Comparing The WORST Music Distributor Terms | Distrokid, Too Lost, TuneCore, Landr, Symphonic + More

I was with Distrokid for 3 Years. When I first started distributing my music For the first time in my career I decided to seriously pay for promo and marketing. I invested 6k$ into 2 major Marketing campaigns from Liontari Agency and Icy Network targeting Spotify growth. (Both Major marketing companies that work with tens of thousands of independent, as well as Industry Artists, Like Solja Boi, Boozi, +) they guarantee organic reach and provided receipts. Each Campaign ran for 30 days. and I had them both run during the initial Month of release. on 4 songs. I was up to around 17k monthly listeners and had about 5k followers and around a Million ish streams total that was the result of the campaigns. FF bout 4 months to the end of the quarter and I Was excited to see what kind of ROI came from it so I could decide where to go with the marketing from there. I went into my Distrokid account and Spotify had paid me just 54$ When I contacted them they claimed that they detected that my streams were bot streams and not eligible for payment. As well they finished the response with telling me that If I wanted to dispute the decision then then I would have to contact my distributor and have them reach out because spotify doesnt deal with artists directly. SMH... I have never paid for a play, or a like, or a bot stream in my entire life and Ive been making music for 25 plus years. On God. When I contacted despicable kid. they Treated me like some degenerate that deserved to not get paid, Because I was buying fake streams. like 8 emails back and forth arguing with me, treating me like Im a liar. Even though I had the proof of the results from the companies that ran the campaigns for me. AND THEY REFUSED TO CONTACT SPOTIFY FOR ME. Needless to say Ive been on spotify for 5 years now. Ive never recieved any royalty payments from them ever since all of this happened besides literally a couple cents here and there. I was never contacted and told of what they accused me of. They just refused to pay me. They never removed the music or anything. the songs are still on my spotify channel to this day.

YES

Who is the BEST music distributor then? I'm scared to realease anything!!

thank you for all your work!

Maybe you should start your own music distribution company where these awful, vulturistic terms don't exist. I imagine you would get a LOT of musicians migrating over to you! 😊
As I told Gigi a few weeks ago: trying to figure out which distributor to use is like wading into a pool of hungry piranha.

A video for best distributor would be nice, but "best" isn't the right word. "Least worse" fits much better, as they are all greedy scumbags who take advantage of artists any way they can. Face it, though: These distributors do nothing to promote your music in a huge sea of 100,000 releases a day, and neither do the platforms, e.g. Spotify, etc. Not saying that's their job, but since they don't, why use them at all? There's no value. Just the opposite quite frankly. Money down the drain. If you think it's the way to get heard, nothing could be further from the truth. If you believe that then you need to get your head out if the sand and face reality. Promote yourself with a strategy everyone else is NOT doing, and point potential fans to your own site where they can purchase your music or do it in a way where there is no middle man. Otherwise, you will always be taken for a ride. Artists need to stop picking up the soap and get out of this dream world that these distributors and platforms will help them to get heard. It's a scam. And if you make a "living" completely on streaming, what is your current lifestyle like? I'd like to know.

Thank you for sharing your expertise.

Пользовался лэндр, всё было чётко

Why not file a class action suit?

I have learned a lot watching this. Thank you. I will put it into use as soon as I get finished looking for angels in the valley.

what are the best music distributor?

they all sound like sharks. Yes, please, give us the Best of list, too. I’m finishing up mixes of songs I’ve written, and I don’t like the terms of any of these so-called distributers.
What ever happened to Harry Fox?

I need the best terms

PLEASE cover the terms of Ditto and their Web3 subbrand "Opulous"! 🙏🏾

What would be the best distributor

Is sync licensing separate from all this? Sorry if this is a silly question I’m very new to production.

DIstrokid are thieves. They really don’t even know what they are doing. They’re communications are really bad.

Can you do a video on sound could distrobution TOS?

Show me the best please!

Keep in mind if they can "remix your stuff" they can train AI on it. Limiting liability should be illegal as they are leveraging the inability of artists to upload directly to certain entities.

For example, it should be illegal, if I tell an Amazon company to sell my book, and the contract says "if an employee steals your profits (aka the CEO?)" you will only be compensated $200 even if they stole $13,000. Huh?

A lot of this in my opinion stems from people copying the Microsoft contract model, where use of an operating system only exposes them to liability of the license fee, not if the software scrambles your books.

This is an important observation to pass on to regulators - royalties are a different ball game then an operating system in my opinion - and it was copied because Microsoft licensed copy rights - not patents - even though the code is specifically designed for machines, we are using intellectual laws designed for humans - a moot point perhaps after all this time.

Keep in mind as well, whatever the lawyers "think" is right, the justice system can say "nope, you wrote the contract wrong". Here is the remedy "whatever it is".

Lawyers frequently become politicians, so there is sometimes unnecessary friction in the system to remove, lawmakers can make mistakes.

Don’t think I’ve ever seen a review on united masters?

No doubt you’re on fire !!!

Without third party financial audits, the distributors and streaming services will continue to have a free for all with other peoples money.

Well, I won't be using any of these. I'm ready to release but afraid to. Who has reasonable T&Cs?

I just want a distro that:
– Offers real support
– Treats artists as customers, not a crop to harvest
– Doesn’t take down my music if I unsubscribe — or when I die
– Is affordable enough for small artists

If they need to cover basic upkeep from my royalties after I'm dead, fine — but that's reimbursement, not a jackpot. Skimming 15% with no limit could mean thousands for mid-sized artists and up. That’s a scam.

I use distro kid and I use que perpetual distribution on one of my singles. Now I want to quit distro kid and I feel trapped. Please do the best distributors video

How is SoundCloud?

Valid discussion with information that needs to be related for millions simply don't know any of this.

I need a full review on toolost

Have a look at Emubands, maybe do a video on them, im no lawyer but they were well recommended to me

Please make a video on the best one. And or start your own.

Which do you use?

CDBaby was the least worst in my opinion.
The others were just terrible.

I discover that Distrokid are removing streams when they update the streams every 24 hour without any information. 😠

Have you reviewed the Musicdiffusion's terms? Could you please check and talk about that one?

Thank you for making these informative videos. I would love to see a video where you compare the top 3-5 distributors since I am looking to switch if DistroKid dosen't fix my ongoing upload issues.

Yeah, I'm not doing any of this. I create because I can. I am pressing my second record right now. People can create, one doesn't have to play the game...

Bye........
I'm gonna open my own company, no need for third class agents, Thanks!

Do you have a video covering TuneCore’s publishing administration service?

Question: so all the distribution companies can - legally - rip off their clients?

Perhaps you should be doing videos showing producers how they can become distributors.

I'll also show my appreciation for your past videos and would like to add to the chorus of voices for what your thoughts are for best distributors. (And if possible, maybe show which jurisdiction they're in, since for example the EU tends to have better privacy rights.)

Could you do Ditto, plz

Please check ditto distributor especially where u have to pay to be on the billboard

I have two questions that kind of relate to "choosing the least worst option." Does distrokid allow the legacy option on a waterfall compilation?

The reason I ask is because I would like to gradually build interest with single releases but some of my songs are too varied in genre (which would likely denigrate the algorithmic momentum in playlists and such) so I planned to lump those in on an album after those initial singles have been released. $30 seems an over the top charge for individual singles.

The second question is... If Landr or Distrokid retain rights to any royalties should an artist stop being a subscriber, what happens if you change distributors and move your songs over to another service?

Thanks!

What distribution do you use yourself, now your off cd baby??