Official Artist Onboarding
The minimum to create your official artist is $99, all-in — that’s $75 onboarding with us plus your first DistroKid year (about $24, 7% off through our link). One number, nothing hidden. One-time processing fee — by acceptance only: submit your art first at toysandbeats.com/pages/submit-your-art. When you're accepted, this onboarding opens your door.
What's Included
- Your official artist name — created from your brand/IP (brands) or your username / the name you go by (creators).
- Your sonic identity — the genres and styles of your sound, built from your art and your picks and confirmed with you.
- Your first release — built around your art as the cover, registered and distributed to all major platforms.
- Royalty setup — your 50% share of streaming royalties, registered for collection.
- Promotion — featured across toysandbeats.com, our daily blogs and social channels.
How It Works
Submit your art (free) → we review every submission personally → if accepted, complete this onboarding → create your DistroKid account through our DistroKid sign-up link (also sent with your acceptance) and enter your tax info there → your artist is created and your first release goes into production.
Required: Your Own DistroKid Account
Onboarding includes signing up for DistroKid through our DistroKid sign-up link — it’s also sent with your acceptance. DistroKid’s Musician plan is $24.99 a year — through our link you get 7% off your first year (about $23).
Your DistroKid account is yours: it’s how DistroKid tracks you, it’s where you enter your tax information, and it’s where your 50% streaming split gets paid — directly to you, by DistroKid.
We handle no royalty accounting, tax information or payouts, and we never see them. The distributor handles all of it. Your money moves between you and DistroKid — nobody in the middle.
DistroKid Is Your Accountant
The yearly DistroKid fee isn’t paying to use a platform. It’s paying your accountant: DistroKid collects your revenue and shows you your own numbers — what’s working, which platform pays you the most, where your audio reaches — without waiting on a monthly report from anybody.
Your audio is delivered everywhere our distributor delivers: every major streaming service, social platforms, workout machines, TouchTunes jukeboxes — anywhere it plays, it earns, and DistroKid pays you your share.
Measure on the quarter: music money runs about 2–3 months behind your posts. Post for three months with your new audio, then read the first real report — that’s when you’ll see what’s working.
Your part is small: your tax information as an individual — or your company’s EIN if you’re monetizing as a business. That’s the B2B / B2C line, and it’s the only paperwork that’s yours.
What you’re hiring is organization: we create the artist and set everything up correctly from day one, so you can monetize right away — without having to learn the hundred little things that trip people up at the beginning.
Signing up for DistroKid through our link gives you your dashboard: where you track how your audio and your artist are performing across every platform we deliver to — Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, all social media, every major streaming service, and international services beyond — over 20 platforms and counting.
DistroKid exists for one reason: so you can track and collect your money, every year.
And as we release new music for your artist, you’ll get an email confirming you are a 50% owner of that audio. Every release, in writing.
Who Owns What — Plain and Simple
- You keep 100% of your art and your IP. Your character, your logo, your images stay yours — we never own them. We use them, with your permission, for the release you’re earning on.
- We keep 100% of the audio. The master recordings and the publishing stay in our name — registered and administered by us, the same way your art stays in yours.
- Your 50% is a royalty partnership: a revenue channel attached to your content, running year by year. You collect half of everything the audio earns — without owning the audio, and without managing any of it.
- Your first release is an EP — a minimum of five songs — that we build from your brand materials, your logo and your visual art, with the track listing and the SEO done by us and the sound matched to your sonic identity.
- One honest note: if you release your own music and want control of your masters, this isn’t your lane — and that’s fine. This is for brands and creators who want a new revenue channel, not another job to manage.
Please Note
This is not a physical product. Nothing ships — onboarding is a service, set up personally by our team for each accepted artist.
One onboarding per artist name. The fee covers setup costs per artist and is not a subscription — there are no recurring charges. Streaming royalties split 50/50 on the back end, forever.