DistroKid
reviews and complaints

I've established two artist channels on Distrokid, and to my dismay, on September 25th, 2023, all of my music was removed from both channels without any prior notification. There was no attempt at communication through email or any other means. Furthermore, they've proceeded to withdraw my earnings without obtaining my consent. As a result, I've lost all of my music, my music channels, my subscribers, and the earnings I had accrued. Despite reaching out to them via email and phone calls, I have received no response. This experience has left me extremely stressed and profoundly disappointed with the level of service provided. I am actively exploring alternative distribution options.

I registered for Distrokid in late 2022 and uploaded about 3500 songs, By profession I am a singer and I have sung about 10000 songs since 2000. the work uploaded was purely mine and I was the sole author of my work. I connected my varified official artist channel to Distrokid. in July 2023 my all music was tookdown and all my earnings were disappeared. I owe abou 7000$ to Distrokid, I registered numerous complaint to Disteokid team bur I didnt get a single reply. they failed to satisfy me why did the takedown my music? on whom complain they did that? Distrokid stole my earning and wasted my time and my music which I never publish through other paltform.

I've been using Distrokid for several years, 50+ releases, and up to today no complaints.

However, a recent release required me to contact support.

That, however, seems to have become impossible. The introduction of the chatbot Dave drives me crazy. It is no doubt the worst implementation of a chatbot ever. Every link to "Contact Support", "Send Email", or explicitly "My issue is not listed in the FAQ" still leads to a dead end at Dave.

Sending a real email or contacting a real person has become impossible.

I quote the auto-reply from CEO Philip Kaplan:

<

Hi,

Thanks for writing!

I'm currently unable to keep up with email, and likely won't see the email you've just written.

Please don't take it personally! I frequently miss important emails (hence this auto-reply).

There are two ways to ensure I've received your message:

Include my assistant's email at: [protected]@distrokid.com

Or, if you have my phone number, text me. I often miss texts too, so if you don't hear back, keep trying (or try step #1)

If you're writing for DistroKid customer service and would like a response, do not email me--but instead contact DistroKid at:

https://distrokid.com/email

Thank you--and apologies for any hassle!

Sincerely,

Philip's mailbot. Bleep, bleep, bloop.

>

But:

- [protected]@distrikid.com: No answer.

- https://distrokid.com/email : ends up with chatbot Dave. No email at all.

I bought a mechanical cover license to make and distribute a recording of a song and checked with them first and asked if a session musician that I hired and paid could make a claim against the song and they responded that my license through the *** Agency with DistroKid was enough and not to worry but now they have taken down my song because of a false copyright claim by the session musician and refuse to look at facts of the case or refund me for the price of the cover license

I stopped paying to renew my account with Distrokid about a year or more ago because they refused to pay out the royalties on my music; that is not the cause of my complaint, but related. I found another suitable distribution platform, and I'm trying to get the ISRC codes for the albums I released (and paid for) so I can re-release those older albums, and Distrokid's support team has been all but nonexistent. I tried getting them from the ISRC registries, but they do not appear on there (presumably because Distrokid had them pulled), so I need them from Distrokid.

I used the distribution platform Distrokid in order to release my music over the past few years(Jun 16, 2018-present). Recently (July ) distrokid negatively affected my reach by directing traffic to someone who I don't know's sports *** channel. On iHeartRadio Distrokid had put a different artist release in my profile, as well as with Amazon. This artist was given my iHeartRadio profile picture even though I paid Distrokid to upload my music at a much earlier date.The customer support email and phone numbers don't work, and their online document forms do not work well enough to send any inquiries about resolution.(Sept ***, 2021)

I am a music artist who publishes with the distributor Distrokid. Spotify is the main platform my music is uploaded to, last year I had around 31k streams. The year prior I had 48k, the issue is that my distributor is only reporting around 8k. Around $300 which while for one person isnt major if it happens to a small artist like me its most likely taking place on a large scale. Spotify is an investor in Distrokid and neither company will provide any detail, any number, any reason for withheld streams. Spotify denies not paying streams and stands by the accuracy of stats on the app, Distrokid is saying Spotify reported the smaller number and that streams were withheld for potential fraud.

on 1/22/2022 I attempted to sigh up for their music distribution service. to continue with this process, the fee of $19.99 was immediately taken. (no product or service as yet given as sign-up process incomplete). started filling requisite info. was asked for mobile phone #. I don't have a mobile phone. I live in the *** of *** and no cell service there. since I could not continue signing up, I attempted reaching someone to get the initial charge credited to my card. you cannot ever reach a person, in any form at that company. even e-mails are answered by a "bot" I have wasted days, not just hours trying to get my refund and cannot. your assistance is greatly appreciated. folks should be informed about this issue with this company. not everyone, I'm sure, is as persistent as I. thank you

For a while now, I have been having issues with this distribution company for quite some time. they don't ever get back to you when their is an issue, and the fact that they have been getting all these bad reviews about their company it's not hard to see why. I've been preparing to release a new album in the next few months, and somehow, i can't release the album on apple music because of certain songs that they say can't be uploaded because it's already been on the distrokid platform, so me thinking that i can edit & re-upload the album to make sure everything is fine, now i can't even upload my album to all platforms all because "Apple Music" Policies and how they don't except music that has already been uploaded. it's garbage to me and i have been reaching out to distrokid for days to possibly see if this error can get fixed, and no response.

Distrokid is a music distributor. I have asked them many times to submit a song of mine to stores and didn't. I have asked for explanations and got not many. There site keeps saying these platforms are on a delay. I contacted all including Napster and they said that it was not true and they never got my song from Distrokid. It's getting ridiculous there not doing there job. I'm even speaking with a manager and it's not helpful. They don't provide me any links to my music. I get no email that it was submitted to the special 4 stores. I have to fill out everything myself. All they have to do is submit my song to stores and they can't even do that. We have over 70 emails! They never contact me on weekends or I just get one to two response a day. I send screenshots and they can't even understand that! They put my songs out of order also. I put lyrics for first song and no stores got any yet! They keep resubmitting everything

on may 29th, i withdrew my royaties/earnings of $1,951 from a distribution company called distrokid. i am a artist with a decent sized following and use distrokid in order to collect my royalty money, when you withdraw your earnings it takes a few days to transfer it to your paypal account. i have reached out to distrokid in 30-40 different emails asking them why my earnings have not been released and they are sending me bot responses simply telling me "withdrawals take up to 14 days and for some reason yours was flagged for further review" they've been telling me the withdrawal will be sent within a week or so since over a week ago and i am not getting any transparent response from them, further more i can prove and show whatever discrepancy is showing in their system and mine. i care for my one year old daughter and it is causing me and my family unbelievable amounts of stress by them being unresponsive and refusing to release my earnings

I am an independent artist using distrokid as my music distributor, and also collect royalties. On September 10th i requested to withdraw the royalties they owed me (*** USD) and even received a confirmation email On Fri, Sep 10, 2021 at 8:26 AM DistroKid wrote: ***A few days later I looked at my bank tab on distrokid to see if they processed my payment and i notice that all my income numbers have been cleared out as if i never made a dime. No explanation provided. I emailed them and answered 4 days later with a copy pasted message accusing me of fraudulent stream and refuse to provide explanation. My songs are still on streaming platforms and they are still collecting my money and refuse to pay me. They are stealing.

I uploaded a song to Distrokid to be released on all platforms specified in a screenshot below. Since I am a new user, I requested new accounts to be set up on these platforms to associate the song with myself. However, my song is either not on the platforms at all or associated with another singer's account. I previously filed an edit request on April 26 for the song which still has not been processed. I reached out to customer service multiple times but they have not resolved the issue and told me they cannot do anything until the request is processed. It has already been 2 months and they cannot even provide a status of when it will be complete. So I asked for them to take my song down/stop the request so I can go to a different distributor with better customer support. However, they cannot even take my song down. I would like for them to manually stop the request and take my song down and provide a refund for the musician plus membership I am paying for. Thank you.

I have been a subscriber of DistroKids music distribution services since December , and now as of August, and September 25th, DistroKid has falsely marked me for apparent Fraudulent activity regarding their terms of service. I have made contact with their support team many times to get this issue resolved; in return I have received zero evidence, or concern about the accusations they have stated. DistroKid has deleted the currency amassed within my bank(Totaling $3,770), and has disabled my account, along with all my work associated with it. I have contacted *** and ***(the platforms where my music has been published), and they have all responded with the statement that no such claims of fraud had been tied to my work, and that the issue has been enacted by DistroKid themselves. DistroKid has been trying to limit my ability to contact them, and blatantly ignores me when i do manage to get in contact. I now have no other way left to resolve this.

I had used Distrokid for nine months as the pricing was very good - a once-a-year payment to upload as much content as you like. It also had more features at the time than some of the other distributors couldn't offer such as instant access to Spotify and Apple Music for artists. But ever since they have been cracking down on 'streaming fraud', they have harshly punished innocent artists who have dared to actually promote themselves and compete in the music industry by wiping their entire discography off of all stores, halting any future releases and worst of all: withholding any future royalties by disabling their Distrokid bank account and setting all past and present royalties to zero. They did this all without warning and with completely no communication until I had to browse past the "we don't actually want to be contacted" Contact page. The only warning I got was for only ONE of my releases for "editorial discretion" when I was preparing my next set of releases all spaced o...

The date of this issue started on November 25 I received a paymenty from Distrokid on October for a small amount of $430 which I have no complaints about. However, for November, I was suppossed to get paid a massive amount around $5,000. When I contacted Distrokid asking where my earnings are, they said that *** is holding them due to suspicious activity. After contacting ***, they told me that my account was in good standing and that there are no red flags on my account. After bringing this up to Distrokid I received no response.I invested hard time and work into my music and Distrokid wants to take that away from me. This is not right. I paid my yearly subscription fee yet they do not want to hold their end of the bargain to simply roll over my well deserved earnings over to me.The business committed to giving me 100% of earnings and royalties, however, they have failed to do so when they noticed a large payment going through. Distrokid is not interested in solving this problem at all, and is speaking by email as if "it is what it is."I have spend money on advertising and spent countless days and nights preparing my music. I should not be treated this way.

Over two weeks ago I asked them to remove all of my music from all stores online.After about a week/or two of waiting I reached out to a customer service representative, and received a response from a woman named bey, who asked me to send the links to each individual store, which I did. I sent over 11 links from *** search that I had found. Instead of clicking on the links and helping me resolve my issue, she told me that I had to click on each link and send another link? I was like? How can you not see the links I sent you? All she had to do was literally type my name and album name (which I gave her) in the *** search bar and they would all pop up. There were over 10 still active.They asked for the links for each store (which should have already been removed at this point) it's been more than long enough, and now my music isn't showing on distrokid (since I had deleted my track) but they are STILL on *** search, and part of the stores they are in are showing my music under a different artist? They need to remove my music as I requested and cancel all services they are trying to *** from me (if any at this point) I do not want my music out in the public anymore.

I have not been paid my royalties. I have contacted Distrokid many times about this issue. They have been giving me the run around, every reason why they can't pay me. A lot of the money is from Spotify. They claim they can not see that Spotify owes me money but turns around and says they can see that Spotify is holding money. I don't understand how they can see the holding money part but can see that they owe me money doesn't make sense. They said I have to contact Spotify myself. Which I did and Spotify says Distrokid has to contact the Reporting Team at Spotify and they be happy to work with them. I went and told Distrokid this and they said they can't contact Spotify. Saying they can't do a counter claim, I was not asking for a counter claim. I clear stated in many emails that I just wanted them to reach out to the Reporting Team and ask about the withholdings. Distrokid went back and fourth with me to only say they can't do counter claims. I don't understand why they can't reach out to Spotify when they said they could. Also I don't understand why they don't get that I'm not asking for a counter claim. I am owed hundreds of dollars. I would like to be able to clear this up very soon.

I had used Distrokid for nine months as the pricing was very good - a once-a-year payment to upload as much content as you like. It also had more features at the time than some of the other distributors couldn't offer such as instant access to Spotify and Apple Music for artists. But ever since they have been cracking down on 'streaming fraud', they have harshly punished innocent artists who have dared to actually promote themselves and compete in the music industry by wiping their entire discography off of all stores, halting any future releases and worst of all: withholding any future royalties by disabling their Distrokid bank account and setting all past and present royalties to zero. They did this all without warning and with completely no communication until I had to browse past the "we don't actually want to be contacted" Contact page. The only warning I got was for only ONE of my releases for "editorial discretion" when I was preparing my next set of releases all spaced out from each other. This apparently meant that store "didn't want my single at this time". Nothing mentioned about my Distrokid bank being closed and all my future royalties and discography being at risk of being halted and wiped from existence until I had contacted them only to receive a copy-and-paste response. This all conveniently happened when I was close to 1 million monthly streams with them. I have been in many user curators Spotify playlists, have made well-targeted Facebook advertising to first world countries and have even had several Spotify editorial placements with the notable one being on "Lo-Fi Beats". To be called a fraud for getting genuine listeners to my song is absolutely insulting and withholding these royalties that I am absolutely owed for is just straight-up criminal. I had even sent proof straight from my Spotify for Artists account and asked them which of these streams/playlists are 'fraudulent'. No answer. Nothing. Any further attempts at contacting them feel like I'm shouting at a brick wall. Sadly, many people have also been affected by these false accusations of fraud. Take a look at their Twitter and see the people shouting at them that they can't access their royalties. Check the unofficial Reddit help desk and you see people with the exact same problem. This is absolutely two-faced behavior and dissatisfaction is an absolute understatement these people have with Distrokid. Also, Distrokid is blaming stores (namely Spotify) for the takedown of musicians' songs, but when they actually go and contact Spotify, they actually tell you that Distrokid is the one making all the takedown requests, proving that Distrokid is carrying out this shady rogue behavior. You may have a good relationship with Distrokid now, but once you actually start earning money for yourself using their service, they will take it all for themselves in a second and try to wipe your songs from existence all under the guise of 'streaming fraud'. They are actually punishing artists making a genuine attempt at competing in the industry and blaming you for an issue that is next to impossible to avoid. They are turning into another scam music company that everyone should avoid at all costs. I've now come to the conclusion that if you are using Distrokid just now, your music is not safe, your royalties are not safe, and if you rely on it, your livelihood is not safe. It is time to switch distributors before they come after you.