The Dangerous Problem with Distrokid

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[@remixedcat]

Spotify can blow 310m on naming rights for a stadium and pay podcasters 9 figures.... but can't pay artists....

[@Marcustrh]

This part right here 🔥🔥🔥🔥

[@Bradleybrookwood]

Precisely why I will never put my music up on Spotify ever again.

[@KevinTheCardigan]

Crazy to think that podcasters are worth money and draw an audience to spotify and that they are rightfully compensated so for putting their content on Spotify. Crazy how it works when your content has value.

[@CaptHiltz]

Spotify has always been a streaming platform and not necessarily a music platform even though they started that way because Ek is a music fan. That statement probably contradicts itself but it was looked at as a repository for information and that information was music.

[@netplane]

When you put it this way yeah they could definitely pay artists AT LEAST A PENNY instead of less than one

[@surrealchemist]

We need a DistroAdult

[@2free2snakes]

The soundcloud distribution service is that, tho they only take 20% of your revenue on top of your yearly fee. They don't take your music for hostage or do any of the other shitty things DK does to artists.

[@Tim_ArtistName_Tallent]

This one 🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@1jokerdan]

@@2free2snakesfactss bro and soundcloud pays your everything and in time

[@jetsonvibes]

@@2free2snakes 20% is insane though, you don't need to give away any percentage

[@guaranteerecords]

Mahla Sangeet Distribution Total free Approval time 1 hour

[@kiDchemical]

I avoid all these problems by having no fans. Checkmate

[@tastefulsubstance]

Fax. I'm just using it cuz I want my stuff out there. Idc how much it pays and doubt anyone is gonna bot me🤷‍♂️

[@guaranteerecords]

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[@therealajnelson]

Hahahaha same.

[@DJdeliverance]

Fax 🤣 fear of failure protect us from much trouble RN 😂

[@unclenick8809]

I’m a fan of this comment

[@Tyrell_Corp2019]

I grew up before the internet explosion. Getting someone on the phone, their supervisor or even the receptionist's name meant getting things done. I am sickened by the ubiquitous digital wall of mafia behavior. "Sorry. We have determined..." Too many companies are getting away this BS.

[@crnkmnky]

Now we have entire industries run by automation. To the extent that it's impossible to contact _any_ humans, unless you have a bit of social capital. KZbin included.

[@guaranteerecords]

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[@mikeexits]

​@@guaranteerecordsBegone, bot!

[@anthonydisibio7938]

Spotify also has a minority stake in DistroKid, feel like that's important to note

[@CreativeMindsAudio]

oof i forgot about this! which essentially means that major labels have stake in most of the indie market as well. it's all a fucking scam!

[@Aethelvlad]

what are you talking about? i'm an independent beat maker. i make roughly $350 USD every 100,000 streams, and I have 14 million streams. do the math. they pay me.

[@Aethelvlad]

@@CreativeMindsAudio what?

[@CreativeMindsAudio]

@@Aethelvlad major labels (Sony, Warner, universal) own a combined 18% of Spotify. This was the deal Spotify made to get their catalogs on the app.

[@heeeeeythere7480]

@@Aethelvlad$350 for roughly 100k .. so they’re 99% bots then ? That’s pretty poor.

[@Marcustrh]

Is this the beginning of Weaver Beats Coffeezilla Arc? I’m so here for this. Thank you 🙏🏿 I think it’s weird it’s only distro kid users.

[@Ganjahandler42]

That would be fucking awesome! 😂

[@crnkmnky]

Deshplease posted about TuneCore doing funny business too. She had to go through them to use the Grimes AI voice. She paid the fee and Grimes ok'd the song. Then TuneCore rejected the track with zero explanation and no way to dispute it.

[@Marcustrh]

@@crnkmnky bro I use tunecore. Never had an issue with em. 😂 clout chasing a grimes feature made by AI n getting mad it didn’t work will always be funny to me

[@skyko]

@@crnkmnky Tunecore is the DEVIL, I would STAY TF away from them at all costs! They are another arm of Ticketmaster/Clear Channel/Blackrock. Some REAL shady NWO scumbags. 🤬👿👹💩

[@wo-and-lo-yinz]

its not just distrokid,they all are doing it for the $

[@JonahBaker]

This happened to me and I’ve never paid for artificial streams! I have a million monthly listeners, I don’t need to buy plays. And distrokid had Spotify give me a “strike”. Three strikes and my career is over.

[@KobeBanks]

I’m currently in the same boat and it’s really frustrating cause you cannot call anyone or get it sorted out asap

[@macronencer]

"Three strikes and my career is over" - this is an unacceptable degree of business risk to have not under your own control. What a crazy f-ed up world.

[@KobeBanks]

@cere8ro.artist wym?

[@ThatAutisticBlackMan]

Kobalt Music @@KobeBanks

[@teetateeta8104]

Yep they gave me a strike too, if I was buying streams I’d have a million monthly listeners, it’s so stupid

[@kassemir]

absolutely agree that they should just remove fake streams, like youtube. not only would it solve this issue and not punish distributors. but, it would also make the criminal activities and money laundering more difficult. definitely some sketch stuff going on.

[@unconcernedsalad2]

replying to boost this comment

[@7vensoundz851]

Makes sense.

[@guaranteerecords]

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[@Jecks_music]

in any case Spotify should give us a tool to remove our songs from other user's playlists or block the bridge between us and some playlisters

[@guaranteerecords]

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[@mikeexits]

​@@guaranteerecordsBegone, bot!

[@mikeexits]

Being someone who hasn't used either myself, I assumed this would be a given. Apparently not. Any good DK alternatives out there? I always assumed CDBaby and Tunecore were ripoffs but I bet I'm wrong in that assumption at this point.

[@bazookaman1353]

Hold up, is there something going on flying over my head? I don't see it being that bad of a thing.

[@HarryVsingersongwriter]

It's the old story all over again in a different guise: it's all about money. There was a short while before moderation when we had the world for a playground, that has been taken away. I decided to wait and see, and more and more comes out, so THANKS Weaver Beats for sharing this!

[@LonelyJuan]

Yup I remember speaking on using their wheel of playlist on Reddit when my song got a #1 spin. All my streams came from Finland and then my Reddit got banned lol

[@aubreybailey1834]

same. we noticed 200 streams on one song a couple of days ago and all from helsinki findland. ive maybe spun the playlist wheel one time. no ban yet but its deffinatly a bot wavri playlist

[@Tamajyn69]

​@@aubreybailey1834 iirc finland has one of the highest amount of data centres in the world so makes sense

[@lofialumnimusic]

This happened to someone I know, and then they just copied that item code from the taken down song, reupload it through their distrokid, and it was back in a couple days with the original streaming numbers intact 😅

[@guaranteerecords]

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[@MYHEARTINEVERFEL-kx7ye]

same thing happened to me, you dont even need to use the ISRC code, it already knows the song and gets reuploaded in hours, its just stupid

[@mikeexits]

​@@guaranteerecordsBegone, bot!

[@madden1247]

this also confirms a suspicion I had, I was doing 100% organic promo, the same promo that was okay less than a year ago but all of a sudden my songs started getting flagged left and right in the past 3 months or so

[@xmusologyx]

This exact thing happened to me with my last track. Even after contacting Spotify, who assured me that's no action would be taken against me, after I informed them of the playlist my song was on and that it was botted, they then went on to remove song anyway.

[@lukewood]

The same happened to me. I contacted Spotify twice and saved the live chat to a PDF, but my song was still removed.

[@smartmunkee]

Exactly the same happened to me. I reported the dodgy playlists and was assured I would not be impacted. They lied and took down my tracks! I have evidence of the conversation.

[@ChrisMinorOfficial]

Same here w an album from my old band @timewilltell

[@prodsgbeatz]

So basically... When I'm a small artist (10-50k monthlies) in a very specific style of music with not too much competition, I can just bot my competitors songs, get them removed and take over, right? Asking for a friend of the aunt of my brothers stepsister oc

[@CrimsonRedstone]

Bro is a villain 😂 ( I mean, bruv's friend of the aunt of the brothers stepsister is oc lol)

[@prodsgbeatz]

@@CrimsonRedstone 😂😂😂

[@teetateeta8104]

Yep 😈

[@em8969]

Who or what would you go with? I don’t know how to distribute my music now, highly sceptical

[@prodsgbeatz]

@@em8969 i think most other distributors besides distrokid should be fine 🤷

[@PatrickZelinskimusic]

I have friends that this happened too. Glad this video is out and there needs to be more of a stand against this broken policy.

[@cropscropscrops]

Yo thank you for making this video, can't believe this isn't being talked about more. This has happened to me 3 times now with recent releases and every time I've reached out to Spotify For Artists or Distrokid I've either been met with A) total radio silence, B) a "there's nothing we can do" type message or C) pointing the finger at the other service which is crazy because they work together. Cannot believe there is no way as an artist to remove your song from a playlist and the fact that it takes +24hrs to be get an update on the playlist you've been added to in these cases (even though you can see the live counter going) is crazy. What's worse is I've noticed if you release a full proj it's usually on the song you are driving the most streams to, generally the single, which is most times the one you as the artist want to celebrate but now cannot because it might get taken down. As an independent artist it really sucks because at the end of the day you're trying to build trust with an audience and this messes with that and is totally out of our control. Hope more people talk about this so it forces a change but at this point the only solution seems to be change distributors.

[@cutrugs5676]

Got a strike on a song 24 hours after releasing it before it even made it to any playlists

[@mikeexits]

This makes me worried for my artist collective that uses DK. What are the alternatives at this point if TC and CDB do similar shenanigans?

[@Artistu007]

Hi guys, mb a little bit a help? Sorry for the grammatical mistakes. So, I have an account with a name that appeared to me that it is already on spotify and it asked me for the Spotify URI looker-upper and when I entered to add it it didn't let me, because I didn't post anything on spotify, so I put a name that was no longer on spotify and it posted my song, now the question is, how do I access that account? name or password or something?

[@Bloor005]

Glad someone is calling them out on this. Too many big music YTers are pretty shill for this company. Also, imagine if you went into a regular shop and started taking stuff under the premise "but you have to sell 1000 before I pay you!"

[@jasonanderson5034]

KZbin forces u to have 4000 watch hours and to gain 1000 new subs every 365 days or u cant monetize isnt that the same ... i dont see u complaining about weaver needing to reach that before being monetized ... this makes it easier to make a living as a artist those who actually make more then 50$ a year from streams will make more money , should i mention facebooks requirements what about instagram and tiktok

[@Bloor005]

@@jasonanderson5034 you dont see me complaining because you didnt look or ask. They're all a scam to make corps more money.

[@crnkmnky]

@@jasonanderson5034 🤨 Who said we don't complain about KZbin's monetization BS? Anyway, Weaver doesn't *pay* KZbin for the privilege of uploading here.

[@jasonanderson5034]

@@crnkmnky Spotify doesn't charge u their is free distribution how is Spotify charging u

[@jasonanderson5034]

@@crnkmnky what about Instagram and Facebook and TikTok they are all much harsher for monetization and free but spotify is free anyway u jus choose to pay someone

[@permutemusic]

Haven't finished the video yet, but i just wanted to say that I'm excited for this arc of video essays, as long as the editing and shit doesn't get too bothersome. This is my fave kind of content and it's gonna be neat to see how you approach some of these topics. VINCENT ADULTMAN SPOTTED

[@deastman2]

I’ve had music taken down because they claimed it was bot playlisted. I argued the point with Spotify customer service, and they told me that the music would be reinstated if I could prove that the streams were legitimate rather than bots. That’s hilarious, because they don’t provide access to their data… how exactly am I supposed to prove anything when they control the data? I also think it’s absurd that we’re focusing on distributors and punishing artists when their music ends up on bot playlists. Anyone can add any song to a their playlists, without the consent of the artist or the distributor. The obvious problem here isn’t the artists, but the bot playlists. Why doesn’t Spotify simply ban those playlists and call it a day?

[@KobeBanks]

Same exact thing happened to me back on Jan. 17th. Haven’t heard anything back from Distrokid since then and it’s really frustrating.

[@em8969]

Who would you recommend I use? I’m a bit put off now I don’t know who to go to for my music

[@heeeeeythere7480]

@@em8969CD Baby, routenote, tunecore - if you feel comfortable with where you are “career” wise - try your hand at sending your music/ socials to the orchard. EDIT: DO NOT USE DISTROKID

[@guaranteerecords]

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[@smartmunkee]

Exactly. They know wavr are behind the bots so why don't they shut them down? There is something really suspicious going on here.

[@TangentMoon]

Spotify's actions make perfect sense when you realize the only thing they are trying to do is make more money. They could solve the botted playlist issue in many different ways (remove 'free' accounts, stop 'free' accounts listening to 3rd party playlists, give musicians the option to turn off 3rd party playlisting, etc.) but these solutions don't help the Spotify bottom line so of course they're not interested. With regards to distrokid's actions, well I'm just glad I don't use distrokid, but Spotify's (partial) ownership of distrokid has always seemed like an obvious conflict of interest.

[@guaranteerecords]

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[@jackrighteous]

I was just looking at that Wheel of Playlist. Thank God i listened to you first

[@Awthentik]

This is a great video. I just went down the biggest rabbit hole reading articles about Spotify and its revenue. Something is extremely shady about all of this.

[@pajzd]

it"s a multinational corporation, what did you expect ?

[@michaelhall3795]

Y'all trust these snakes with ur art n publishing rights...lol

[@Awthentik]

@@michaelhall3795 fuck no lol. I do all DTC.

[@guaranteerecords]

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[@AncientlightInsights]

Wow I have noticed some of these red flags with DK as well, specially the horrible customer service. Thank you so much for sharing this very informative information.

[@hcienmusic]

This happened to me as well , funny part my lowest stream songs , and they said it’s due to bot streams , Jokers 😂

[@PSYB3RMOTH]

same

[@jackrighteous]

I just signed up with them. Thanks for the video, something to watch out for

[@dudemcgee256]

Perfect timing. I'm getting ready to pick a distributor and was considering distrokid since it's so prevalent. I'll never use them now.

[@kzyoi]

what's a good one touse

[@d-bro-sector36]

@@kzyoi I've been extremely happy with Symphonic Distribution, but they did change their ways of joining so I am not sure if it is still possible to join them. I run a small label though, with more than just me as an artist.

[@neurenindustrial]

You can, chill. My request to support was answered in 1 day (even tho they said about 3 days) and the problems solved

[@dudemcgee256]

@@kzyoi Man, I'm trying to figure it out myself. I'm in the middle of my research. I'll post here when I pick one. Although I wouldn't listen to me, I'm just some idiot on the internet lol.

[@impauseable]

I left Distrokid and paid for symphonic and ditto, although routenote is a great free option if you don’t mind sharing royalties with them! Not really using symphonic though as they don’t exactly cover my region but ditto seems great replacement for now!

[@stevewoodyt]

I don’t even have music finished. Y’all are on a whole different level. Imma go watch some tutorials on how to finish songs.

[@santhymx]

Lol same

[@Insight-music]

Relatable

[@Skrenja]

Songs only need to be a minute long these days.

[@Insight-music]

@@Skrenja yea it’s crazy but true, anything over 3min is considered a long song now lol

[@jpinesavage]

Yeah.. I've tried to remove my released music for almost two years now, have not paid for my subscription for almost the same amount of time, I get notifications daily how my music will be removed, yet there it stays, on all the platforms. Distro never replies to emails, requests, nothing. It's scuffed beyond belief.

[@AndrewYac]

Same has happened to me, I haven’t paid it in 4 years and yet the music is still there somehow

[@Pawl4k]

​@@AndrewYac did you change distributor ?

[@guaranteerecords]

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[@gavinpoulton7918]

CD baby has the same style faq but you can connect with an agent if you as the chat bot and talking to a real person is very helpful when there is a problem with the release

[@budgetkeyboardist]

Yup

[@GodlikePariah]

They permanently banned me for music produced

[@ajit-chhaniwala]

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[@lilbendrowned]

I had this problem with one of my albums. One of the songs got popular due to memes and got put on playlists. Both Spotify and Distrokid were extremely hard to get in contact with and gave me a runaround. Basically I'm forced to either reupload the entire album just to Spotify with the same IRSC codes, or cope. Whats strange is that you cant find the album on Spotify through the artist page, but if found through a playlist, not all songs have been removed.

[@lowceilingmusic]

I was added to a wavr ai playlist and got like 150 streams from Helsinki. I dont use any of the playlist features or anything. Asked Spotify to be removed, they said they cannot do that. After a week I was out of the playlist cuz thats apparently how long you stay in one before they update the playlist.

[@kaybecker]

Thank you kindly, I was just about to switch from LANDR, gonna stay away from that! A zillion thanks mate!

[@JulianSwayzer]

weaver beats the kind of journalist this community needs. finding all these crazy rabbit holes like Woodward and Bernstein

[@Awthentik]

💯

[@mikeexits]

Been rewatching Breaking Bad after finishing Better Call Saul, just want to say I appreciate the outro gag lol.

[@redangelsophiasvideoproduc92]

I think that one of the keys t o DistroKid’s popularity is that for many people getting into the game of independently distributing their music -- DistroKid is the only digital distributor they _know_ about. You have to be in the game for a bit to even be aware that any of DistroKid’s _competitors_ even _exist._

[@RachyKatly]

That’s completely true!! Also most of the KZbinrs in music industry have their videos sponsored by DistroKid so it almost the only thing you hear about until you make your own real research to find other services

[@retroklub_tv]

great video mate . had this take down for 2 songs , which are ones that i never promoted through anything but the spotify algorithm . i swapped distributors almost immediately . they used to use an email for support but now its a long line of bs . since i was sponsored by them at one point i have priority communication with them and im trying to get some more answers on this stuff . let me know if there is anything else you want to ask them !!

[@Fear2Stop]

Hey bro I meant to comment on the video you did about it , but this is a good enough time as any… you did a lot of promo for them and for you to get screwed by them too is BS . I’m glad I got away from them when I did . Who did you end up going to?

[@retroklub_tv]

im with boost collective now . we are working hand in hand to make a pretty sweet platform for artists with things like fb ad campaigns + templates , etc. im still trying to get answers from them but im left hanging right now . @@Fear2Stop

[@FrazerPayne]

Really good video. V interesting. Thanks WB! I don't understand how Spotify is simultaneously dominating the music industry and NOT making a profit. If artists aren't making enough money either, where is all the money???

[@amusik7]

I also had a a three day period in November where I got hundreds of listens out of nowhere and it appeared someone was just playing the song on repeat - and I have no idea why. Thankfully it wasn't tens of thousands, so my account has not been affected but it's really, really scary that other peoples bots can potentially ruin your reputation!

[@babysunn2]

Great Call Out. 👍🏽👍🏽

[@miksreaction42]

You are 100% on the money on EVERY single thing you said here. I am part of a musicians group of about 1,500 artists and it has happened to a lot of them - only the one's who are with Distrokid. If this truly came from Spotify, why aren't any of the other distributors doing the same? Thankfully, I left Distrokid ages ago because they are completely useless. I urge every artist to check your KZbin, to make sure they have set up your CID. They don't seem to have any idea how to do that. But really, just get a new distributor NOW before they seriously stuff you up.

[@riccardoplatone]

The exact same happened to me: I’ve uploaded my first song in September 2023 and tried the wheel of Playlist. A couple of months later my numbers started to be boosted out of nowhere, and I’ve found out I was placed on the WAVR AI playlist and all of my streams were from Helsinki, Finland. Luckily it was for just three days and I didn’t gather more streams than I already had but in doubt I sent Spotify an email telling them that I had no part in this and they put me there without even telling me. God knows if they’ve even read it. My advice would be to NOT use the Wheel of Playlist. It’s no use since nobody listen to it and it’s just a pool for them to take songs to bot, and especially for us artists with no audience yet it risks to kill our careers before it even started. Pretty hard to believe that Spotify and DistroKid have no role in this sketchy situation.

[@therobertpetty]

I stopped paying them when I found out I couldnt downgrade my plan. To me that sounds like its intended so they can force you to pay them more once you make the mistake of upgrading, and then you cant do anything about it since your music and account is all tied to that one Distrokid account.

[@russell_the_love_muscle]

half the time I watch your videos, at some point I say, "Those bastards!". Doing great work Weaver

[@messagenorth]

I just recently had a situation where a clearly botfarmed playlist added one of my songs to their list, and it shot my views + followers up significantly on that one song in particular for a day or two. I don't know why they added my song, I didn't pay for/submit anything to this or any shady playlist nor do I condone that shit at all. At that point I kind of freaked out and the only thing I felt like I could do was to contact spotify artist support about it so there's at least a paper trail of me trying to do something and report the playlist. My song was not deleted or going over the threshold thankfully, but still I totally am inclined to believe the artists who say they are going through this because It's happened to a few of my friends too.

[@iamcrisis187]

Happened to me with one song from my last album. Never used any type of playlist/promo service. Distrokid took that one song down from Apple Music and said it was Apple that took it down. I emailed Apple Music for Artists support and they said they didn't take it down, and for me to speak with my distributor. Then I get an email from Distrokid with some made up BS story that said Apple said not to upload the song again or I will be banned from Distrokid... WTF? LoL... I took down all of my music from Distrokid the same week and linked with a admin label/distribution company. The song went right back up on Apple Music and retained all of the stats for the song on Apple Music for artists. F*** DistroKid!

[@El-Azar]

What distributor did you decide to use afterwards?

[@em8969]

Who or what would you go with? I don’t know how to distribute my music now, highly sceptical

[@LukasBay]

I went for the same problem to tunecore, let see tho D

[@extendo7137]

Don't leave us hanging 😅 tell us what distributor you decide to use?

[@ES-cl5hi]

Guess we'll never know eh?

[@TheDogStarHouse]

Thanks for this upload man

[@hftl412]

Distrokid caused me headaches with my last release. The title "acid bass & breakbeats" got shortened to "acid bass" because the "&" broke their code. Basically the moral is its garbage and Ditto is the win, they do beatport! Lol

[@EternalColdMusic]

sooooooo should we all jump ship from distrokid and find a better way? I think its time.

[@terranborn56]

absolutely believe large labels are behind punishing independent artists.

[@WillboDabbins]

This is why you gotta stay off the playlists and just push the music organic my man. Good luck!

[@iamsajoga]

This happened to me - random spike at the EXACT same time in November and then taken down with no notice 2 months later. Here's my question: if Spotify knows which plays are bots and which playlists those bots are on why not shut down the playlist and creator of it? Wouldn't that make more sense then punishing the artist who hasn't done anything? Unless...

[@shoegazeforever8810]

A few years ago I ended on a botted Finnish playlist just days after submitting my 2nd song for Spotify playlist consideration at a time when noone knew who I was.

[@lokelosk]

I've seen a case online where a person had their songs flagged, received the "you've been a bad boy" pop-up, and after clicking on the options saying they wouldn't do it again (there was no option for "I didn't do it"), a pop-up said they could reupload their songs, _but with a new ISRC_ . And this seems like... stupidly abusive? But also, I have a theory. If you think about it, it kinda makes sense: if the song was ever popular, it would have to climb all the ranks _again_ to generate revenue. And now that each song needs 1000 plays before they generate revenue, it's a way to keep indie artists at the bottom without paying royalties and claiming it's the artist's fault, while hoarding the money for themselves. Of course, I didn't see anyone else talking about this ISRC thing, so I don't know if they changed it or if the pop-up about it is hidden somewhere difficult to access.

[@crnkmnky]

🤬

[@Prismfold]

same thing happened to my music. I couldnt dispute it, and the worst part is they provided ZERO data as to where the fake streams came from. So i was left with no information as to how it happened and a strike on my Spotify account. Haven't uploaded music since because I have no way of knowing if it will happen again. They make you take this quiz where you answer obvious questions and you HAVE to acknowlegde that what you did was wrong even though you are not at fault for it in the first place.

[@ankor8902]

@@Prismfold Stop botting your own music. Works hard for your fans or fail like you are currently

[@Prismfold]

wasnt botting my own music lol. was trying a promotion service, seemed legit at the time

[@guaranteerecords]

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[@stillavenue]

this shit is getting to the point where it will just make more sense to not release your music on these streaming services.

[@CurtissKingTV]

Geezus 🍿

[@tapdaddy69]

Curtiss reacts to weaver beats getting kicked from spotify video??

[@CurtissKingTV]

@@tapdaddy69I think it’s that time

[@aje-olokunsChile]

​@@CurtissKingTVyesss I'm ready 🙌🏾

[@guaranteerecords]

Mahla Sangeet Distribution Total free Approval time 1 hour

[@crnkmnky]

@@guaranteerecords 🤨

[@DJBEARZ]

Damn i was trying to change from tunecore to distrokid but ig i aint doing that mo more

[@Djsatile]

😂 I’m so happy I switched to TuneCore from distrokid last year

[@not_austinn]

do you get paid better than distrokid? I've been thinking about switching over to a different distributer for quite a while now

[@err_rawr]

@@not_austinn this literally just happened to Benn Jordan (aka The Flashbulb) and he was on TuneCore they removed all 49 of his albums and banned him. So, I don't the distributor is going to make a difference.

[@MANNETO]

I just got hit by this on Tunecore and I am considering heading to Landr

[@Blukemet]

Thanks for the info! Straight to the point.

[@gavinw9560]

Great video, just wished you touched on some alternatives to distrokid cause they all seem awful and I’m not sure how to put out my stuff

[@Juliano_DJOL]

Uploading my music to a distro company (not distrokid but similar) like 2 years ago has been nothing but a headache 4 me and has literally made releasing music a cringe thing I dont enjoy at all anymore! I went from having a large audience and lots of plays to hidden under a rock, like instantly when putting my music on there, pretty freaking sad IMO!

[@struckrex]

Makes me glad I stopped using DistroKid.

[@momoamzo1050]

What’s you use?

[@andybond5002]

Which service are you using now?

[@random_meteor]

I've really been holding out for SoundCloud to come back around. I ditched distrokid like 2 years ago

[@heeeeeythere7480]

Same, distrokid are the worst of all the platforms and it isn’t remotely close.

[@RachyKatly]

Same here Now I’m with cd baby and ditto

[@ArlinGodwin]

I had a track treated in the exact way you describe with that same weird one time message. I looked at the streams data and sure enough it looked spikey...up and then down and back up over a period of days etc...not a smooth increase in streams as other tracks had. We took the track down since that was our only choice. Have not put it back up. But the bottom line is WE DID NOT PROMOTE THAT SONG IN ANY WAY AT ALL. We certainly never bought playlists or used bots. So if bots were being used to get streams it was not because we asked for it...nor would we...it very much appeared that someone unconnected to Arlin Godwin music had decided to use bots to promote that one track. Thanks whoever you are. Because it was a great song. Nobody has heard it because some a*****e took it upon themselves to use bots to "promote" my track without my involvement. If this is something that DK or Spotify is involved with: I smell legal action. This needs immediate attention by the corporations involved. I make music. I pay DK to send it out. My track is not being promoted. But I am then threatened by Spotify. I am forced to take my track down. After a while it's not worth spending the money anymore is it?

[@crnkmnky]

That sucks. Even moreso if it was a fan trying to "help."

[@neonwind]

CD baby? Seems alright, been using it for years.

[@budgetkeyboardist]

It's not perfect, but there is customer service.

[@djdeepblue]

The exact same thing happened to me, but with AWAL. They are terminating the contract with me and no answer on it. The whole music industry is a joke nowadays anyway, so I don't even care anymore. It's so frustrating that I can't even enjoy making music with everything else that we have to do. Nowadays I just ghostproduce...

[@clockingthet4827]

Can we please stop referring to it as a 'support agent' and refer to it as 'support script?' Anthropomorphizing this sh*t only helps to normalize this craziness. Thanx.

[@cameronneal4]

I've only had positive experiences with Distrokid. I've never tried the playlist features though

[@camblackofficial]

Another bad thing here. People could start intentionally botting Artists songs to get them removed. For example what if a Major label hypothetically botted top independent Artists in an effort to reduce competition. Also Major labels are probably way more likely to bot but keep it below the 90% threshold so they are not hurt as much by this botting problem. If Spotify really has a problem with botting it would find out how to find the bots and remove those plays. That's the problem they don't know how to remove them so they put it in on us.

[@snapkrr]

They don’t want to remove the bots they’d rather remove the competition 😀😀😀😊

[@camblackofficial]

@@snapkrrfacts

[@LMBECIL]

💀💀💀

[@PSYB3RMOTH]

yep and spotify lets the playlist stay up but remove the artists music. so whats really going on here. its already shady that spotify owns some of DK

[@derfred9571]

i can recommend symphonic

[@MAJEURVANGUAR]

So one drops distro … where does one go next Cdbaby or symphony?

[@thelandof]

yep - same thing happened to me. Used the wheel playlist thing and ended up being on the Helsinki bots playlists

[@niteshades_promise]

Im going back to myspace.🍻

[@v2khi]

yikesss just purchased a subscription and made a switch from tunecore but looks like i’m going right back and getting a refund😟

[@klubstompers]

Distrokid is the one Bot farming. They get payed from Spotify for the amount of streams on Spotify. This is why they were pushing back when Spotify announced this change. This is the reason Spotify made this change, because they know that Distrokid is ripping them off with AI views.

[@crnkmnky]

😯

[@JasonCGuitarOfficial]

This just happened to me. I had to take down 2 full albums. I'm livid!

[@JoDawne]

I don't understand how some of the shiiiit get's so many listens, then you put up something - well more than ok - and it gets 1 view.. wtf... and then I listen to the latest song from a big artist and think to myself WTF.. and they spend $250K on marketing (that's playlist pushing!!! and everything else - only the spotify's and Distrokids get the marketing dollars).. it's BS!!

[@angelbeats1]

70k monthly listeners and most of my releases were taken down because of this exact same thing. Never paid a cent for botting/marketing 😵‍💫

[@Arrvss.]

Honestly Distrokid always seemed shady to me, but is there really even anything else out there that can compete at a similar price?

[@Arrvss.]

@@unduloid To Spotify? Can you do that?

[@StevieBoyesmusic]

It's not even cheap if you need there extras.

[@halfbrokerising]

I just used CDbaby. Had 0 issue so far. Went up without a hitch, did research, and all went well. You just pay a simple price for each release, but no worries like this from my research. Some cool tools come with it also, but I don't go pro. I just fill out all the publishing stuff myself on Soundexchange, MLC, and etc. It's free to do it, just takes time. $10 for every album release, but no worries like this.

[@PSYB3RMOTH]

its expensive over time. i moved to cdbaby.

[@budgetkeyboardist]

CDBaby. You pay up front, then never again... but they do take a cut. To me it's worth not having to pay DistroKid every year forever.

[@alyssa_degrande]

I signed up for distrokid and didn’t upload anything immediately. Took me three months to put together an EP that I was excited to release only to find out distrokid deleted my account! No uploads, no plays and they still banned me. When I plan to upload my music I’m taking it to Tunecore. I’m not dealing with distrokid anymore.

[@ThyFavourMusic]

Please don’t use tunecore They are also scam They can ban you for no reason Search it hear on youtube and read artist reviews about it Thank you 🙏

[@lukesilvamusic]

Worst customer service EVER! Still waiting for their legal team to reply after over a month. Absolutely USELESS.

[@TheBlackJewelz]

Just when I was considering joining DK. Nope. Thanks bro

[@TheBlackJewelz]

Also the craziest part is literally ANYONE can just add your song to any random playlist they have. I had some bot-tastic promotion company do that to one of my songs and was like "Hey look, I just got you 1k more streams for this song! Wanna pay me to bot some more??"

[@Tiodenéromuzik]

I’ve been saying distrokid sucks for the past 4 yrs

[@DreamingWhileAwakeMusic]

they are doing it to anyone that is competitive, great video

[@tommorton7211]

It's clear what is going on here. Since you think of each of your songs like children, busyworksbeats is taking care of them by buying them plays and then letting you fight to get them back!

[@theroyalcrane]

I was waiting on this comment.

[@VirginiaBluesOG]

I was born for this.

[@proxzi]

interesting stuff i believe in the theory that there are tiers when it comes to distributors and DK is being treated like low tier one (since most of the ppl release trash stuff or buy plays the legit artist with big potential get treated like a piece of s as well getting no real exposure), and as a long term customer can say yeah they lack many features other distributors do provide (paid or free) and support sucks sometimes but when u get lucky enough to speak to someone who cares then they might fix ur issues, at the end its distributor for indie artists the purpose is just to get ur music out for low price until u get signed i guess

[@proxzi]

not to mention i also got placed onto a fake playlist for some time without being asked that clearly looked like a promo service i didn't buy nor was informed about but all i used was the dk wheel of playlist everyday

[@Luccidamus]

Nah its just tiers of artist who use the platforms. Low tier artist make low tier decisions that effect the rest of us. Thats all

[@GizzyDillespee]

Wait... Distrokid is botting people's songs, putting them on bot playlists, and then removing those songs from all of the streaming services for being botted?!🤣 Here's a head's up, Spot - you keep losing money for the same reason you put record stores out of business - you charge people less than the price of a single CD, for ALL MUSIC. If I charged $10/mo for a house, "Wow, what a disruption!" Then, 10 years later... "Gosh, I've lost money with every single deal! What happened?!" And then, to make up for it, I try to shake down the lumberyard who supplied the building materials.🤣 Listeners don't want to know, because they were gifted a sweetheart deal. They're happy to pay a Silicon Valley startup a small monthly fee in exchange for convenience and legal cover. To people who remember that we used to have to buy music, this system seems amazing, as long as we don't think about the details, or don't care about taking advantage of each other. That's why I think the Rapture already happened. If Jesus was still in charge, none of this would fly. It sucks about His 1000 year sentence, tho. He was framed, too.

[@trevorcrawford1]

Great comment and handle

[@arnonymous7211]

this makes my top comments list for 2024 already

[@skyko]

AWESOME comment! They are PART OF THE MACHINE that is enslaving us.

[@dannyatx]

if you were the preacher I would start going to church

[@jasonanderson5034]

where is the proof they are boting songs and it isnt just botters .. alot of people will not admit to botting ... sometimes botters attack people .. sometimes botters also promote their playlists by randomly adding artists .. where is the rpoof that distrokid or spotify is behind this everytime ive been added to a bot playlist which is twice i neveer asked for it or paid for it ... the playlists had contac details to get sales genius

[@tedstrupple]

Why isn't there a class action against Spotify or these distributors?

[@matthewgaines10]

The music industry has always been dirty and self serving. Botting is a problem but platforms aren’t really trying to solve that problem with technology. They just try to new ways not to pay legitimate artists. Businesses that make it easy for you to establish a revenue stream for them but make it hard for you to address concerns with the business practices aren’t really there to help you. They are there to help themselves. If they could do it without you and make money, they would.

[@acomedybyec1437]

Church

[@JackieLombardi]

Ive been using dk for the past 9 years and at this point im scared to use anything else

[@mlrdmn]

The bot situation just seems to be a cyber attack.

[@remixedcat]

Pretty much is!!

[@heeeeeythere7480]

It is - DK are behind the entire process, it’s the easiest way to scam artists into paying more.

[@MiladaAdato]

I had good customer support. Both with QA and live support.

[@ILLUDIUM_Q_36]

Time to start pressing 💿 cds and tapes again. 🫡

[@Loch1210]

Ain’t nobody got no cd or cassette players.

[@ILLUDIUM_Q_36]

@@Loch1210 you don't have these things. The rest of are good 👍🏾 😆

[@Loch1210]

@@ILLUDIUM_Q_36 nobody I know still has them though

[@Skrenja]

​@@Loch1210CD players are still relatively common in vehicles.

[@justinwheeler727]

Literally just went through this... We have been OPENLY against artificial streams. It is insane they can just pull a track with absolutely no warning.

[@jetsonvibes]

Distrokid is the worst distributor, period. Use literally any other distributor and enjoy your stress free life 😂

[@danielsmokesmids]

Cap. Soundcloud is WAY worse. That was stressful. Ive had so much less stress since moving to distrokid. I cant find a single better option. Everyone else seems to either only work with labels or be stupidly expensive.

[@guaranteerecords]

Mahla Sangeet Distribution Total free Approval time 1 hour

[@OfficialTygo]

Soundcloud is not a distribution service. Soundcloud is a platform on which you can host and manage your own page. Cant do that on Spotify so you need a Distribution​@@danielsmokesmids

[@MANNETO]

@@danielsmokesmidsThis just happened to me and I am on Tunecore. Do you think I should re upload my song on distrokid? Have two distribution services?

[@dynamorphic]

I can only share revenue with distrokid... CDbaby doesn't allow that

[@LukasBay]

Same happened to me..had to change distributor...insane..

[@NickMirambeau]

my favorite distrokid feature is the fact that it is physically impossible to cancel your subscription, like, at all, so you're forced to just tell your bank to block their charges. a close second is the fact that you have to pay like $50 per song, on top of the yearly subscription, to get the same features other aggregators offer for like $5-$15 without the subscription. so user-friendly !!

[@PSYB3RMOTH]

yea thats why i moved to cdbaby.

[@lcr4696]

I'm glad you brought this up, cause something similar happened to me. I released a song that wasn't well recieved. So, after about a month, I took it down. A few months later, my records stated that song somehow got over 16000 streams. I've never scored that big a hit, ever. Now, I'm in dire financial straits, but I have a strong guilty conscience. So, I contacted support, and told them exactly what happened. Their response was long and drawn out. But, it basically boasted about their efficiency in fairly counting, and distribution of artists royalties based on streams. Like I said, I'm financially strained, so I left it at that. Till now. Like, Wth is going on here? 🤔

[@RfeMil]

What distributor should we use then though? Im all for just selling on my own website with epk and Merch but that would limit all the potential listeners across the world

[@Flexi_Skot]

I think landr is the only viable option , dont get me wrong , i've never used a distributiin platformer but from what i've seen they're trustworthy

[@geek_marketing2020]

Thanks for the feature.