Budgets & Revenue
Every release costs money before it earns money. Between studio time, mixing, mastering, music videos, PR campaigns, and distribution fees, costs add up fast. The Financials tab on each release gives you a single place to track what you’re spending and what’s coming back in — so you can tell at a glance whether a release is in the red or the black.
Setting a release budget
Section titled “Setting a release budget”- Open a release and go to the Financials tab
- Set an overall budget amount for the release
- Your workspace’s default currency is used (configurable in Settings > Workspace)
Whether you’re budgeting a full album with outside producers or a self-released single where the only cost is mastering, setting the number upfront keeps you honest about what you can afford to spend.
Tracking expenses
Section titled “Tracking expenses”Add individual line items to track where your budget is going:
- Description — what the expense covers (e.g., “Master by Joe LaPorta,” “Lyric video,” “Playlist pitching campaign”)
- Amount — the cost
- Category — type of expense such as production, marketing, or distribution
- Payment status — Planned, Pending, or Paid
The financials view shows a running total of expenses against your budget so you can see how much headroom you have left. This is especially useful for labels juggling multiple releases at once — you’ll know immediately if a marketing push is about to blow past what the release can recoup.
Revenue tracking
Section titled “Revenue tracking”Track revenue flowing in from different sources:
- Manual revenue entries — add revenue from sync licenses, direct sales, merch bundles, or any source not covered by a distributor CSV
- Royalty imports — automatically populated when you import your DistroKid, TuneCore, CD Baby, or other distributor CSVs
The combined view merges both manual and royalty-sourced revenue, giving you a complete picture of how a release is performing financially. For labels and managers, this is the data you need when reporting back to artists or deciding whether to invest more in promotion.
Royalty breakdown
Section titled “Royalty breakdown”If you’ve imported royalty data, the Financials tab also shows:
- Revenue broken down by source and distributor
- Per-track earnings matched via ISRC — so you can see which songs on an album are actually driving revenue
- Total royalties for the release
This level of detail helps you make smarter decisions about where to focus marketing spend. If one track is outperforming the rest, that’s your signal to push it harder on playlists or pitch it for sync.
See Royalty Imports for details on importing distributor data.