Distribution
How to Sell Your Music in Prisons: Get on JPay & GTL (and Keep 100%)
Done Deal Digital LLC · June 5, 2026
There are roughly 1.6 million incarcerated people in the United States who buy and listen to music — on tablets and kiosks inside their facilities — and almost no independent artist is reaching them. It's one of the last real markets in music with a paying audience and barely any competition. If you've ever wondered how to sell your music in prisons, this is the plain-English breakdown.
A market nobody's serving
Inside prisons, people pay for music the same way the rest of us did fifteen years ago — they download or stream it on a facility tablet. The catch is that you can't just put it on Spotify and call it done. Prison music runs on a closed, filtered network with its own rules, which is exactly why most artists never get in. That barrier is also the opportunity: the artists who learn the process own a market with very little competition.
How prison music distribution actually works
Three networks carry music inside U.S. correctional facilities:
- JPay — an à-la-carte download store on prison tablets (owned by Securus/Aventiv).
- GTL / ViaPath — a subscription streaming service curated for the corrections market.
- TRULINCS — the federal Bureau of Prisons system.
You don't upload to a prison directly. You go through a music distributor that feeds the prison pipeline behind the scenes — Neurotic Media (which powers JPay and GTL) and Audible Magic / MediaNet (which reaches JPay, GTL, and federal TRULINCS). Pick the right distributor and the right pipeline, and your release lands on the kiosks.
How you get paid — and why you keep 100%
Prison kiosks pay out at iTunes-equivalent rates: roughly $7 per album and $0.70 per track sold — and you keep 100% of the royalty. The facility adds its own fees on top, but those are paid by the buyer, not taken out of your cut. Sales reports typically land a couple months after a sale (the networks pay on a delay), so the money trickles in rather than arriving overnight — but it's real, recurring, and yours.
The rules that get releases blocked
This is where most artists fail. Correctional networks run a strict content filter, and they don't publish the rules. Here's the part that trips everyone up: your audio can be explicit, but your metadata cannot. Track titles, your artist name, and your cover art all have to be clean — no profanity, and nothing referencing violence, gangs, or weapons. Your artwork also can't carry the Parental Advisory logo. Get one of those wrong and the release is silently rejected, with no notice. Get them right and you sail through.
The fastest way in
There are two ways to get your music selling in prisons. You can learn the whole process yourself — every step, every rule, every distributor — with our step-by-step guide. Or you can let our team handle the entire thing: compliance, routing, submission, and confirmation, done right the first time. Same destination; you just choose how much of it you want to do.
Ready to get your music in prisons?
Get the complete, step-by-step playbook for $97 — or have Done Deal Digital do it all for you.
See How It Works →Frequently asked questions
Can my music have explicit lyrics?
Yes — in the audio. Only the visible metadata (titles, artist name, artwork) has to be clean.
How much do artists make?
About $7 per album and $0.70 per track, and you keep 100%. Facility fees are paid by the buyer.
How do you get on JPay and GTL?
Through a distributor that delivers to the prison pipeline (Neurotic Media or Audible Magic / MediaNet) — you can't upload to a prison directly.
How long does it take?
Usually two to three weeks after a clean submission.