Does DistroKid master your music?

DistroKid’s pages expect a finished master

DistroKid’s help articles point the same way. Its guide to singles, EPs and albums puts “Final mastered audio file (WAV or FLAC recommended)” first on its list of things to have ready. Its Mastering Questions article reads, in full: “Please consult a mastering engineer for tips about mastering your tracks. We’re just a distributor :) Once you have your masters ready to go, upload away!” And its article on track volume says: “We don’t do any loudness post-processing to your audio (unless you opt into our Loudness Normalization extra), we simply deliver it to streaming services as is, and they decide how it should be played back.”

These opt-ins at upload do change the audio:

• Mixea. If you don’t have the subscription, you hear a preview after the upload form and choose. DistroKid’s article on Mixea without a subscription says: “Once you select ‘Yes,’ your files will be mastered and sent to all services you opted into.” If you select “No”, it says you can still add Mixea later with the “Enhance Audio” button on the release’s dashboard page.
• Loudness Normalization. This is a checkbox on the upload form that adjusts your audio to Spotify’s recommended settings, which DistroKid gives as “-14dB integrated LUFS with -1dB true peak maximum”. It’s listed at $2.99 per track, one time. DistroKid says it checks first, and if the release is already at optimal loudness it doesn’t apply the extra or charge for it. The text of these pages calls it a level adjustment, not mastering.

Mixea costs $99 a year, or a per-track fee at upload

DistroKid calls Mixea its “online mastering service”. Its pages describe these ways to pay:

• The subscription. “Mixea costs $99 USD per year”, billed each year on the date you first opted in and paid, for “an unlimited amount of tracks, for an unlimited amount of artists”. The Mixea page says “Your first mastered track is free” and offers the download “with a free account”.
• Per track, at upload. Without the subscription, the upload flow offers Mixea for “all tracks on your release” as “a per-track fee”. DistroKid tells you to “review the full price” before selecting “Yes, enhance my sound.”

The pages we read don’t publish the per-track amount. They also don’t say whether that route gives you a file to download, or whether the $99 subscription needs a paid DistroKid plan: the Mixea page offers free registration and the help center describes Mixea as its own annual fee, but neither answers that.

Mixea generates “15 different mastering options” that you compare with Intensity and EQ sliders, then download as a 24-bit 48k WAV, a 16-bit 44.1k WAV or a 256 kbps MP3. For an album, DistroKid says “you may want to choose the same Intensity for each track” if you want a similar loudness across the songs.

TuneCore Mastering is $5 a song, paid to Masterchannel

TuneCore’s mastering page says “TuneCore Mastering is $5 per song.” Payment goes to its partner, Masterchannel, and appears under that name on your bank statement. It isn’t part of a TuneCore plan: “this service is not included in your existing TuneCore subscription; you need to pay for each master separately.”

You can hear it first. TuneCore says you can test “as many tracks as you like for free”, that you get “a free full-length preview”, and that “You will never be charged automatically.” If you buy, you download the master and use that file when you upload your release. The page describes buying song by song. It doesn’t mention an album offer or file formats.

DistroKid and TuneCore don’t ask who mastered your file

Both companies’ pages treat a master as a file you bring to the upload. DistroKid tells you to upload once “you have your masters ready to go”, and describes Mixea as something you use “before distributing” your music. TuneCore’s steps end with you using “the downloaded master file” in an upload. DistroKid’s file rules and TuneCore’s file rules cover the format of the file and don’t ask who mastered it.

Going by those pages, you can master somewhere else and upload the result through either of them. We read DistroKid’s and TuneCore’s pages, not every distributor’s, so check your own distributor’s file rules. The opposite direction is less clear: neither Mixea’s pages nor TuneCore’s mastering page says whether their masters can go out through a different distributor, so ask them first if that matters to you.

A Bounce Sessions download is three files, which you keep: a 24-bit WAV at your source sample rate, a 16-bit 44.1 kHz WAV and a 320 kbps MP3.

What each route costs for an album’s worth of songs

We used 12 songs as an album-sized example.

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Prices read 1 November 2026. They’re in US dollars as shown on each company’s page, and prices can differ by region. None of these figures includes what your distributor charges for distribution. Our paid plans and downloads aren’t on sale in every country yet.

Bounce Sessions masters each song on its own, so it doesn’t balance 12 songs against each other as a record. If your record needs that, personal mastering is the route: an engineer listens first and quotes for the track, EP or album.

What to check before you upload

• Which file it is. Going by DistroKid’s pages, an unmastered mix reaches the services unmastered unless you opt in.
• Whether to say no. If the file is already mastered, you’ll probably want “No” on Mixea and no Loudness Normalization. DistroKid recommends removing mastering plugins before Mixea, limiters included, and TuneCore’s page asks the same. A finished master has already been through that stage. If it’s at a different level from DistroKid’s target, Loudness Normalization would change the level you approved.
• The file format. DistroKid takes WAV, MP3, M4A, FLAC, AIFF and WMA up to 1 GB, and says “16-bit, 44.1 kHz WAV is typical, but pretty much any specification works.” TuneCore recommends 24-bit, 192 kHz WAV and calls 16-bit, 44.1 kHz WAV “Accepted, but not recommended”. Its article names no other WAV format, so if your master is 24-bit at another sample rate, ask TuneCore before relying on it.
• The level. Measure the exact file with the free loudness checker.
• What happens after delivery. “As is” covers DistroKid’s part only. It says the services decide how a track is played back, and that many apply compression, so a stream can sound a bit different from your file.

If you still have the mix open, our mix preparation guide covers what to sort out first. Mixea’s page says your first mastered track is a free download, so buying one master here gives you a version from each to compare. The free comparison tool plays them at matched loudness, so level doesn’t decide for you.

If you already uploaded the mix

On DistroKid, you can add Mixea later with the “Enhance Audio” button. Audio Swap replaces the file of a released song and lists “An updated master” among the changes it allows, but DistroKid says it “is only available on the Ultimate plan.”

On TuneCore, the mastering page sends you to its guide to changing a release, which gives two routes. You can take the release down and distribute a new version, which TuneCore recommends and which means paying for distribution again. Or you can change the existing release, where it says “we cannot guarantee that all stores will make the changes.”