The DistroKid Experience
Why the "middle-man" model is not a solution to the issues with the music industry.
If you've ever looked to distribute or publish music and get it sent to digital stores and streaming services, chances are you've heard of DistroKid. If you haven't, it will be in the top 10 of any google search when looking for a distributor.
I recently decided to start releasing music to promote an EP project that is releasing this November 2020. This is an exciting time. The release of a project that has been a year in the making is a milestone. A lot of great people, close friends, and talented music professionals were apart of this project. It's time to share this music with the world. So I signed up for DistroKid.
DistroKid is attractive to the independent musician (me) because, for $19.99/yr, you gain access at a preferred level to many distribution and publishing tools. DistroKid promises to let you keep 100% of your earnings. These key points are huge decision factors and seem like what you'd want as an artist.
However, I found out DistroKid doesn't actually care about anything relating to distribution other than the fees they can collect upfront. With zero recourse or follow through on anything, they might mess up or, in my case, ruin.
Submitting My Track
DistroKid's uploader tool gave me many options. The form provided opportunities I could use to properly set up my music distribution. Essential details like artist name, stores I wanted my work to appear in, etc. As I typed in my music project, "The Sight & The Sound" (a.k.a. the name of my band), the form detected, I had used an ampersand (&). DistroKid needed clarity: is this a collaboration between multiple artists, or is this a single band name?
DistroKid’s form detected an Ampersand and asked if my Artist/Band name was a single band name or a collaboration project. I selected “Band name”.
I selected that this was a single band name and explicitly not a collaboration between two different artists. I finished filling out the information accurately to how I copyrighted my project with ASCAP and other legal measures securing my rights to my performances and mechanical royalties.
The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers is an American not-for-profit performance-rights organization that protects its members' musical copyrights by monitoring public performances of their music, whether via a broadcast or live performance, and compensating them accordingly
After my submission was complete, DistroKid gave me the big green checkmark of happiness, informing me that my project was good to go and that it would be up to the various storefronts and streaming platforms to do the rest. I could expect my single to be live in a matter of days, and they even provided me a "Pre-Save" link to help promote the single. Everything was on it's way.
A few days later, I received the email saying my project was live on Apple Music, iTunes, Spotify, Pandora, etc. I was beyond excited, and I got busy creating social media and video content to help announce and promote the single's release. This was when the issues started.
Spotify displaying incorrect artist attribution and incorrect copyright attribution.
In the screenshot above, things look relatively normal as you'd see any song on Spotify. But when you look closer, you'll notice that the ampersand (&) is not present in the artist's name under the track's title. There is a comma separating "The Sight", and "The Sound". So I hovered over the artist's name with my mouse cursor to see if they had swapped a comma for the ampersand. To my dismay, they had not inserted a typo; they had, in fact, attributed my work to two different bands. The first band being "The Sight," which is an electro-pop band. The second band is "The Sound," being a 1980's post-punk band similar to the likes of Joy Division and Echo & The Bunnymen. Respect, but not even close to my single, my work, or who created this music. Furthermore, there is a whole line of singles and albums listed below under the title, "More by The Sight," which contains a whole bunch of electro-pop music, not created by my band, and utterly unassociated with our work.
Screenshots of Spotify Mobile displaying incorrect artist attribution as well as incorrect copyright attribution.
I loaded this up on my phone to verify as I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Sure enough, on mobile is was even more prominent. The artists listed were "The Sight" and below them the band "The Sound". On top of this, DistroKid registered my copyright under "2289929 Records DK" and not "The Sight & The Sound".
Besides the name of the single, and the artwork I created, DistroKid didn't distribute my work with a single legally accurate piece of information that I submitted. Because of DistroKid's incompetence, my music was attributed to other artists, with fake made up copyrights worldwide.
DistroKid, The Middle-man
When it sunk in that I was blocked from claiming an Artist page in which to administrate corrections to these massive errors, I decided to reach out to DistroKid directly.
Guess what you can't do from your "Artists Dashboard"? Yeah, that's right; you can't send them a message. After searching around their FAQ (which has all posts heavily downvoted, it's a trash fire over there), I was at a total loss. I decided to pull all my music from all the stores, eat the $20 cost, and delete my account to find distribution through another provider, if not myself. In the "Delete my account" flow, a link to a form popped up that said, "before you go, let us try and help". I just had to smile. As I used the contact form to choose my issue, almost all results didn't end in a field to type but links to articles in the FAQ site. After selecting the vaguest items in the lists, only then was the form submit button produced on the page, and I sent the message. I received an error. So I tried again. And then, I got a blank page with no confirmation of success or failure of submission.
It is 3 days since I stumbled my way into the complaint form. I still do not have a follow-up message about my issue. I have no access to change anything about the submission metadata attached to the single. DistroKid won't let me resubmit my single unless all of the data is identical to the first submission.
That's right, DistroKid ruined my ability to submit my track with attributes that point to accurate copyright and band information and does not provide a nuanced solution to a problem they created. Furthermore, there is no consistent way to contact them even as a paying customer. Looking around the internet to see if anyone else has experienced this produced a litany of horror stories.
Turns out, DistroKid will take your money, muck-up submissions to storefronts and streaming services, and then send you to FAQ's which all pretty much say, "it's not up to us it is up to (insert store/streaming service), and you have to take it up with them". I'm going to give them 2 more full business days, and if I don't hear back, I'll probably submit this to Reddit/YouTube.
tl;dr - DistroKid doesn't care about anything other than the fees they collect and are not interested in the legality of their lousy service and business practices.
Next Steps
There are quite a few distributors which partner with independent artists and we still have options. The first swing was a miss but I’m staying on top of this. I’ve pulled the singles from all store fronts and streaming services and I will be working with The Orchard or Tunecore on this next pass. Once I have confirmation from either that everything is good, I’ll still wait till it hits the stores before I fire the hype train up again. I wish this process was straight forward and simple but it turns out it’s kind of jacked up still. Over 100 years since music publishing became a thing and we still don’t really know how to do it right as an industry. Shake my f’n head.
All in all:
Do not use DistroKid to distribute or publish your music.
Chad
