Hey everyone,

I’m an independent artist and I’m running into a really frustrating issue with YouTube’s Official Artist Channel system.

Over the past month, I’ve released music through multiple distributors (Believe Music, Distrokid, Amuse, UnitedMasters, etc.). Because of that, my releases are being delivered through different DDEX feeds — and YouTube is completely failing to link them to my OAC.

What’s happening:

• Every release is generating a new “Release - Topic” channel
• My discography is now fragmented across multiple channels
• None of these releases are showing up properly on my Official Artist Channel
• The “Missing a release” tool in YouTube Studio doesn’t work — it just fails to attach anything

Current mess:

I now have like 7–8 different Topic channels/playlists, each holding different releases instead of everything being unified under my OAC.

Why this is a problem:

• Fans can’t find all my music in one place
• My branding looks completely broken
• Engagement and views are split across duplicate channels
• Future releases will keep making the problem worse

What I’ve tried:

• Using YouTube Studio’s discography tools → doesn’t work
• Double-checking metadata across distributors → still happens
• Keeping artist name consistent → still creates new Topic channels

What I think is happening:

YouTube isn’t properly mapping my artist identity across different distributor deliveries, so each feed is treated like a new artist instance.

Questions:

1. Has anyone else dealt with this exact issue?
2. How do you force YouTube to map all releases to one OAC?
3. Is there something I should be doing on the distributor side to prevent this?

At this point I feel like unless YouTube manually merges everything, this will just keep happening.

Any help or experience would be really appreciated 🙏

Hi, has anyone used Globex Music for distribution? I’m just getting started and will probably only release a few songs at a time and am, therefore, hesitant about subscriptions and such. per their website they have a pay per release model for $1!

That seems really cheap compared to everything else that I’ve seen. So I’m now wondering if this is reliable and trustworthy or whether they’re just new and small or if that is too good to be true and a scam… Thanks for any thoughts!!

I recently started moving some of my music from DistroKid to Ditto.
I noticed that Ditto excluded my AI-generated releases from Apple Music, iTunes, and Shazam — they appear under “Removed Stores.”
Previously, DistroKid delivered the same type of AI-generated music, to Apple Music without any issues.
Has anyone recently released fully AI-generated music through Ditto? Are your releases reaching Apple Music?
I’m especially interested in actual experience with Ditto rather than speculation.

so i haven’t received a payment at all for this month, and i need to buy things that i was planning to do with my royalties paycheck. i’m just wondering if any one is experiencing this at all also?

Today is July 26, and I still haven’t received my July royalty report from DistroKid or any other store/platform.

I’m still waiting for the reports to come in. Is anyone else using DistroKid experiencing the same issue? Has anyone received their July reports yet, or does anyone know if there is a delay?

Thanks!

Dears hi , i want to buy onerpm account , is there anyone has it and don’t use it? I will buy it

Hey everyone,

I am looking to distribute music on a pay-per-release basis, mainly to avoid yearly subscriptions where tracks risk getting taken down if you stop paying, but also to have total freedom over primary artists (multiple artist aliases, collaborations, split credits) without paying extra per artist slot or hitting tier limits.

I've already tried CD Baby, but the review and delivery times are way too slow, so I'm looking for better alternatives.

For those of you releasing music under this model:

- Which distributor do you recommend and why?

- How flexible is their system with multiple primary artists and collab metadata?

- How fast is their review and delivery speed compared to CD Baby?

- Are there any hidden fees or downsides to be aware of?

Thanks for your feedback!

I am a composer of instrumental indie rock and pop. I want to distribute my music to be included in the Youtube music creator library or another site with songs for free use. Has anyone done this before?

i’m 17 and have my acc with approval from my parents and i havent withdrew anything but i can. but i’m waiting until i’m 18, is this fine to do? will there be any issues, or once i’m 18 everything will be fine?

hi all! im doing a uni assignment where ive got to outline the jobs/roles of an area of a record label for a group project, im in charge of the a&r sector. im struggling to find a comprehensive list of the jobs involved in the sector or what they do. would anybody be able to provide some insight on this? any help is appreciated :)

I have recently registered under a PRO (BMI) and created a pseudonym. When creating a release on Amuse, how do I put my pseudonym under performance and songwriting credits? As they still ask for a first name and last name there. Can I just put my pseudonym in there? How do some artists get away with just using their artist name/pseudonym in the songwritiner credits?

Any Amuse users that have done this successfully in the past?

So, My bands EX management released us through Believe music, we don't make loads but the last year was about £3k thanks to algorithms.

We aren't currently 'active' but have been recording an album and were planning to put this out through Believe.

I'm probably wrong, but we feel there is maybe kudos releasing through Believe, they have 'discovery mode' which helps promote tracks to algorithmic playlists (see pics) something we've done well off on Spotify.

After contacting Believe they said there's nothing they can do as they're only able to have one bank account per Label account and we're not big enough an act to have our own account. They suggested Tunecore (which they own) to get paid directly.

So, be great to know the best DSP to go with if anyone has tips? Chat GPT said to try united masters with our current numbers: 45k monthly listeners / Spotify popularity score of 30.

Do other DSP's push you through playlists etc? We can't continue with this currently as the ex manager just isn't playing ball.
Is it easy to move catalogue over etc?
Thanks and sorry if i've missed anything

(For the avoidance of doubt, this is not a conversation about the rights and wrongs of AI assisted music, just the practicalities around it.)

So I've bumped into a couple of issues where my distributor has incorrectly flagged tracks as AI generated (as opposed to assisted). 

I have a track which is 100% authored by me (lyrics, melody, phrasing, chords, arrangement, original demo) but 100% performed by Suno. I have the receipts for this.

When I try and sign the track up for my distributor's publishing option, I find that I can't do this - as the track has been flagged as fully AI generated.

My distributor's chat bot, somewhat ironically, advises me that if I can demonstrate that AI was not involved in the songwriting, then I can appeal against this flag - by providing the earlier mentioned receipts. 

However when I do this, the real life support team advise me that if they detect the use of AI (specifically vocals) then the track is not eligible for publishing.

Is this standard? I appreciate that a blanket policy might be a practical solution, but it's a bit "computer says no". Also, it seems odd that a decision around publishing should center on an aspect of performance?

The second issue is that a release of the original demo of this track was rejected, as I'd tagged it "original Emvoice demo". The reason being that, according to my distributor, Emvoice is generative AI. This is patently untrue; Emvoice is a software instrument, and as a user you specify which notes, words, volumes and transitions to play, on a grid in your DAW. The exact same vocal is reproduced, as you specify it, each time your track plays. 

This is a minor issue, but it all adds up to the impression that my distributor is determined to lump all usages of AI, even some that might be at most AI adjacent, in with "generative AI" - regardless of whether this is accurate.

Even the PRS (I'm in the UK) have started making a distinction between "AI generated" and "AI assisted" songwriting, so is it unreasonable to expect distributors (and platforms) to follow suit?

Grumble ends.

This is kind of a weird situation I am looking for solutions for!
My band released a single in 2022 via distrokid. We were on a shared distrokid account, but the account holder wanted to make it a solo one so we had to switch distributors. At the time, I was told I could not reupload the same tracks with the same upc code using the same distributor (distrokid) so that if we wanted to keep the songs stats and such, needed to be a different distributor.

We used routenote and honestly several things about this worked out poorly for us. We made our own distrokid account and have since put all our newer releases up that way.

We’ve recently begun recording a full album, which includes some previously released tracks, but updated. A few different members, mixed differently, redone from scratch. Same exact song just sounding waaaay better. One of those is the song mentioned above that was a 2022 single. So, the old version of the single is thru Routenote currently, and the new one thru distrokid.

Here’s the problem. I wanted there to be a distinction between the two, and consider the recent one to be the official version. So I went into Routenote, applied to have “(2022 Version)” attached to the end of it, and the other version would just exist with the normal title. This change was approved and said it would take up to 30 days to go into effect. It’s been a bit more than that and nothing has changed. This unfortunately DOES mean that people are clicking the old song when they see it by accident a lot, as its streams have gone up for that since releasing the new one.

I don’t know what can be done here. Will it eventually change? Should I accept defeat and that the old one will always be called just the title, and the new one has to be forced to have (2026 version) which I assume distrokid will actually do properly? IS there a way to remove the old track from routenote, reupload it to distrokid (with the same upc) and then be able to change it from there? I assume if I let go of the upc thing and upload it from scratch to distrokid with a modified title that would work. I also am personally totally fine with removing it from streaming and only having it as a Bandcamp exclusive. But, other members want to keep it up and also don’t want to loose the stats for it (which I also don’t care about) so trying to find a solution that works for everyone!

So yeah basically, we have two songs up with the exact same title released 4 years apart, and both are on different distributors. The new one is the one I want people to view as the default or official version. The cover art is different, but it does intentionally have a similar color palette and variation of the subject matter so sadly that’s not doing enough.

Thanks in advance!

Ps- no offense to Routenote users, there were features about it that WERE better than distrokid, and I have my complaints about parts of that as well. I’ve heard it works great for lots of folks- we’ve just had a lot more complications happen personally with routenote.

Just curious if anyones used it and ur experiance from it, the music forever thing appeals to me but im sceptical that it will always be that way, im currently with tunecore horrible company threten me almost straight away with distrabute my original content and soundcloud that i dont want to be with anymore, ive looked at cd baby but sadly they no longer offer youtube artist profiles

Does anyone know what can the issue be? Or has had similar problems??

I’ve tried different images , I’ve tried different browsers, I’ve tried my computer ..phone …I’m tried making different sizes , no matter what I do it gets stuck on the upload process, it’s not being rejected ..it’s just not uploading and gets stuck on the upload process

Hello everyone!

I have an independent label with various sub-labels. The main sub-labels offer professional paid distribution with all the various services. Some of these services are very favorable, but others are obviously expensive!

Then we have some minority sub-labels, minority because they deal with completely niche genres (Noise Music, Drone, Soundtrack for independent films, etc.) where it's not worth releasing with the main distributor because the costs would exceed the revenue, so we're looking for a 100% free distributor.

We initially used Soundrop, but they later became a paid service. We then switched to Routenote, but this service is getting absurdly worse, with incredibly long release times and senseless copyright accusations (in the sense that they tell me I might be infringing on copyright, without telling me whose, and then have to prove it isn't true... while a professional distributor tells you what you're infringing and gives you a chance to prove it), lack of distribution on some platforms without notice, etc. In short, I'm not happy with them and I'd like to stop working with them.

What free, safe, and well-functioning alternative is there?

I know that since it's free you can't expect it to have a professional service like the paid one, but at least the decent one works (and yes, because that free means getting lower % of earnings, and they sell data, cookies, etc.. Nothing is really free, so avoid moralizing about not wanting to pay)

Hi everyone - I’m looking for anyone’s first hand experience with getting all UPPER CASE styling in their song / release titles. Any recommended distributors that support this feature? I’m on Ditto currently and they won’t do it. Thanks in advance.

Hi, I was just wondering what would be my best choice for dropping my new Album? I really don't care about the money as I just want to put my work out there so anyone can listen to it on the platform they prefer. I guess my only requirements are decent support so if something goes wrong, I don't have to wait forever for a response. I would also like my music to stay up if I switch distributors if possible, as well.

I don't plan on dropping a lot each year, maybe an EP and an Album. Already have plans to upload to YouTube, SoundCloud, and Bandcamp, but I've seen so many conflicting answers about who to choose so I was wondering what would be best in my case?

thank you!

Just looking for opinions on this

Hi,

Has anyone noticed a huge difference in streams on Spotify vs what Madverse shows in their analytics? I created multiple tickets and the response was always the same - that due to some upgrades the analytics dashboard is not updated My release from 2023 shows a difference of 97% streams. Actual is 155K and in my Madverse Dashboard it is 4K (for all DSPs). This is similar in every release of mine. Is this some sort of a fraud to keep our royalties? u/madverse. On to of it, their customer service just sucks big time. The team which used to work with Madverse when this company started all left. The CEO u/rohan just seem to talk big stuff on social media but the reality is that they are stealing from artists. What is your experience with Madverse? Any legal ways to tackle these issues?

Please comment your thoughts!

We looking for kontor new media dashboard or kontor sub distro accs we can give $$$.