Last time,
I wrote about completing the album “Melty.”
With eleven tracks finished,
it finally felt like a complete work—
something you could listen to
from beginning to end.
And once that happened,
a very natural thought emerged.
— I want to release this.
When it comes to music streaming,
the first name that comes to mind is Spotify.
But honestly,
I had no idea how distribution actually worked.
Can you release music without being a professional?
Do individuals really do this on their own?
And more fundamentally—
is it even okay to distribute music made with AI?
The answers came
more easily than I expected.
I started browsing note,
and found an overwhelming amount of information.
“How to monetize music made with Suno”
“My experience distributing AI-generated music”
Article after article appeared.
That was when it really hit me:
so many people were already using Suno.
What I thought was a private experiment
was, in fact,
already connected to the outside world.
As I kept researching,
I learned about music distributors.
A single service that allows you
to release music across
multiple streaming platforms at once.
There are domestic options in Japan,
but the name that kept coming up—
again and again—
was DistroKid.
Just to be safe,
I asked ChatGPT about it as well.
Of course, it knew DistroKid,
and explained both the pros and cons
in clear terms.
Moments like that make you realize
how reassuring it is
to have something you can ask
and get an immediate answer from.
The number of streaming platforms
was far greater than I had imagined.
Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music,
YouTube Music—
and many others I had never heard of.
The fact that DistroKid could
deliver music to all of them at once
felt genuinely impressive.
Choosing a plan took some thought,
but since I intended to keep making music,
I went with Musician Plus.
Fewer restrictions,
and peace of mind for long-term use.
With that,
distribution should have been ready.
…or so I thought.
As I went through the registration process,
I realized something.
What name am I using?
My real name?
Or the name I used years ago
when I was active in music—
Maurice Blue?
Neither felt quite right.
This wasn’t just about a display name.
This would be a name I’d keep using,
possibly for the rest of my life.
If I was going to release music publicly,
I had to decide
who I was going to be.
The album was done.
The distribution method was clear.
But the most important thing
was still undecided.
Next time,
I’ll write about choosing an artist name—
how I arrived at a name
I might carry for the rest of my life.
In some ways,
this decision was harder
than making the music itself.
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