Sell Your Music Directly to Fans and Keep 100% — played.fm’s 7-Day Free Trial

Every musician we talk to has the same two complaints: streaming pays fractions of a cent, and the platforms that do let you sell directly take 10–15% off the top forever. played.fm is the platform we keep recommending because it breaks both patterns — fans pay you directly and you keep 100% — and it's now running a 7-day free trial of the full Pro plan. Not a demo tier: the real product, including the part most artists haven't seen yet — a live sync-licensing board where indie films, TV shows, podcasts and games post paid briefs you can pitch your existing catalogue into. We've been through the trial flow ourselves; here's exactly what you get and how to make the week count.

What the free trial actually includes

The trial is the complete Pro plan with fair-use volume caps: up to 3 track releases and 1 sync pitch during the week (both go unlimited-and-3-per-month once you convert). Your storefront goes live in minutes at your own played.fm page, with your prices. Mastering and cover art are included rather than upsold, and your fan email list is exportable — yours to keep even if you cancel. A card is required to start, verified but not charged; after 7 days it becomes $19.99/month unless you cancel, which is one click in Billing.

Keep 100%: what that means in real money

The model is worth spelling out because it's genuinely different: played.fm charges a flat subscription and takes 0% of your sales. Fans check out through your own PayPal or Wise, so the money never even passes through the platform. Sell $100 in a month or $10,000 — the platform's cut is identical: nothing. Compare that with marketplace stores where roughly 10–15% of every sale disappears forever, or streaming where $1,000 requires about a quarter of a million plays. We covered the full strategy in our guide to selling your music and keeping 100%, and the head-to-head in played.fm vs Bandcamp.

The sync board: pitch your music to films, TV, podcasts and games

This is the feature that separates played.fm from every other direct-to-fan store. Music supervisors and producers post paid briefs — "indie film needs a moody synth track," "podcast needs a theme" — and you pitch tracks from your catalogue directly. At the time of writing there are 23 open briefs paying between $120 and $3,000, with $21,720 in combined live budgets. Sync income is the part of the music business where a single placement can out-earn months of streaming, and it's normally gated behind agencies that take 30–50%. Here, the pitch is yours to make.

Honest expectations: a pitch is a submission, not a placement — played.fm says exactly that on the trial page, and we rate them for it. Treat the trial's included pitch as a live audition for how the board works, not guaranteed income.

How to make the 7 days count

1. Day 1: start the trial, open your storefront, and release your 3 strongest finished tracks — mastering and art are included, so don't wait on polish.
2. Day 2: browse the sync board before using your pitch. Match a track you already have to the closest brief — supervisors pick fit over genius.
3. Days 3–6: point your existing audience (socials, mailing list, link-in-bio) at your storefront. Direct sales convert best from fans you already have.
4. Day 7: decide with data — you'll know what a week of direct selling looks like for your audience before the first $19.99 is ever charged.

One more group this suits perfectly: AI musicians. played.fm has no genre or content bans, which makes it the rare direct-sales home that's explicitly safe for Suno and Udio work you hold rights to — a topic we've covered extensively in our guide to making money with Suno. Our full 4.5/5 assessment is in the played.fm review.

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