Beware DISTROKID a SCAM

DISTROKID SUCKS

Bottomline DISTROKID is 100% a SCAM and DISTROKID SUCKS.

They sure sound good in their sales pitch info and have okay references, but the reality is we gave them over five times what most accounts give them in a couple of days and now the dozens of songs we listed with them are all deleted.

So now all the songs are disappearing from all the digital stores they ‘aggregate’ to. I’m giving them a few hours to FIX THEIR SCREW UP and then I will hit them with a lawsuit that will destroy their startup.

For years we published lots of music and SOLD IT DIRECT as MP3 files from lots of our own sites.

Now music is distributed through aggregators like Distrokid and a few big internet companies process all the sales and streaming.

All this new bullshit digital delivery is in its infancy.

Anyway, we got some new songs that are getting major media attention and had to put some of our catalog of Adoni Music and 9th Level into all the top digital stores. iTunes, Google Play, etc.

So instead of us going to each store and setting up publisher accounts, we chose the bullshit digital file aggregator solution many companies are using.

We chose Distrokid.

Reason is they have a minor yearly fee for unlimited uploads of music and no fee to collect the sales dough from the stores.

So we tested them, setup the normal $19.99 account and sure enough we had a few songs in hours on iTunes and Google Play.

So being leary of a startup company with no phone number on their site we decided to upgrade to multiple artist account. Guess what the company can’t give you a credit instantly, so now they got your 19.99 and bang you for a larger plan which can be 35 or 80 bucks.

So we put up 2 days of work into upload dozens of songs and covers and info and then we start giving them additional money since we have original music covered by the unlimited plan we could upload but part of the reason we chose Distrokid was due to their 12 bucks a song fee to handle the mechanical licenses on cover songs. We recently decided to publish some cover songs from a band we have a long term relationship with for their original music.

So when you start uploading songs at 12 bucks a pop for mechanical licenses it adds up fast.

This morning I’m listening to some of our songs on Google Play and I start to get error messages. Then I start searching sites like Google Play and while our artists pages are there NO SONGS.

So I’m thinking it’s Google (I HATE GOOGLE AS YOU KNOW).

But instead it’s this new bullshit aggregator Distrokid.

Our account is active and yet EVERY SONG IS GONE.

No email we did anything wrong.

No nothing, the only clue we had something was wrong was our music page showed we didn’t even have 1 song in our account now.

So now our artists are doing PR with big sites and saying look for us at iTunes and the clowns that run Distrokid are so fucked up all the songs we uploaded for them are GONE.

So the mother of all lawsuits will soon be on these scammers Distrokid, unless they fix this shit and give me a nice sum for the damage they did to my artists today.

Until it’s fixed, if it ever gets fix, I say BEWARE OF DISTROKID they are 100% A SCAM and in my opinion DISTROKID SUCKS.

Every other aggregator has a minor fee per song to list for artists and labels and they don’t lose your songs.

Distrokid will remove all your songs IF YOU DO NO PAY THE YEARLY FEE. Well our yearly fee was paid for TWICE. Guess what when you try to call them NO PHONE NUMBER. A search of their whois record reveals a real red flag, their whois phone number is a BS google number the type SCAMMERS love to use.

Their auto responder email says it takes over 24 hours to respond.

This is 2016, the net moves in real time and my artists are doing interviews and their sites have links to stores that all had their songs on them yesterday and today thanks to DISTROKID all their music is gone.

You want to be in the big leagues Distrokid, no problem, but you harm a company you will be sued like the fucking assholes you are.

You deleted our songs and if they are not back NOW you owe me money for every minute they are missing.

UPDATE

Distrokid responded back to my lawyers, they deleted our account and gave a form letter for ‘possible reasons’ and none apply to us.

The interesting thing is they claim in the form response that one possible reason is some songs may have others work in them. So they took 12 bucks a song for any ‘covers’ we publish. 90% of our catalogs for our musicians are ORIGINALS and the ‘covers’ we listed with Distrokid were all PAID IN ADVANCE as to their BS fee to obtain ‘mechanical licenses’ for the covers we did give them to distribute

So, Distrokid gave a FAKE REASON to have deleted dozens of songs of ORIGINAL MUSIC and any ‘cover’ we gave them we properly listed as a cover and PAID IN ADVANCE their nominal fee to obtain mechanical licenses.

So now we wasted lots of man time using Distrokid. They claim they will REFUND our money we paid, but as yet we haven’t seen it.

SO BEWARE OF DISTROKID, they do not deliver as they advertise.

The best way to have music put into the top stores is a direct relationship as a publisher. So if you are a musician use a label that has their own distribution with the big stores since our venture to use an ‘aggregator’ did nothing but waste valuable time. Anyone or any publisher can set up a direct relationship with both Google and Apple (iTunes). The dummies at Amazon say on their music publishing page to use a few aggregators they list, they do not publicly encourage publishing companies to deal direct with them. Distrokid is not on their approved aggregators list and it’s not on the list at iTunes as well.

DISTROKID SUCKS that is my opinion and unless they pay me for all the time we lost using them to upload our catalogs, that will be my final say on the matter.

In today’s music scene you have to be on the top sites and have music listed with a PRO so you make sure any public play on streaming or radio gets YOU PAID.

If you have no choice but to use a digital aggregator use one of the APPROVED DIGITAL AGGREGATORS listed on iTunes at least and that means you can cross off the list Distrokid.