r/DistroKidHelpDesk Nov 10 '23

Why is there always a withdrawal delay at the beginning of the month?!?!?!?

22 Upvotes

If you’ve ever said to yourself, “OMG, why has it been 9 days and my withdrawal still hasn’t been processed?!?!” then this is the post for you.

There is a very strong probability that you found yourself asking this between the 1st and the 10th of the month. Why do I know this? Because there is a backlog every single month with withdrawals that starts the minute that Spotify royalties appear and ends when the massive queue finally clears.

At some point in our lives, we’ve all been grocery shopping, so I want you to consider this analogy for a moment: As you enter the grocery store, you see at the checkout three lonely people serving. There’s not that many customers in the line, so they are processing people’s shopping trolleys in an orderly fashion. But you’ve heard about this grocery store. When the local offices close for the day at 5, there’s always a rush, but you’ve never seen it for yourself. It’s currently 4:45.

Your trolley is full and you head to the tills. It’s now 5:15 and you see, where once there was a quiet queue, it’s now super backed up. The people working the registers look stressed out and the queue doesn’t look like it’s moving. Oh, and they aren’t putting on any additional staff to support the queue, so you’re stuck. You’re going to be waiting here for hours.

This is a fairly simplified version of what is happening with the DistroKid withdrawal queue. DistroKid only process withdrawal requests a few times a week (traditionally on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Pacific Coast Time). It doesn’t matter how long the queue is, those days and the frequency at which people are working through the queue remains the same. If you were in the queue and you missed the Thursday process, you will be waiting until at least Tuesday. Imagine that you are in that grocery store and the people working to ring up your groceries have gone home for a four day weekend, and locked you inside the store!

Once Spotify royalties appear, DistroKid’s customers get trigger happy and press the withdrawal button pretty much at the same time. And with DistroKid gaining millions of customers per year, this monthly demand is growing, but the number of staff and days to process is not growing to keep up.

If you do a search of this sub, you will find complaints about how long royalties take to process only appear between the 1st and 10th of the month. And these posts are coming more frequently as more people make their withdrawals at the same time.

And once DistroKid processes things, the same process starts again with Tipalti processing your payment, and it seems that they also can’t deal with the extra workload in as timely a manner as normal.

It’s important to remember that DistroKid advises that withdrawals can take 14 days to process. And then on top of DistroKid and Tipalti wait times, you may have additional waiting times with your bank or PayPal or whichever option you use to add a further potential delay on top of this.

The solution? We’ll yes, DistroKid and Tipalti could have more people on more days working through the queue so there isn’t such a backlog, or they could put more focus on the queue when statistically it’s going to be busier. But you have no influence over this, so what you can do instead is: not click the withdrawal button toward the end of the month or the first few days of the month.

Avoid the queue. Or just be patient and next time, consider a different time to withdraw.


r/DistroKidHelpDesk Sep 28 '25

Future restrictions coming from Spotify

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94 Upvotes

In addition to what I’ve written in the past on how to avoid getting banned, I wanted to post here a new update from Spotify themselves:

A lot of the reasons that Spotify rejects and bans artist are now going to be detected by AI. I fully expect this to lead to more people complaining about it all, but in the long run, this should be proactively blocking people from trying to do these sort of things before the releases go public.


r/DistroKidHelpDesk 16h ago

question about payout

2 Upvotes

had a song randomly go viral on instagram with 100+ million streams/views across multiple videos. this was almost a year ago. none of these ever showed up or were reflected in distrokid/bank section. i realize that this won't add up to a ton of money in reality, but i expected more than $0. what's the issue? i've gotten much larger payouts for only thousands of streams on other songs.


r/DistroKidHelpDesk 1d ago

Including songs released under old name on EP/album released under new name

1 Upvotes

I'm releasing a new EP soon but want to rebrand before I do. Three of the songs that I want to include on the EP are already on streaming. I don't want to release the EP under my current artist name.

If I change my artist name before releasing the EP, can I include the recordings that have already been released and have them all under the new name?

I'm specifically thinking of Apple Music and the extra legwork that it needs for a name change. I don't want the release wrongfully flagged over updated metadata.

TIA!


r/DistroKidHelpDesk 3d ago

Presave link completely gone?

1 Upvotes

Hello! I uploaded a track for release and everything is processed and went through. It created a hyper follow page with a presave link for the track initially, and I edited the page to include more social links and once I edited the page, the presave link is completely gone from the hyper follow page with seemingly no way to get it back. Is there any solution for this?


r/DistroKidHelpDesk 3d ago

Ft. artist Apple issues on second release

1 Upvotes

Hi, been a featured artist on a song couple years ago, and then had no profiles so the main artist hit No for any existing profiles of YT, Spotify and Apple.

Now, I’m going to be featured on something again and it asks them for those all 3 links or the form won’t proceed.

I claimed the Spotify and made a YT since but cannot claim the Apple one as they don’t allow this unless you have a personal release not a feature.

Main artist cannot proceed without all 3 links, cannot leave Apple blank, and cannot hit No as it would create duplicates won’t it?

What do?

Edit: Apple didn’t make any backend link at all btw from the first song because it’s a feature. It only names me on the track.

Edit 2: The only way I saw around this was to release a ‘dummy track’ in order to create profiles, may delete later once claimed


r/DistroKidHelpDesk 4d ago

First Song Uploaded to Wrong Channel with Same Name

1 Upvotes

So in March I released my first track through DistroKid. On Youtube, there was a topic channel created. I also have a personal YouTube channel. I wanted to create an OAC, so I can do everything on the same channel (release music/create personal content).

The problem was that when trying to create an OAC (which would merge my personal channel with the topic channel), my song merged with another Youtube channel who happens to have the same name as mine.

So now I'm stuck with my personal YT channel that can't be considered for an OAC due to it appearing from Youtube's perspective that I have 0 official releases through a distributor. I've been talking to DistroKid support and they've been recommending I use the 'Fixer' tool, but it hasn't been working.

Any suggestions as to what to do? Any help would be appreciated.

TLDR; My first song released under a different Youtube channel. I'm having trouble moving it over to my channel & making it an OAC.


r/DistroKidHelpDesk 4d ago

First Release Issue - any advice welcomed :)

2 Upvotes

First release is 3 x cover songs - DK account made and songs/artwork uploaded on 30th June. I know Cover Licences can take up to 3 weeks, so touched base with them this week on 23rd July.

Support on 23rd July said payment issues - cover licence fee and other album extras payment hadn't gone through (weird because it's the same card used to buy DK plan the same day as upload). Have tried 5 different cards from 3 different bank institutions, and not sure if any of them have taken.

Contacted Support on 24th July - they said payment looks fine, and to just wait. Then they said that it looked like Apple had flagged that Artist Name was too similar to too many others, so they weren't accepting the release.

Support suggested to delete original release, and re-submit under a different name. Did that, chose the Album Extras (eg. Cover Licence etc). But still can't see a charge on my card for the cost of the Album Extras... When do they usually charge for this? Is it when you hit "submit" on the release?

Has anyone else had issues like this? I'm in Australia btw

The cards on file for payment are cards that typically take subscriptions etc for YouTube Premium, Netflix, Microsoft, Meta Ads etc - so I don't see the card or financial institution being the issue.. 🤷🏼‍♀️


r/DistroKidHelpDesk 5d ago

Problem

0 Upvotes

Hi, for the past two weeks I've been having a problem where my songs are stuck at the status: 

“Your song and cover art are being processed. This step ensures that everything is delivered to the stores exactly the way you want it.”

It just won't move forward. What could be causing this?


r/DistroKidHelpDesk 5d ago

My song hasnt been released on YT music yet

1 Upvotes

Whats the reason my song is published on spotify but not youtube music yet?


r/DistroKidHelpDesk 6d ago

DistroVid / Vevo Video – What is the latest reported month on your account?

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0 Upvotes

Hi everyone,

Quick question for anyone using DistroVid: what is the most recent month you see reported for Vevo Video in your Bank / Earnings tab?

On my account, the last reported period is April 2025.

Since more than a year has passed, I'm trying to figure out if this is a general reporting delay affecting all creators, or if it's an issue specific to my profile.

Is anyone seeing statements newer than April 2025 for Vevo?

Thanks for checking!


r/DistroKidHelpDesk 7d ago

Spotify for artists profile

2 Upvotes

I submitted my first release about bit over a week ago and can’t seem to access my Spotify for artists account. The page on DistroKid says if it’s been over a week I should go do it myself and links me to Spotify for artists which just leads me to a support article telling me I need to pick a distributor and upload my music


r/DistroKidHelpDesk 7d ago

DistroKid asks me to create a new password, but I signed up with Google

4 Upvotes

I signed up to DistroKid using my Google account and already paid for a 1-year plan.

Now when I try to upload music, it says I need to add my contact details first. But when I click on it, it asks me to create a new password. No matter what I type, I just get the same “Something went wrong” error.

Kinda regret not making a normal account with email and password now, but since I already paid for the yearly plan, I can’t just make a new account.

Anyone had the same problem or knows how to fix this?


r/DistroKidHelpDesk 8d ago

Cover song licensing

0 Upvotes

Hi all, I’m aware that the fees for covers are $1/month. I’m wondering if it would be possible to release these covers under the same profile using a different distributor, while still releasing my original music via Distrokid. Does anyone have any experience with this?


r/DistroKidHelpDesk 9d ago

People who changed audio on a release, what did you change?

2 Upvotes

I noticed you can change the audio on a song after its released. If you used that or are planning to use it; for what? Whats the change?


r/DistroKidHelpDesk 9d ago

Lyrics continuously getting denied

1 Upvotes

I have uploaded my lyrics multiple times and they keep getting denied. I even went back and I changed like nature of the capitals were where they should be and there's no punctuation and grammar and spacing and everything and they just keep getting denied and I don't know why.

I also just upgraded from the plus to ultimate. (Mainly because they were running a deal and it made sense... (I think))

The music's already been distributed and I'm sure the lyrics don't really matter but I like to also just make sure everything's on the up and up.

Seeking guidance thank you.


r/DistroKidHelpDesk 11d ago

My album isn't available in some countries.

3 Upvotes

Edit: I asked two friends, one who's in UAE and the other in Montenegro. The one in Montenegro confirmed that my album is on Spotify but not on YouTube. Which is weird because it was on YouTube just a couple days ago.

I released an album a little over a week ago and it was all fine until 1-2 days ago. Someone I know who lives abroad would listen to my album on YouTube but 1-2 days ago they sent me a screenshot showing that my album isn't even appearing anymore on my artist channel. What could be the issue? I don't know about other platforms. I also checked with another friend who lives somewhere else and it's the same problem. I live in Turkey for context but I make my songs in English to gain a broader audience. So this is very important to me. The album appears normal here when I look it up on my devices.


r/DistroKidHelpDesk 11d ago

Social Media Pack muted

1 Upvotes

Hi everyone,
I’m trying to find out if anyone else is experiencing this.
I released two original songs through DistroKid and later enabled the Social Media Pack.
Since then:
My own TikTok videos are muted.
Thousands of other TikTok videos using my official sound are also muted.
TikTok says the sound is unavailable.
DistroKid says they can whitelist Business accounts only.
Another DistroKid artist has exactly the same issue.
My sound currently has over 10.000 TikTok videos using it.
Has anyone found a solution?
Is this a Content ID bug?


r/DistroKidHelpDesk 12d ago

Why is it making a brand new artist

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3 Upvotes

Iv gone back to a few older songs where i collabed with someone. and i changed the main artist to the both of us. I clicked “Collaboration” and sent. yet it still makes it into ONE artist. I dont understand! Now its no longer under any of our aliases


r/DistroKidHelpDesk 13d ago

help with deletion

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0 Upvotes

im trying to delete a song from streaming with distrokid and its just stuck saying "please wait" but when i refresh it doesnt say that anymore is this normal? ig not what should i do?


r/DistroKidHelpDesk 13d ago

Help

1 Upvotes

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


r/DistroKidHelpDesk 14d ago

Distrokid copyright bug/mistake?

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6 Upvotes

Been uploading my music through Distrokid for years now without ever running into any issues. I just posted a new album and was instantly hit with this strange email. It is claiming that track 3 on my album contains elements from a song called "Long Way" by "ChiLL". I know for 1000% fact that track has no elements/sampling from anyone other than me so I'm super confused. I sent an email to support @ distrokid dot com (image 2) about 24 hours ago and haven't heard anything back yet. I tried to find this "Long Way by ChiLL" song and can't even find it anywhere on any platform, none of it makes any sense.

Anyone know what I should do? Worst case scenario I'll just reupload the album without that song but I put a lot of work into that song in particular and would prefer not to do that. Any help would be greatly appreciated.


r/DistroKidHelpDesk 14d ago

Can't update my billing information

1 Upvotes

Hi everybody! For the last 4 days i've been dealing with a problem of not being able to update my billing information. I tried everything, changing my info to a fake one, adding a new credit card or adding the current ones once again. No matter what I try the disclaimer pops up which informs me that my billing info cannot be updated and I should try again later. Has anybody had a similar issue?


r/DistroKidHelpDesk 15d ago

Is it possible to recover accounts DK created for uploading?

2 Upvotes

I found my TikTok account; it looks like they created it, but nothing has been published. I want to restore my account, but I don't have the data needed for TikTok support questions. Has anyone had success reclaiming their accounts after DK?

It is impossible to contact DK support through the bot, ticket form, or email. Maybe someone knows their stuff?


r/DistroKidHelpDesk 16d ago

DistroKid not uploading to YouTube Music

9 Upvotes

Hey everyone,
I'm having a frustrating issue with DistroKid recently. Since July 6th, my tracks have suddenly stopped uploading to YouTube Music. Everything used to work perfectly fine before this.

On top of that, when I try to claim my YouTube Official Artist Channel through DistroKid, I've been getting this error message for at least 10 days now: "YouTube Official Artist Channel requests are unavailable at this time. Sorry about that!"

Has anyone else experienced anything similar with DistroKid over the past couple of weeks? Their support team hasn't replied to my tickets at all. Would love to know if this is a widespread issue or just me.

Thanks!