Different rights, different jobs
Distributors deliver sound recordings to stores and streaming services. They report streams and master-side income according to your distribution contract.
Publishers and publishing admins focus on the composition: registrations, writer shares, and composition royalty flows. That income is separate even when the same stream triggered both.
Independent careers need both lanes
Many artists release independently through a distributor while still needing publishing administration to chase composition income worldwide.
Treating them as the same service leaves money and metadata gaps on the table. A distributor upload is not a PRS, MLC, or international mechanical registration.
Where Dark Lab sits
Dark Lab Records Publishing is not a distributor. We do not deliver masters to Spotify. We help you administer the composition side: catalog registration, royalty tracking, analytics, and statements.
Keep your distributor for releases. Use publishing administration so the song underneath those releases can actually get paid.