Distributing your music in 2026 is no longer a privilege reserved for labels: any artist can reach Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, YouTube Music and TikTok from a single platform. But the technical ease hides decisions that can cost you royalties for years.
This guide sums up what we see every day working with independent artists in Colombia, Mexico and the United States: what each platform wants, how payments are split, and why the revenue-share model almost always beats handing over your masters for an advance.
The 5 platforms that matter in LatAm today
Spotify still dominates discovery thanks to Discover Weekly, Release Radar and local editorial playlists. Apple Music pays the highest per-stream rate on the market and prioritizes audio quality. YouTube Music captures a huge Hispanic audience that discovers artists via videos before tracks. Amazon Music grows quietly thanks to Alexa. And TikTok is no longer a promotion platform: it's where 60% of new music is discovered among under-25s.
A serious distributor delivers you to all five at once, with no extras. If they offer Spotify as a premium package, it's not a distributor — it's a reseller.
How royalties are calculated (the no-nonsense version)
Every stream generates two distinct rights: the master royalty (the recording) and the publishing royalty (the composition). If you wrote your song and produced your master, both belong to you — but you only collect what the distributor can invoice.
Spotify pays roughly between USD $0.003 and $0.005 per stream to the distributor's account. From there, a distributor with an 80/20 revenue-share model pays you $0.0024–$0.0040 per stream. If your distributor keeps 50%, you're handing over half your income without them doing anything extra for you.
The mistake of handing over masters for an advance
When a label offers you USD $5,000 in exchange for ownership of your masters for 7 years, what it's really buying is the future royalties of those songs. If a single one reaches 2 million streams (not science fiction for a well-placed single), that label recoups the advance and keeps everything else — forever.
The alternative: work with a distributor that gives you editorial visibility, marketing support and a clean exit right every year. You keep 100% of your masters; they charge a fixed percentage of the income. If they stop generating value for you, you leave.
Next steps if you're just starting
1. Register your splits with your co-writers before release. Doing it afterward is 10× more expensive.
2. Make sure your artist name doesn't clash with another already distributed — a day losing your Spotify Verified to a duplicate can cost you a whole campaign.
3. Release at least 4 weeks ahead to access Spotify's editorial pitch.
4. Measure what happens after the first week: if there's no organic traction, adjust before the next single — not after three.
If you want to review your specific case, book 30 minutes with our team: we'll review your royalty chain, your platform coverage and tell you exactly where you're leaving money on the table.