Bar and Restaurant Musicians: Should You Distribute Your Set List Covers?

Yes, distributing your set list covers is almost always worth it for working bar and restaurant musicians, provided the cost per release is low enough that even modest streaming activity covers it. At $1 per release with royalty payouts starting from $10, a musician who already has ten or twenty covers rehearsed for live sets can turn that existing repertoire into a passive catalog without learning anything new or spending additional rehearsal time.

The math here is straightforward, and it’s worth walking through before assuming this is a waste of effort.

What does a working musician actually have to lose?

Very little, because the material is already prepared. If you’re playing three sets a night, five nights a week, at a restaurant or hotel bar, you’ve already rehearsed, arranged, and performed the covers. The marginal cost of releasing a recorded version is the price of distribution plus whatever time it takes to record a clean take, which many gigging musicians already do for promo reels or demo reels sent to venues.

At $1 per single, releasing ten covers from your standing set list costs $10 total, one time, with no recurring annual fee. Compare that to DistroKid’s $44.99 per year subscription: a musician distributing the same ten covers on Globex spends $10 once and never pays again for that catalog to stay live, while a DistroKid subscriber pays $44.99 every single year just to keep the same songs online, regardless of whether they ever earn a dollar back.

How much can a set list cover realistically earn?

Modestly, and that’s fine, because the covers already exist as a byproduct of paid gig work. A jazz standard or a well-worn wedding-band cover isn’t likely to chart, but streaming income from these tracks is additive to money you’re already making from live performance, not a replacement for it. Restaurant and lounge musicians are a specific case: guests regularly Shazam a song they hear during dinner service and look for it later on Spotify or Apple Music. If your version isn’t distributed, that search either finds the original artist or finds nothing with your name on it.

With payouts starting from $10 USD, a handful of these ambient discoveries per month across 200+ platforms is enough to cross a payout threshold that some larger distributors set much higher.

Does covering the same songs as every other bar band actually work against you?

Somewhat, but less than musicians assume. Yes, «Fly Me to the Moon» and «Sweet Caroline» already have thousands of cover versions online. But the same repetition that seems like oversaturation on a crowded platform search is exactly what makes discovery valuable at the venue level: a listener who heard your specific arrangement, with your specific vocal tone or instrumentation, at a specific restaurant, is searching for your version, not a generic one. Distribution just needs to make sure your version is findable when they look.

What’s the actual cost comparison over a working musician’s career?

It compounds heavily in favor of low, one-time per-release pricing, because gigging musicians tend to release covers continuously rather than as a one-off project. Consider a musician adding five new covers a year to their catalog, every year, for five years — a realistic pace for someone rotating in new requests and building a broader streaming presence alongside live work.

Globex Music: 25 covers over 5 years at $1 each = $25 total, no annual fee, no ongoing per-song commission.
TuneCore: $24.99/year base subscription over 5 years = $124.95, before adding per-cover licensing fees and a 20% commission on social platform revenue.
CD Baby: $9.95 per single × 25 songs = $248.75, plus a 9% royalty commission that applies permanently to everything you’ve ever released through them.

The CD Baby model in particular matters for musicians thinking long-term: that 9% commission doesn’t expire after a year like a subscription does — it applies to the catalog forever, meaning every stream from a cover you released in year one is still being taxed at that rate in year ten.

Should you distribute the whole set list or be selective?

Be selective, prioritizing songs that fit three criteria: strong audience reaction at gigs, a recording you’re genuinely proud of, and confirmed licensing availability through your distributor’s mechanical licensing system. Automatic mechanical licensing removes the manual clearance step entirely, so the practical bottleneck isn’t paperwork — it’s simply which recordings are good enough to represent you publicly.

A reasonable approach for a working musician: record your five or six most-requested covers first, since these already have proven audience response built in from live performance, then expand outward as you build new arrangements into your rotation.

How fast can a bar musician actually see this catalog live?

Quickly enough to matter for near-term bookings. Fast moderation means a batch of set list covers recorded this week can realistically be live across 200+ platforms well before your next relevant gig — useful if you’re playing a recurring residency and want return customers to find your version between visits.

The bottom line for gigging musicians

If you’re already performing covers professionally, distributing them is close to free money relative to the work you’ve already done. The only real cost is $1 per release and a short recording session, set against royalty payouts starting from $10 and permanent catalog stability once the tracks are live — no annual renewal required to keep a residency-built catalog online for years.