I’m not going to tell you what name I make music under, but I recently decided to distribute my music to streaming platforms. And holy fucking hell is the state of music distribution a complete failure. You would think music distributors would have the easiest fucking business models: distribute music to services and collect money because all they are are middlemen.
Hold your fucking horses because that is not even close to what music distributors do nowadays. Let me show you how difficult a journey it’s been to not get my music distributed still on streaming platforms as a cautionary tale for the musicians and music lovers reading this. And to any entrepreneur looking for a new market to enter.
DISTROKID
Distrokid was the only platform that actually delivered my music to streaming services. Unfortunately, Distrokid sends you a deluge of spam emails for every track you upload, meaning if you have a normal album of 10-12 songs, or a double album of 18 songs like I do, you are going to get an email for every track every time something happens to any of the songs. Did one just get approved? 18 emails! Did one just get uploaded? 18 emails! Do they want to market something unnecessary to you? 18 emails!
There’s no way to unsubscribe, so I reached out to their help! And by that, I mean they have no support email, no support number, no support tickets, and their AI chatbot looks like the screenshot.
I downloaded 4 browsers over a weekend to finally be able to get the chatbot to the point where I could ask to talk to a human. I don’t know where my money is going for distribution services, but it’s clearly not going to the customer experience. Next!
CDBABY
Imagine going to the post office to deliver a letter to your mom. And the post office person goes, “I don’t like your handwriting, try again.” You’d be like, wtf? Imagine then that they get their supervisor involved who’s also like, “yeah, we don’t like your handwriting, change it or we won’t send your letter.”
This example is about CDBaby, who decided not to distribute my album because they didn’t like my font choice for the name.
TUNECORE
In order to sign up for Tunecore, you must click their verification link. And if the verification link isn’t working, you must submit a support ticket. And if you want to submit a support ticket, you must log in. And if you want to log in, you must click the verification link. And if the verification link doesn’t work, you must submit a support ticket. And if you want to submit a support ticket, you must log in. And if…
SPACEMEDIA
Spacemedia claimed I was using AI, which is laughable after doing a 30 second web search, and laughable when you realise my music is about constipation and my dog stepping on my balls. Why use a company who can’t do a quick websearch before making big decisions?
AMUSE
Amuse used to be free and free of AI, then it became paid, then it became AI, and now I don’t know if today’s deal is going to be tomorrow’s deal because they can’t stop changing their terms of service. Why use a service that’s that questionable?
DITTO
Ditto Music rejected my album because I used samples. It’s nice that they think I’m that talented, but I’m not and have to make everything by hand. Which would be fine if I didn’t have to reupload everything and hope and pray they don’t think it’s a sample again. And then reupload again and hope and pray…
I know what you’re thinking – reuploading an album isn’t that big of a deal. Well, it is when their website is broken and uploads only one track until it decides to upload the second track. And then you get to delete the duplicates!
ROUTENOTE
Routenote would be good if their support could answer my tickets about why I can’t actually upload music.
OFFSTEP
Offstep doesn’t refund you the full amount, will flag your album for random things (like samples that don’t exist), not tell you where those issues are, and make you reupload the album multiple times. But, to reiterate, they steal your money but not giving a full refund.
This will be an ongoing post…