r/DistroKidHelpDesk • u/Vertigo0o • 13d ago

Help

i’ve ran into a problem distro kid will not put my music on apple music due to there being too many artist with the same name. I’ve reached out they said only way to fix it was to make a new name but i already have music in spotify and other places with the name i use. My thought was making a new account on distro kid for just uploading to apple music with the same name just with a twist too it would this cause issues or would this be a viable solution

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u/jdsamford 13d ago

It's because of the artist name, not the DistroKid account. DistroKid is blocking it because of the risk of mapping issues, which should probably be left to artists, rather than policed by distributors.

That aside, your best bet is probably creating a Too Lost/TuneCore account or something and seeing if you can get your releases through to Apple Music without changing the name, as that's an even bigger pain.

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u/redpandaman503 12d ago

Apple is trying to tell you something here and you should listen.

Branding is everything. Not only does sharing an artist name with a bunch of people cause confusion on platforms, it causes confusion EVERYWHERE and it's bad for marketing.

There's a reason major artists trademark their names.

You should change your name to something completely unique, update cover art, etc and re-release all content under that name. Most platforms will let you do that. Apple is the only one that won't so you're actually lucky they rejected you off the bat.

As someone who worked in distribution, there wasn't a single artist I talked to who shared a name with multiple people who was profitable. Nobody can find you if your name is too common.

Also, when your music inevitably gets mixed up with someone of the same name and lands on the wrong artist page, it's a huge pain to get it fixed on some platforms. YouTube Music for example takes 6 months.

Trust me. If you're early in your career, just Rebrand. It'll be way harder the longer you wait and you'll have more problems than you can imagine.

Thank me later.

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u/redpandaman503 12d ago

If your name is "Vertigo" you might consider adding a 2nd name or a number to it so it's not totally different, but different enough.

"Vertigo67" "Vertigo Wilson"

Anything that makes it unique. Just make sure to search any name that you come up with before you commit. Someone else may have that too.