Share your summer cover song
Want to put your spin on a summer classic? We make releasing cover songs easy—and legal.
Upload your cover to streaming services for just $12/year.
How to release a cover song
Create a DistroKid account and select the plan that’s best for you.
Upload your cover like any other release, but when we ask for the songwriter, select “another artist wrote it (it's a cover song).”
That’s it. We'll handle the paperwork & pay the legally mandated fee to the original songwriter. You keep the rest of your earnings.
Let's hear it
Submit your cover to our summer playlist. All artists on DistroKid are welcome.
Covers only. Warm-weather energy welcome.
FAQ
A cover song is any song that you perform and record yourself using music originally released by someone else. You can easily (and legally) release your cover songs through DistroKid.
We handle the paperwork and automatically deduct the legally mandated fee from your earnings—12.7¢ per song sold in the U.S.—and send it to the Harry Fox Agency, who gives it to the original songwriter. You keep the rest of your earnings.
You need a license—specifically, a compulsory mechanical license—because U.S. law dictates how earnings from cover songs need to be shared with the original songwriter.
You can learn more here, but we’ll handle the legal stuff automatically when you tell us the song is a cover during the upload process.
The song you're covering must meet these copyright requirements (this is a legal thing, not a DistroKid thing):
- The song you're covering has already been released in the United States
- Your song does not contain samples and is not a remix
- Your song can’t contain audio you don’t own (from TV, movies, social media, video games, other songs, etc.)
- Your song does not change the basic melody or fundamental character
Genre changes and embellishments for cover songs are totally okay and encouraged. Language changes are probably not okay. If you're not sure if your cover is allowed or not, please see the Harry Fox Agency's FAQ and make sure to only upload covers that can be covered by compulsory mechanical licenses. (These rules affect all distributors and licensors.)
Yes, but you'll need to purchase the cover license again for the cover that is being included on the album. More details here.
When your song is a cover, a portion of the earnings are paid to the original writer. This is legally mandated.
Any song or musical work published in 1929 or earlier is in the Public Domain in the USA. As long as there’s no current copyright on the original work or the arrangement that you’re covering, it's probably OK, but public domain can be tricky. Here’s why.
