What an Aggregator Does, and When You Don't Need One

A delivery service, not a distributor

A finished master with no home yet raises the same question every time: who actually puts this on a storefront? The answer is often an aggregator, and people use the word as if it meant distributor. It doesn't. An aggregator sits between the master and the storefront and does one job.

That job is delivery. According to Wrapbook's guide to film aggregators, an aggregator is a third-party service that gets a film, short or series onto platforms such as Google Play, Sony PlayStation Network, Amazon and iTunes, and some will also help with encoding and with assets like subtitles and dubs. Each storefront wants its own file specs and metadata. The prep is fiddly, so what you're really buying is someone else's familiarity with it.

What an aggregator does not do

It doesn't market the film. A distributor is expected to, and usually holds broader rights for a longer term: territories, broadcast, sometimes physical. The aggregator typically only helps get the title posted where it can be bought. If nobody knows the film exists, a clean delivery to iTunes changes very little.

It also doesn't reach everything. The same Wrapbook piece says Netflix is not served through aggregators and points filmmakers to a distributor, a sales agent or an entertainment lawyer for that route. If an SVOD sale is the goal, an aggregator is the wrong door. We have written separately about where an independent catalogue lands on FAST, which is another tier with its own gatekeepers.

The part worth reading twice in any contract is the stacking of fees. Filmmaker Magazine's guide to distribution contracts walks through the arithmetic: a sub-distributor keeps 20% of $100 and passes $80 up, the distributor keeps 30% of that, and $56 reaches the filmmaker. Every middleman takes a cut, so the useful question for each one is what they do that justifies it.

How aggregators charge

Wrapbook describes three models. A one-time fee, where you keep 100% of revenue. A backend cut, often around 10% after expenses. Or a hybrid of the two. Its examples, as published and certain to drift, include BitMax starting at $600 for a feature, FilmHub charging nothing upfront but taking 20% on the backend, and Quiver Digital charging $1,395 for the first retailer and $225 for each additional one on a feature, with no backend percentage.

Treat those numbers as a sketch of the shapes, not a price list, and pull current terms before you decide. The trade itself holds: pay upfront and keep the revenue, or pay nothing upfront and share it. Which is better depends on whether the film will earn enough on VOD for a percentage to hurt.

When you don't need one

Some storefronts take direct submissions. Wrapbook lists Prime Video Direct as one. Apple is the awkward case: it requires five theatrically released feature-length films, or 100 if direct-to-video titles count, before you can upload to iTunes yourself. Most first-time producers can't meet that, which is why the aggregator exists. Check the current requirement before you lean on that figure.

If revenue per viewer matters more than reach, self-distributing on a channel like Vimeo keeps the most of each sale, and you can pair that with your own site. If the goal is a credit, a festival profile or a conversation with a buyer, a sales agent or distributor is the better fit, because that is the work they do and an aggregator doesn't. And some films have a better life outside the storefronts entirely, in educational and institutional distribution or the gallery.

A working note

Before you pay anyone, write down what you need the film to do: be purchasable, be seen, or be sold. An aggregator answers only the first. For the other two, the question is who you want to put it in front of, and no amount of clean delivery files can answer that for you.