Our friends over at Ditto Music are working hard helping unsigned artists and bands sell music online. So we asked them to share what a Music Distributor gets up to day to day…
There are many different jobs and career opportunities at an independent music distributor. Here’s an overview of some of the roles you’d find at a company like Ditto, and how they generally spend a working day.
Marketing
Marketing encompasses a wide range of tasks, which often change from day to day, including blog writing, sending newsletters and special offers to subscribers, setting up partnerships with other music companies and managing advertising campaigns.
Social Media
Ditto’s social media team plan, manage and implement campaigns across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for a number of artists and bands, as well as Ditto’s own social media channels.
PR
Ditto Music has PR executives based in London, Liverpool and Los Angeles, helping to secure press coverage for a range of artists.
A typical day as a PR exec includes meeting with labels and artists, writing press releases, and contacting journalists from a range of media publications and music blogs on behalf of musicians.
Content Quality Control
Content Managers at a music distributors spend their day going through all of the latest tracks to be uploaded, checking that they meet the guidelines set by the major music stores.
Stores will only accept music, artwork and track meta data in certain formats, so it’s important to make sure every release adheres to the rules. Once the songs have been checked, Content Managers send them to stores ready for release.
Artist support
The artist support team is at the front line when it comes to helping musicians with any problems they are facing while trying to get music onto Spotify, iTunes and other stores.
Ditto’s support staff spend most of their working days taking calls and responding to emails from independent artists who are looking for advice and help with their releases.
Finance
Music distributors are also responsible for collecting streaming and sales royalties from the major music stores, and paying them out the bands and artists.
It’s Ditto’s finance team’s duty to make sure artists get hold of the money they’re owed as soon as they request it, as well as managing the company’s own finances.
A background as a musician is always an advantage when working at a company like Ditto, and many of the team are musicians themselves. In fact, Ditto’s CEOs Matt and Lee Parsons were working musicians for many years, and set up Ditto Music to help fellow unsigned artists release and promote their music.
