We don't just distribute your music — we get it heard with industry leading marketing built to help independent artists compete at the highest level.
Then, we turn audience signals into scale by deploying data driven marketing funding for emerging artists, regardless of their size, track record, or starting point.
of artists that released with us in 2025 received marketing investment
dollars invested into emerging artists over the last 12 months
of investments were in artists under 10k monthly listeners at the time
Mandatory Music is more than just another distributor.
We are a platform that identifies which songs are resonating with real audiences globally, amplifying them with the marketing and funding they need to reach their full potential.
We test music in the real world, using data to understand what truly connects. When something works, we move quickly, investing meaningfully to turn signal into scale, cutting the noise of an increasingly competitive market.
Why? Because getting your music out is easy, but distribution alone is not enough in the modern music industry. Great music deserves to be heard, and to be heard you need to compete on both quality and budget - quality opens the door to success, but the budget behind your song is what puts it in front of people who are most likely to care.
And our model is accessible for any artist, regardless of their size or track record. If your music connects, it earns the opportunity to be amplified - no gatekeepers or industry politics, just a clear data-driven pathway to success.
This approach allows us to invest earlier than anyone else, democratising access to industry-leading promotional funding and unlocking advantages traditionally reserved for major labels on terms built in the artist's favour.
The result? A more meritocratic music industry where great music isn't released into the void, but instead finds its audience. By turning data into investment, we're fuelling the independent artist revolution and reshaping how success is earned.
Release your music properly
We deliver your music to all streaming platforms globally and manage releases seamlessly, with human support at every step.
Every release is supported with global editorial pitching, access to Discovery Mode and consultancy on everything from content production, organic social media strategy and release optimisation.
In doing so, we make sure that your music is set up to perform, laying the foundation for success.
We turn data into decisions
For every release distributed via Mandatory Music we strongly encourage artists to run a test digital marketing campaign with content informed by strategy that we provide, as based upon insights that we've gained across thousands of campaigns.
This lets us put your music in front of targeted listeners and measure how they respond using performance data to determine audience resonance benchmarked against real results from similar campaigns.
This removes subjectivity from the process, allowing us to identify a song's true potential and make smart decisions as we help artists optimise their next steps.
Invest in the music that clicks
When your campaign meets our benchmarks, we invest early to scale the campaign.
This is because we know that audiences are deeply resonating with your release, indicating that the only limit to the song's success is the reach that we can generate on your best performing advertising assets.
Our typical starting commitments per song being between $5,000 and $20,000, with the ability to scale up to $100,000 per release.
Based on our previous campaigns, we expect to break even on our investments within months, generating enormous streaming growth, fan acquisition and long-term cash flows for the artists that we work with.
Give your new audience what they want
Your audience will grow considerably once you pair a high performing campaign with an industry-leading budget.
When this happens, we help you monetise your audience beyond streaming through funded merch and vinyl, sync placements and targeted tour promotion.
By building an ecosystem around your audience we turn streaming growth into a diversified and sustainable long-term career.
Sammi Constantine
Will and Joe at mandatory are not only professional in how they go about helping artists, but they make it feel easy and you can tell that they genuinely care about the music. I've never felt more valued or seen when working with them.
YOGA
Mandatory's collaborative approach to releasing Y.O.G.A.'s music has been incredible - their understanding of digital marketing and audience growth is second to none, and Y.O.G.A.'s growth over the past year is a direct reflection of the strategy, care and energy they bring to every campaign!
Don West
Mandatory Music has been an amazing partner, helping develop Don West into a career artist. Their professionalism, industry insight, and genuine dedication to artist development set them apart in a crowded field.
Corrj
In an era where many agencies try to take advantage of you, Mandatory makes you feel secure and in control through their transparency. Their business model isn't based on promises or presumptions, every bit of success still lies purely in your hands which I admire. The financial help allowed me to see results I never would have - competing with major labels that have infinite budgets. Mandatory puts you on the same playing field.
Ben Robinson
We work with Mandatory across several artists on our roster. Great operators ahead of the curve when it comes to label marketing. I have released a number of tracks via Mandatory where the process and results have been amazing.
Zhuli
In a world where it feels more and more like you're screaming into a void and no one cares, it's really great that Joe and Will do! They've helped me achieve a lot of playlists, as well as a decent campaign that helped me reach a lot of goals in my career. They're also the best to talk to, anytime I have questions about the industry or music they do their best to help me understand and share their experience. 10/10 would recommend.
Two Another
We really enjoyed our experience releasing music with Mandatory. Their expertise in DSP pitching and digital marketing made a real difference to our campaigns, and Joe and Will were consistently clear, professional, and great to work with throughout the process. We'd happily recommend them to any artist.
Jorj
It's so refreshing to work alongside people who believe in your project, don't try and change you and actually want you to succeed! Signing with Mandatory has been the best thing I've done for my music career so far and I'm so excited to see where the future takes us.
Stilla
The team at Mandatory are the real deal! They've supported me and helped grow my audience significantly even in just a few months. I love how well they communicate, always make time to chat and are way ahead in terms of their thinking and approach to artist success. Like finding gold!!
Silky Roads
Working with Mandatory Music has been unreal. Since we teamed up in early 2025, they've given us full creative control over our music, projects, and brand aesthetic — zero compromise, 100% support from the whole Mandatory team.
We're open to artists from any country, in any language, making almost any kind of music.
We've backed a wide range of sounds, genres, profiles and career stages, because our decisions are driven by real audience response - not assumptions about taste or trends.
The best fit is an artist who's willing to engage with the process: make content, take advice, test ideas and keep pushing when the data shows there's an opportunity.
A core belief of Mandatory Music is that an artist shouldn't be restricted by how early they are in their career, how big their fanbase is, what gatekeepers think, or how much money they have to spend.
What matters most is that the music is good - and good music can come from anywhere.
Some of our strongest results have come from artists who started with very little audience at all. That's what testing is for: to understand whether a song resonates, where it resonates, and how efficiently it can grow.
Once the signs are there, our job is to give the music the right support and budget to reach its potential.
No - you don't need unreleased music to apply.
We work with new releases, but we also work with back catalogue. In fact, some of our biggest successes have come from songs that were already out.
Our view is simple: if someone hasn't heard a song, it's new to them. A release might be a year old, but if it's going to exist online forever, that's still a tiny fraction of its lifetime.
If you've released music but never properly tested it, you may not actually know its true potential. That's why we encourage artists to look closely at their back catalogue - you might be sitting on a much bigger opportunity than you realise.
A successful campaign starts with the quality of the music.
From there, the best campaigns usually come from artists who are willing to test properly. That means not putting everything behind one asset, one idea or one version of the story.
Different sections of the song, different hooks, different formats, different visuals, different angles - the more thoughtfully an artist tests, the more chances there are to find something that connects.
No one knows exactly what will work before the data comes in. The job is to challenge assumptions, test widely, and let the audience show us where the opportunity is.
No - no one can guarantee streams or growth, and you should be wary of anyone who says they can.
What we can do is put your music in front of the right people, test how they respond, and use the data to decide where more support makes sense. From there, the music has to do the heavy lifting.
Great music paired with the right reach can turn into streams, fans and momentum. The quality of the art opens the door. Advertising just helps more people find it.
Yes - when it's done properly.
We have systems in place to make sure your music is reaching real people, not empty clicks. A stream is often where fandom starts: someone hears the song, saves it, follows the artist, buys a ticket, tells a friend.
Our most successful artists have seen advertising translate into much more than streaming growth, including stronger social followings, more tickets sold, festival bookings, merch sales and wider industry attention.
Success starts with one question: can we turn attention into new listeners and fans at a cost that makes sense?
The first thing we look at is a song's acquisition cost, because when you test a large number of assets systematically, it gives us a strong early signal of how much audiences are resonating with that release. From there, we track whether increased ad spend is translating into meaningful streaming uplift over time.
We may also consider other factors, such as an artist's existing organic baseline, editorial or radio support, algorithmic growth, and the broader catalogue opportunity.
Because we mainly work with emerging artists, we know that potential needs to be developed, not just identified. Where the data gives us a reason to believe, we try to invest in as many songs as we responsibly can - because great music still needs the right support to reach the audience it deserves.
It depends on what the data is telling us.
As a starting point, we typically invest between $3,000 and $20,000 into song campaigns. When a campaign keeps showing strong signs, we can continue scaling well beyond that - our biggest campaigns in 2025 were $75,000+.
Importantly, we don't think about promotion as a one-week push and then move on. We often promote songs over months, adding budget gradually as the data gives us more confidence.
A campaign that starts at $3,000 can become $50,000+ if the results keep showing there is a good reason to keep going.
We want artists to spend as little as possible while still giving the test enough room to tell us something useful.
Everyone's financial situation is different, so we're not prescriptive with budgets. Instead, artists can choose the total test budget they're comfortable with, and we'll help structure the campaign around that.
As a guide, we usually need around $15–$30 AUD per asset to test properly. So if your budget is $300, we'd generally recommend testing 10–20 assets. If your budget is $600, we'd recommend 20–40.
Most artists sit somewhere in that $300–$600 range per test campaign.
When we invest in a song, we're usually putting additional marketing budget behind it to help it reach more people.
That investment is then recouped from royalties until it has been paid back. Importantly, we recoup from the top - not from the artist's share - which is a major difference between our model and many traditional label or distributor deals.
In simple terms: if we invest $1, the first $1 of royalties pays that investment back. After that, we split the profits as agreed.
That means we only profit when the artist does as well. Both parties benefit from the ad spend, and so we both share the cost - meaning our incentives stay aligned.
Want to get started? Book your onboarding call below.