Got banned/restricted on distrokid for no reason

  • Thread starter Thread starter amadwok
  • Start date Start date
amadwok

amadwok

New member
Hello,
I have no idea why, all i did is uploaded my piano music to distrokid, which is all 100% original, written by me, and played by me. The only reason i could think of is that it my tracks were about 1 minute long.

The weird thing is that they don't seem willing to give any sort of explanation about anything

i just received this message from distrokid:

Hi,

Hope you are well.

We've been notified by stores and streaming services that one or more of your releases has been rejected due to editorial discretion.

Unfortunately, stores are no longer accepting releases from you via DistroKid. You’ll need to try another distributor for future releases.

Please understand that DistroKid is unable to assist with reversing this and many DistroKid features have also been restricted as a result of this. We have no other information or context, and we are unable to get involved or take sides when this occurs. We’re just the messenger, passing along this info to you in hopes you find it helpful.

We understand that this email is probably frustrating to you, and we regret having to be the messenger of bad news. However, we hope this email is helpful, and we thank you for your understanding.

Best,

August
DistroKid Support
Click to expand...

any ideas?
 
Yep, short tracks , ultra quiet tracks, tracks flagged as advertising and even band limited tracks fail the authentication system. Distrokid are so big now that as soon as rejection from just one submission happens, the zap you. Either just one track, or if you do it often, they ban you, without explanation and they dont care. They are also allowed to keep your money. If they determine you may have used unacceptable (to them) ways to increase streams, that is another ban you cannot contest. When you submit, there is a little warning, I seem to remember, but ive been banned a long time now. The trouble is they dont know why spotify or whoever, rejected it. Send me a link to the piece if you like and i’ll give it a listen, or post it here? Usually one of us will spot the problem straight away.
 
amadwok said:
Hello,
I have no idea why, all i did is uploaded my piano music to distrokid, which is all 100% original, written by me, and played by me. The only reason i could think of is that it my tracks were about 1 minute long.

The weird thing is that they don't seem willing to give any sort of explanation about anything

i just received this message from distrokid:



any ideas?
Click to expand...
Was your money wiped out to zero?
 
It's not just Distrokid and Spotify. I really don't think and distributors or steaming sites care about us little guys and it all seems like a bit of a crap-shoot to me. Im currently with Distrokid at the moment which has been going okay. When I tried to sign up with Routenote they rejected my songs due to fake streams but the songs were new and had never been released! I tried to explain to no avail.
 
Have a look at this:


I would open a new account under a slightly different name and submit longer tracks with a bit more production. Do more of the same and you will only get banned again. They get tens of thousands songs submitted every day, most of which is never listened to. I suspect even their AI agents are authorised to ban people.
 
That is dangerous advice. If distrokid make the connection you lose access to everything and all the people who have your music delete it. You have no recourse and attempts to get around their system fail. The give away is your bank details which has your real name and account. Your made up name needs a new bank account!!
 
rob aylestone said:
That is dangerous advice. If distrokid make the connection you lose access to everything and all the people who have your music delete it. You have no recourse and attempts to get around their system fail. The give away is your bank details which has your real name and account. Your made up name needs a new bank account!!
Click to expand...
Two people can have the same name and it is easy to open a new bank account with a different bank. Spotify is an under staffed and over worked enterprise. They make a lot of decisions without much conviction behind them.

Alternatively your dealings with Spotify can be via a company account. I have 3 personal accounts with different banks, a credit card and a company account. If you start dealing with Spotify via a company (LLC) they are no longer dealing with you, a company is a different legal entity.
Most of all, try to work out why they rejected you and don't do the same thing again.
 
I have the business account and my personal ones but hate having to mix them and transfer between them. Distrokid are the aggregator who are a law unto themselves. If they decide you have transgressed, particularly on artificial promotion they are well know for catalogue wide takedowns. I still have access but no history and no bank balance. Just £0 balance. Nothing a non-US person can do. Judge and jury. If they discover multiple banks and names are one person, your income stream will zero. It’s taken me years to get things reissued, and no way will I risk duplicate identities again. It’s not like you are able to talk to Apple, Spotify and the others directly so you are stuffed. One of my recent ones just didn’t appear on Spotify or YouTube. I did a remix, well, a very tiny one that extended the length a bit, and changed the credits and name slightly, I did not label it as classical in any tick box and resubmitted and it appeared on release day. Spotify is not meta, but I’m assuming the rejection from meta also is impacting all platforms.
 
What a great way to take out artists you don't like! Set up a computer with 8 VM's to rotate a playlist of your least favourite artists on continuous play 24 hours a day and get them banned.
 
In my case, I had a track - an instrumental cover of a 70s pop song - all licenced and legit. It probably had 50 streams a week on average, then suddenly it went to 500,00 in a few days, then it shot up to over 5 million! I was amazed and tracked it down to Tik Tok, where it was background music on a series of russian makeup videos. A girl in her early 20s. I watched it climb and climb and then realised that even with 0.002 cents a stream or whatever, there was serious money at play - then - we have noticed abnormal activity on this title and have deleted your account. It actually took three or four messages to go from noticed, to investigated then actioned, but the upshot is the music is STILL there under my name, presumably generating funds I have no access to. There are many facebook distrokid complains groups all with similar stories and not one has succeeded in any way. Your agreement with them gives them the power and you have no redress at all!
This is an example.
Pete (DistroKid)

Mar 19, 2021, 16:27 MST

Hello,

Streaming services are investigating potentially suspicious and/or fraudulent earnings related to the music you uploaded to DistroKid.

Your DistroKid Bank has been disabled due to the potentially suspicious and/or fraudulent earning activity reported to us by stores, and will remain disabled during their investigation.

We do not have any further information from the stores at this time, but will enable your Bank as soon as we are notified that their investigation has concluded without confirmed suspicious and/or fraudulent activity.

Thank you for your understanding.

Best,

Pete
DistroKid Support
http://distrokid.com

and it never was - that was the last communication from them.
 
I had the same email in the OP , not banned, restricted, only been there a month but uploaded 70 songs from two artists....no more releases accepted....so do I stay with DK and the 70 songs?
 
Won't hurt to stay, but I'm with multiple aggregators now. The best ones for generating me money are songtradr and sounddrop - on purely tracks vs payment, soundrop is the winner, so now I treat them as the one to be very careful with, others like record union get my releases that could potentially be problematic, so if I upset them, I lose less. Songtradr also won't promote some of my music to certain outlets as they say they will not accept them, however, record union got them up with no issues? Sort of a gamble really. Soundrop charge me more money - it was 99c per release but it is now suddenly 6.99 - but I put up with it because the returns cover it easily. Songtradr don't charge me for each release - so as I give them the less likely earners, it works.
 
its not personal, its operational, been going on eight years, founder of DK posts here but not satisfactory, some people rejected immediately!
 
Dont forget that the meta organisation who are linked to facebook and others now have a ban on certain music styles, so when distrokid and others submit the music, they get rejected. Classical, repetitive, whale sound, noises and other material are now on the naughty list. I wonder if it because these are so difficult for their AI systems to identify. Five hundred versions or more of Beethoven’s 5th leads to false claims and if they payout the wrong person, they cannot recover it. I recorded a choir. Six months later a copyright claim from a German record company representing somebody in Munich. Did I want to counterclaim? Yes I did and of course won. I can see why classical is a problem. The work is public domain, but the new recording is a creative work, and has rights. Their system that recognises melodies and chords and twiddly bits fails miserably. Noise and whalesong is the same. It applies to music created with beats too. Even free beats can be misidentified, so these are banned too. Samples the same if they are identifiable. Creativity stiffled by inability to process it for ID? I even tried to sneak through a bit of classical disguised as another genre. That got spotted and rejected. Rights are the driver, I’m sure.
 
DK says try another distributor, but if you are at fault they too would have your stuff rejected, and obviously you are not at fault..... I contacted spotify and they said I am not banned, have six more in the 'pipeline' to be released...and gave me my artist(s) pages...DK say I am restricted though.........on my first few releases they gave me a rejection due to a song name, they then said they would upload it manually, so they did me a favour....now dumped...wish they would explain so you dont make the same mistake, looks like the dumping reason is not something they want to share....Im not going to guess
 
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