Ludacris, DistroKid And Music Marketing’s Future

Here Philip Kaplan explains why Ludacris's choice to have DistroKid, a service which places artists' music into online stores & streaming services, release his upcoming album is such a big deal, not only for DistroKid, but for artists everywhere.

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Guest post by Philip Kaplan of DistroKid from Medium

Ludacris has chosen DistroKid to release his upcoming single, “Vitamin D (feat. Ty Dolla $ign).”

As a Ludacris fan, this is a milestone (my head contains equal parts DistroKid database code — and Ludacris lyrics.)

It’s also a milestone for all artists everywhere.

Two reasons for that.

1. Access

This is a signal that musicians at all levels increasingly have access to the same platforms used by the most successful artists in the world. Release using DistroKid, and promote in social media. Whether you’re a multi-platinum, Grammy-winning superstar, or a bedroom musician, you’ve got access to both.

2. Text-message marketing

There’s something amazing I’ve been working on recently. The release of Vitamin D seemed like a great opportunity to show it off for the first time.

I still don’t have a name for the product, but here’s how it works:

Upload your music — Upload your album or single to DistroKid. Make sure to give it a release-date at least a week in the future.
Collect mobile numbers — We’ll give you a page (like this) that you can share everywhere. It contains a countdown timer to your release date. And it collects the mobile phone numbers of your fans.
Send text messages — When your album drops, you can send a text message to your fans. Our interface for texting is really easy; it’s like sending a tweet. Except everyone reads their texts. Not everyone sees your tweets (or IG or FB posts). Texts will come from a new phone number that we generate for you, so nobody will know your real phone number.
Bonus features — After the album is released, you can continue to stay in touch with fans by texting them any time (not too much, or they’ll opt out!) You can also target fans based on geolocation. For example, if you just want to text fans in London, you can do that. You can read incoming texts from your fans, too, if you want. Finally, the page (that collects phone numbers) also has links to your release on iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, and everywhere else. So it’s super easy for people to listen on their service-of-choice.