Redeye Sub-Distro Info & Terms

We do digital and physical distro through Redeye Worldwide and also service a select group of specialty stores and mail order customers directly from Clandestine warehouse in Cincinnati, where we also do warehousing and Bandcamp / webstore fulfillment for select clients (see below for details)

For physical distro Redeye has its main warehouse in North Carolina and handles all U.S. and Canadian stores.
They also have sub-distributors around the world:

UK: Lasgo - Europe: Bertus Distribution - Scandinavia: Border Music - Australia: Planet MGM - New Zealand: Southbound - Japan: Disk Union, BBQ, Ultra Vybe

Digital is handled by the Redeye digital team through their their deal with Merlin (same digital service used by Sub Pop, 4AD, XL, Matador) so they have priority service access to all digital service providers which means the best rates, faster release updates, and access to the newest platform specific marketing programs.

Distro deal terms: 

  • Redeye changes a distro fee of 15% for digital and 21% for physical and Clandestine charges a 10% sub distribution fee so the overall distro fee (redeye + clandestine) of 25% digital and 31% physical

  • You can do just physical or just digital or both.

  • There is a $125 Redeye physical catalog fee (per release to appear in the product listing book that goes to stores)

  • There are a bunch of small Redeye fees; some of which can be avoided by delivering stock on time and in proper format (double boxed with readable UPC and shrink wrap), and others like Amazon discounts and foreign freight fees that are just the price of doing business. These tend to be pennies a unit and are detailed in your quarterly profit and loss statements. 

  • If you run a label we do exclusive 2 year deals with white label branding. 

  • For individual album distribution (self release) we use our pass through label Birdwatcher which only appears in fine print on wholesale catalogs and digital 

  • You get quarterly accounting and royalty payments through Infinite Catalog (45 days from the end of each quarter)

    • Note that for label distro client we charge a $250 a year accounting fee - this does not apply to one-off albums / self release

Distro notes:

  • We need a 11 week lead for physical submission set up & 6 week's lead for digital releases (we can get digital up faster but the best practice for playlist pitching is 6 weeks)

  • Redeye requires stock to be received 6 weeks before the retail street date.. The 6 week deadline is for worldwide distro....but there is also an option to limit to North America only and then the lead time is 4 weeks. If you miss this deadline the release will get bumped 2 weeks and there is a bump fee so make sure and adjust your retail street date accordingly.

  • You get access to retail marketing (paid product placement in stores) and Redeye playlist pitching. 

  • Physical product requires a unique barcode / UPC and shrink wrap to be considered retail ready

  • All physical product is taken on a consignment basis

  • For an artist with limited sales history Redeye usually orders 70-150 units to start. For artists with a good sales history the sky is the limit.

  • Your project manager will ask you for sales drivers and sales history to share with Redeye so they can give you sales estimates. The ideal is to get the sales estimate before you finalize manufacturing quantities so you don’t over or under press.

  • We recommend using the formula of ; Units needed for touring + Units needed for bandcamp / mail order + Units needed for Redeye retail distro (based on Redeye’s sales estimate) to determine pressing quantities

DISTRO &  MARKETING PROJECT MANAGEMENT
For individual album distro (self release),  we require artists to hire one of our project managers to help get the album set up properly and act as your liaison with Redeye.

Our PMs charge $40 an hour 

  • It can take up to 10 hours of work to get releases set up in the Redeye system so we charge $400 retainer upfront.

  • Within this retainer allotment our project managers can help set up a marketing plan for your release as well


About our project managers
We use the same project managers for our internal labels and they are trained in all aspects of the distro set up and all forms of music marketing and project management. Using a cloud based project management system that we developed over 20 years of running labels, our PMs can handle everything from artist and vendor communication to asset management to social media planning and advertising and setting up email newsletters. They also have experience with a wide variety of artist management tasks and we have regular meetings with them about each client project so anything they can't handle gets referred back up to the senior staff for consultation.

For exclusive label clients
For Clandestine label clients release distro set up and retail marketing is handled at no charge by Clandestine’s head of distribution as part of your exclusive distro deal. That being said, we highly recommend hiring one of our project managers to extend the service and create synergy between the distribution and overall marketing functions of our services. The use of our cloud project management system and experienced PMs makes a huge difference in the overall success of your projects with forward planning and less missed deadlines.