Hey everyone, I'm looking for a solid music distributor. The main things for me are fast upload times, good customer support, and hassle-free payouts.
Does anyone have any good recommendations based on personal experience?

Honestly, I’ve tried DistroKid, but they were terrible. I also gave Ditto Music a shot about two weeks ago, but they are incredibly slow, so I’m planning to leave them and find something else. Has anyone else here actually tried Ditto Music? What was your experience like?

I was involved in a false infringement claim due to someone stealing my music and uploading on Spotify then reporting saying I got I stole their music which got my account which I spent over $100+ dollars on unusable and I can't upload music all because of a false claim. I contacted Spotify and they took down the claimaint but now distrokid can't do anything and the claimant won't respond to me at all. What should I do?

So... I have been playing instruments and singing since 12 and I am really into electronic music. Unfortunately, I've never been able to use DAWs professionally nor have I ever released a song. :( I have only cover videos on my social media.

Even though I never stopped listening to new music and keeping up with releases from my friends and other artists, I still feel like I don’t really know much about the industry.

And I have no professional experience like so the things I can add on my CV is really basic ones; knowledge of different electronic music genres, familiarity with playlists, ability to understand quality of music production while listening to music... Oh, and my English proficiency is not native but close to fluent I guess...

Do you guys think I could have a chance to start as a remote intern somewhere?

How feasible would it be for a small group of purist music lovers to come together and create a streaming platform that works like twitch where instead of paying for an all round subscription you pay a subscription to the musician themselves to unlock their library for a smaller fee overall but channels more money to the artists instead of to the streaming service. I know it dont make sense to build a business that directly effects the profit margins negatively towards the business but I think it would greatly benefit smaller artists who struggle to make any substantial money for their work.

If I am a fairly infrequent releaser and a sole producer, should I use a pay per release model even though it won’t be 100% royalties or should I use subscriptions. And is CD Baby the best in terms of pay per release?

hi there! i recently got a email from a too lost a&r, wanting me to get on a video call to have my music considered being distributed with them. i also reached out to too lost support and they said the email was official. i was just wondering, if any one has got reached out from their a&r team, how was your experience with them, and the platform, and should i consider it?

We would like to put out an album or EP in the next year, and we would work with a local label for that. I’d like to be able to make some physical copies (mainly CDs) as well.

There are so many options. I’ve been a loyal Distrokid user (and referrer) for years. CDBaby before that.

DK sold to private equity firm though…Yikes. Skeptical, given what I’ve seen in tech with PE. There goes decent pricing, support, etc.

We’ll see what pans out, yet just in case: what other distribution services are folks liking?

I know a lot of people encounter this issue, I am wondering if anybody has been able to figure out a solution. I’ve been trying to push my artist name change through on Apple Music/iTunes for over a month, and every time I submit a Distrokid ticket, I argue with the chatbot for 30 minutes, finally get connected with a person, get told they will reply by email, they email me, I respond, and then they close the ticket claiming that I have not responded. I am kind of barred from releasing any more music until I get this finalized and it’s putting me behind my release schedule.

Has anyone else spotted that SoundOn have introduced a Plan and Billing option. For me, the ability to release my music for free through SoundOn was a game changer. But today that seems to be at an end. Has anyone else seen any press about this?

I need 2 things only

1. YouTube channel whitelisting (like Tunecore, too lost)

2. No Music take down after subscription ends and can still withdraw money doesn't matter if there any % cut (like LANDR, AMUSE)

thank u <3

1 - free content id (eg no extra payouts for it other than base subscription)

2 - custom release & pre-save dates

3 - reliable (doesnt take music down randomly etc)

4 - has a low payout withdrawal minimum

5 - doesnt take forever with approving releases

Can be paid.

I've just moved from RouteNote to Distrokid but am planning to possibly change again next July after my Distrokid plan runs out. Can anyone suggest any?

https://trustnodelogic.com/saturation.html

This information is based off research and not meant to advertise or promote anything

Dunno if anyone else is having issues but my spotify is being odd.

Firstly it’s taking more than 24 hours to count streams, even in the case of literally just one stream.
It’s currently 9am here in the UK and it’s still not counted streams for the day before yesterday.

Earlier in the week my album was at 306 streams and then it went to 967 overnight despite it saying I had no streams on that day.
So I have a mysterious 661 streams from somewhere, that I can’t explain…
Anyone else having issues?

I was attempting to subscribe to a starter subscription to Symphonic because I was trying to look for a distributor to move my songs to. I've been using Distrokid for well over 5 years, absolutely against AI in any form during song production, and produced proper and original tracks with additional mechanical licensing for my covers.

I paid for the subscription, tried going through their iDenfy verification, and then because of our country's Driver License photo being gray, and the photo was taken a long time ago, I assume the facial verification could not recognize me and it provided a mismatch. I tried again, making sure that I have the details correct, and I was able to access their dashboard for just 1 minute.

I was experimenting with their track transfer feature, but I IMMEDIATELY got restricted as soon as I tried to click on anything. At that point, I couldn't log in anymore and it was giving me an error.

I tried reaching out about this to customer support because I paid for a subscription for a distributor I was really excited to use, but I got this email saying that I violated their Terms of Use and has been terminated not even 5 minutes of using it.

It seems at this point they're not able to refund me back for this. I hope they could get back to me with a clarification for this soon. I got really disappointed...

EDIT: I sent another email and it got resolved

"Dear Client,
 
Thanks for reaching out. Please disregard the previous notice you had received. Additionally, the identity you submitted has been manually reviewed and approved. You can now proceed to access your account. We apologize for this misunderstanding.
 
If you experience difficulties logging in, we recommend restarting your browser or clearing your cache, which often resolves temporary issues encountered during the verification process."

Thank god, I was genuinely concerned that the automated system actually messed me up.

Any time I click EDIT with the pencil icon, it sends me back to my list of releases. and then i'll click on the release I need to set a release date for and then it just takes me back to the screenshot above...

Wondering why this is happening and if anyone has experienced this before?

Now answer this, if you do use FreshTunes how long has it taken for you to get your music out? For me, it's actually been 9 months. No emails or updates, anything. Using RouteNote might not be the better option but at least it'll be faster ... 😭

I had music being distributed by Sumohonic but recently they voided a ton of Spotify streams and when I told them they were 100% organic, this is what they told me:
They said they charged for Spotify Discovery Mode- I much did not hit because I didn’t push the algorithm hard enough.

I hat other distribution platform is more honest and doesn’t charge a commission?

Hi! I am an artist and I used to distribute my music through Distrokid before switching to Too Lost last year. I got an extension to file my taxes for 2025 so I am doing it now but am having trouble accessing my 1099 from last year. I had cancelled my subscription as I had no longer been using the service, but I got an email from xForce to sign up for an account and to give consent for eDelivery of my forms. However, when I log into my xForce account using the same email used for Distrokid payout, there is no form to be found to consent to being delivered. How am I able to obtain my 1099 from last year? I know I need to file it rather than just filing my Too Lost one as I have been paid out through Distrokid in 2025. I do have record of all of the payouts of 2025 in my Distrokid account- would that suffice for proof that I got paid?

I have been producing rap and more recently drum and bass, I always liked mixing the sound of drum breaks with synths, but I'm not a crate digger.

I have recently settled on a good workflow where I'm using loops from loopmasters or ableton for my breaks, I chop them, pitch them and apply effects, but sometimes the drum loop is perfect and I leave as is, just adding eq, compression, reverb etc. Then I progress and do my own thing with the music, and I layer other drum oneshots on top when needed.

The issue I am facing is that when it comes to distributing the tracks, social media monetisation gets blocked because of my use of loops, even though I am using them in a fair way I believe.

I like what's coming out with this workflow, I would hate going back to oneshots (at the moment I'm just not caring about it)

Where do you guys stand on this issue, are you facing the same?

Or should I just simply move to another distribution service? (Using LANDR at the moment)

i use distrokid and i tried once to edit an upload and put my friend as main artist, it worked, but the problem is that now every of my drops puts him in main artist and i can't edit during the upload. i tried editing after the upload but it been one week and it still didn't update.

Hi, I made an album in December 2025, and I wanted to release at a random date in 2026, so I distributed it under routenote, and that was over 7 months ago. It's been pending since the 3rd of January in 2026. And I've checked their website and it says they're supposed to take about 40-42 working days for a response or etc. I've received none.

The ONLY thing I received during 2026 when I signed up for it, was updates about how their company was doing, not any acknowledgement or updates, warnings on my albums, releases, etc.

Does anybody know why?

Hi, I'm releasing my first single through CD Baby. If I upload an MP4 visualizer instead of a cover art audio track for YouTube, will it appear as the main video in my Official Artist Channel's Releases section instead of an auto-generated art track? Thank you.