How do you sell your music online?
·Founder, Stakk
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12 October 2026
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7 min read
You sell your music online in two ways, and most artists use both. To be on streaming services, you work with a distributor: Spotify's own help page says to work with a distributor to get your music on Spotify, and that distributors handle distribution and pay streaming royalties. To sell downloads straight to fans, you use a music store page like Bandcamp or your own checkout, where a listener pays once and gets the files. Streaming is how people find you. Direct sales are how your closest fans pay you. Checked 5 October 2026.
This post is for artists selling finished songs to listeners. If you make instrumentals for other artists to record over, that is licensing, and selling beats works differently. If you make loops and drum kits, see selling sample packs.
How do you get your music onto streaming services?
Through a distributor. You upload the release to the distributor once, and it delivers the music to the streaming services and download stores.
Spotify's help page on getting music on Spotify puts it in one line: "Work with a distributor to get your music on Spotify." It adds that distributors handle music distribution and pay streaming royalties, and that most charge a fee or a commission. If you are signed, your label probably already has one.
TuneCore, DistroKid and CD Baby are three distributors you will see named often. They do not all charge the same way, so compare each one's own pricing page against the number of releases you plan. We are not quoting their prices here, because they change and we have not checked them.
Streaming pays by the play, through the distributor, and the amounts depend on things outside your control. Nobody can honestly tell you what a release will bring in. That is one reason artists add a second way to be paid.
How do you sell music directly to fans?
You give them a page where they pay once and download the release. There are two common kinds of page.
| Where you sell | What it is | Who brings the listener | Good for |
|---|---|---|---|
| A music store page, such as Bandcamp | A store built for music. Bandcamp calls itself "an online record store and music community" | You, plus fans already on the store | A full catalog people can browse |
| Your own checkout, such as Stakk | One page for one release or bundle | You | A single offer you link from a video or a post |
A direct sale is a different thing from a stream. The fan is not renting access. They are buying files to keep, usually because they want to support you, and often because the download comes with something streaming does not have.
That "something" is what makes direct sales work. An album that is already on every streaming service is hard to sell as a plain download. The same album with the instrumentals, the demos, a lyric booklet and a thank-you note is a product.
Which files should you deliver?
A lossless version and an MP3 version, in one folder. People who pay for music often care how it sounds.
- WAV or FLAC. Full quality. FLAC files are smaller and carry the track names and artwork inside them.
- MP3. Plays on everything and is easy to load onto a phone.
- Artwork. The cover as an image file, large enough to look good full-screen.
- A PDF booklet. Lyrics, credits, and a line about how the record was made.
Name each file with the track number, the title and your artist name, and fill in the tags so the songs sort properly in a music app. Put the formats in separate folders. A buyer who has to rename twelve files is a buyer who does not come back for the next release.
Do you own the rights to sell your song?
If you wrote it and recorded it yourself, yes. If anyone else was involved, check before you sell.
A song holds two separate things. The US Copyright Office's page for musicians describes the musical work as "a song's underlying composition along with any accompanying lyrics", and the sound recording as the sounds fixed in a recording medium. It says they are "separate copyright-protected works" that are "commonly owned and licensed separately."
So ask two questions about every track. Who wrote it, and who owns the recording? Co-writers, a producer whose beat you leased, a band you have since left, a label: each can hold a share of one or the other. A cover song is the clearest case. You may own your recording, but someone else owns the composition, and selling it needs their permission through the proper license.
That is as far as this post goes. It describes how the Copyright Office frames the two works. It is not legal advice, and a release with other people's work in it is worth a conversation with someone qualified.
How do you price music you sell direct?
By comparison, and by what is in the folder. Look at five artists in your genre with a following about your size who sell downloads, and note what they charge for a single, an EP and an album, and what extras each includes.
Then build a ladder from your own release. The album is the base. The deluxe folder with instrumentals and demos is the step up. Bandcamp's page for artists says you can set a minimum price and let fans pay more if they want. A plain checkout has a fixed price, so there the step up has to be a product.
An example checkout with made-up prices, not a real listing. The extras are offered before payment and join the same charge, so the order carries one transaction fee rather than two.
How do fans find the page where you sell?
You put the link where they already listen. Direct sales come from people who know you, so the link belongs next to the music.
Put it in your profile on every platform, in the description of each video, and in the first message to your mailing list on release day. Say plainly what the download includes that streaming does not. If your profile link is a link-in-bio page, a link in bio with a checkout explains how the two fit together.
Release day is the best day you will get. The people most likely to buy are paying attention for about a week. Have the page ready before the announcement, not after.
When is Stakk the wrong choice for selling music?
When you want a music storefront. Stakk is a checkout, not a store built for music: nobody browses it by genre, and a full catalog belongs on a platform made for that. Use Bandcamp instead if that is what you need. It is also the wrong choice if cost per sale is the whole decision: Systeme.io charges no transaction fees on any plan, including its free one, and Whop charges 2.7% + $0.30 on a domestic card with no monthly cost. Both are less than our 10% + $0.50. And Stakk has no tips and no subscription billing, so a fan club with monthly releases is out, and every price is fixed. It sells in US dollars only and does not host files: the product is a link you paste in, to a folder you keep in your own Drive or Dropbox.
What Stakk offers instead is the shape of the checkout. The instrumentals and demos ride the same charge as the album, so the order carries one fee rather than two, and the post-purchase upsell is one tap against the card already used. Both are on every account with nothing behind a tier, which fewer platforms do than you would expect.
Ready to put a release behind a checkout?
If the folders are named, the files are tagged and the booklet is done, the rest is short. Paste the folder link as the delivery link, set a price, add the instrumentals and demos as an optional extra on the payment screen, and put the checkout link next to the music on release day. Stakk is 10% + $0.50 a sale with card processing included and no monthly fee, and the charge lands in your own Stripe account rather than a balance we hold.