You've been told the same story for years.
Get on Spotify. Build your following. Post on Instagram. Upload to DistroKid. Go viral. Grow.
And while you were busy following that playbook, the platforms were busy getting rich off your music.
Enough.
The streaming math nobody talks about
Spotify pays between $0.003 and $0.005 per stream. That means you need roughly 250,000 streams to earn $1,000. Not $1,000 a month. $1,000 total.
Apple Music is marginally better. Tidal talks about fairness but the numbers still don't add up for independent artists without massive label backing.
And DistroKid? They'll take your money to distribute your music to platforms that pay you almost nothing — while keeping a cut for themselves on top. You're paying to give your music away.
This isn't bad luck. It's the architecture of an industry built to extract value from artists, not return it to them.
Bandcamp gave you a profile. Not a business.
Bandcamp positioned itself as the artist-friendly alternative. And compared to Spotify, it is. But let's be honest about what it actually is.
You get a page on bandcamp.com. Not your own domain. Not your own brand. A page that lives on their platform, under their rules, subject to their future decisions — including the one where they sold to Songtradr and laid off most of their staff.
And that 15% commission on every sale? That's forever. Sell a $10 record to 10,000 fans over your career and you've handed Bandcamp $15,000. For a profile you don't own.
Artists deserve better than a profile. They deserve a home.
Social media is not your business
Your Instagram followers are Instagram's customers. Your TikTok audience belongs to TikTok. Your YouTube subscribers are one algorithm change away from never seeing your content again.
You're pouring creative energy — and often real money in paid promotion — into building an audience on a platform you don't own, that can change its rules tomorrow, that can be banned in your country, that can simply decide your content doesn't perform and stop showing it.
Every hour you spend optimising for an algorithm is an hour you're not spending building something you own.
Your website is not optional. It's everything.
Here's the shift that changes everything: your website is not a marketing tool. It is your business.
It's the one place on the internet that is entirely yours. Your domain. Your design. Your music. Your relationship with your fans — direct, unmediated, not subject to anyone else's terms and conditions.
When a fan lands on your site, they're not on Spotify's platform or Bandcamp's platform. They're on yours. That distinction is everything.
Social media funnels people to you. Your website is where you actually are.
What Trakiyo actually does
We build custom websites for independent musicians and DJs — hand-coded, on your own domain, designed around your music and your brand. Not a template. Not a profile. Your own piece of the internet.
Every Trakiyo site includes a custom audio player built directly into your site. Not a SoundCloud embed. Not a Spotify widget. Your music, playing from your player, on your site. Fans hear you without going anywhere else.
Downloads are handled at 0% commission. Fans buy directly from your player via Stripe. You receive the sale. Trakiyo takes nothing — just standard payment processing of around 5%, the same fees you'd pay anywhere.
Sell three or four records a month and your subscription pays for itself.
And in August 2026, the Trakiyo streaming platform launches — included in your plan at no extra cost. The fairest artist payout in music. Always.
The model is simple
$49/month. 90 days free. Setup from $150.
No minimum commitment. No commission on sales. No platform taking a permanent cut of your career.
Your own domain. Your own player. Your own audience. Your own business.
The platforms had their turn. It's yours now.
