzicup.com/Servics/Service/index — read 2026-09-08
- Tratore — https://www.tratore.com.br/ — read 2026-09-08
- Vydia — https://vydia.com/ — read 2026-09-08
- Stem — https://stem.is/ — read 2026-09-08
- Believe artist services — https://www.believe.com/artist-services — read 2026-09-08
- Poclanos, for artists — https://poclanos.com/contact/for-artist/ — read 2026-09-08
- SoundOn FAQ — https://www.soundon.global/knowledge/faq — read 2026-09-08