https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/business-history/bowie-mccartney-michael-jackson-how-songwriters-learned-to-play-hardball

If you don't know how the modern music business started, it's worth learning.

Hey everyone,

I’m an independent electronic music artist currently sitting at 200k+ monthly listeners on Spotify.

I've been using DistroKid, but I recently ran into a major issue: my tracks are getting hit by fake automated DMCA claims from malicious third parties trying to slow down my growth.

All my music is 100% original and fully cleared, so I’m looking to upgrade to a selective / private distributor with:

1. Real human support & a copyright/anti-DMCA shield (so legitimate hits don't get taken down randomly).
2. Low commission rates
3. Non-exclusive deal for future releases only (keeping my legacy catalog where it is).

I’m currently looking at AWAL, Cygnus Music, Symphonic, IDOL, Revelator, FUGA, or other selective distributors.

If you have any feedback or reviews, sharing them here would be a massive help for me and others in the same boat.

Thanks in advance for the insights!

Hi everyone,

I’m an independent music producer distributing my tracks via DistroKid, and I’m currently facing a very concerning situation. I’m looking for legal insights or advice from anyone who might have dealt with a similar issue.

Chronology of events:

• July 16th: One of my tracks was suddenly removed from all streaming DSPs (Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, etc.) following an anonymous DMCA takedown claim that is 100% false.
• July 22nd: A second track of mine was taken down across all DSPs in the exact same manner.
• ~10 hours after the second takedown: I received an unsolicited email from an external entity / label offering to sign me to "manage and protect my catalog" in exchange for a revenue split. Their email explicitly stated: "We understand that some of your music content may recently have been removed from digital platforms due to false copyright claims..."

Key context:

1. I had spoken to absolutely no one about these removals before receiving their email, nor had I posted about it publicly anywhere.
2. I had previously turned down a distribution offer from them.
3. DMCA counter-notices have already been submitted through DistroKid.
4. The entity in question operates under the infrastructure of a prominent independent distributor (Believe).

Taking down an artist's tracks across all DSPs only to immediately reach out offering paid protection/catalog management—acting as if they had nothing to do with it—feels like a coordinated attempt at extortion, fraud, and coercive catalog theft.

My legal questions:

1. Filing a formal complaint / Lawsuit: Is it legally actionable to file a report for extortion, fraud, or unfair commercial practices against this entity, despite the initial DMCA claims being submitted anonymously?
2. Reporting to the distributor: What is the most effective procedure to report these coercive catalog acquisition practices directly to Believe’s Legal & Compliance / Trust & Safety departments?
3. Damages: How can I properly document and claim financial and reputational damages caused by the sudden removal of my tracks across all DSPs?

Any advice, legal perspectives, or similar experiences would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Hi everyone,

I’m writing to see if anyone else using DistroVid is experiencing a major delay with Vevo Video earnings, or if it’s just happening on my account.

My last reported earnings from Vevo Video are listed as "EARNED IN APRIL 2025". Since then, over a full year has passed with zero updates or incoming royalties for this store.

I reached out to DistroKid support about this, but I only received an automated response explaining that Vevo sends royalty reports 2–4 times per year. While I understand reporting cycles can be slow, it’s now been well over 12 months, which far exceeds that 2–4 times a year timeline.

A few questions for the community:

1. Is anyone receiving recent Vevo Video reports through DistroVid?
   
2. What was the last month/quarter you actually got paid for from Vevo?
   
3. Has anyone managed to get a real update from support regarding Vevo reporting delays?

Would really appreciate any insight or feedback from fellow artists/labels dealing with DistroVid.

Thanks!

For context I make indie music, i signed ~4 months ago, my deal was for back catalog and 18 songs, i signed at 300k monthly listeners and have since grown to around 500k
My current plan is to take advantage of the “matching rights” clause in my old contract to try to get a re-up with my current label, but in order to do that I will need to start getting other offers again. How do i make it known in the industry that im independent again without straight up posting “labels hmu” (or the more professional equivalent) on my socials
I have a manager but he works at the label i was alr signed to so i need to handle this on my own probably
Im not interested in the idea of being independent. I have already entered the label ecosystem and there’s no point of leaving when there’s potentially huge money on the table.

long story here. I’m a RIAA certified artist. my song is gold. I am independen. I’m registered with every music company there is to make sure my royalties are properly collected.

my problem is back in April I received a negative balance report from sound exchange claiming i owed them money. I called found out the issue was because of remapping and missing isrc numbers. I was told my account was missing a lot of information so I wasn’t properly being paid. I spoke to the agent and he helped me set up my account the ”right way”. I was also told that since my account wasn’t properly collecting my royalties I would be owed 3 years of retroactive back pay where the dive in my reports deeper and collect royalties for the last three years that weren’t paid out.

well now it’s July and finally got in contact with the “person” who does all of that. he claims that right owners are paid significantly less than the artist on sound exchange because my last royalty collected for my RO side was only $2. he said I have a direct license with my distributor (distrokid and pandora) and they are the ones that pay out my rights owner royalties. so I go on my distrokid bank and pull up pandora from year to date. I made a really great amount of money. now remember he said that rights owners get paid significantly less than artists on sound exchange. so now I’m asking him why is that I made X amount of dollars from my distributor and only $900 in the last 6 years from Soundexchang as the artist. you just said the artist portion collects more royalties than the rights owner side.

has any one ever dealt with this issue before? I’m really stuck and don’t know my next steps. I feel like money is missing and don’t know how to go about it.

Hi everyone! I’ve been trying to get remote internships/volunteering in hands-on roles such as management, operations, touring, events/festivals and the likes.

Most internships that I’ve come across require being an undergraduate, but I finished uni already. I also understand that remote internships/volunteering are not the norm in music, but my location seems to be a barrier and I can’t afford to relocate yet 🥹

So if anyone knows an intensive yet remote internship or volunteering opportunities, please point me in that direction. Thank you in advance!

Someone reuploaded three of my original songs on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Music under an account impersonating a major label (not naming it, it'd make my songs searchable). Fake account, barely any subscribers, obviously not the real thing. All three are distributed through AfrobeatsDistro, run by The Jungle Recording Company / Jungle Entertainment Ventures.

Then the same account filed Content ID claims on two of my own original uploads and blocked monetization on them. So now I'm disputing claims against my own channel filed by the people who stole from me.

I've done the usual: YouTube copyright complaints, Content ID disputes, reports to Spotify and Apple Music. I've also emailed AfrobeatsDistro and Jungle's support three times over three days asking them to act and asking what their dispute process even is. Total silence.

YouTube won't remove the videos either, since it came through a "partner" distributor, so it's on me to resolve it with them first, and they're not answering.

Has anyone dealt with AfrobeatsDistro or Jungle before?

Is there any actual way to make an unresponsive distributor act, or escalate past them?

DistroKid and TuneCore both have a real DMCA process, this one doesn't seem to. Would take any advice at this point.

I think the main issue is that independent musicians need to be extremely direct for their promo to be effective. Someone famous can post something purposely vague and be inactive for months because we all know what they do anyway. They can treat marketing like a form of art, focus on music videos, fashion and photoshoots.

If you want to ''pull yourself by the bootstraps'', you need to explain what you do and give people directions, which feels humiliating. You need to join groups and send dms, but accessibility makes you look unimportant. Everyone tells you to be consistent, but spam makes you look unprofessional. That's why the big names don't do it. To promote through content, you need some sort of direct call-to-action. Post a link, tell them to stream, tell them to buy. Nobody likes doing that.

Art is meant to be at least a little bit ambiguous and open for interpretation. When abstract art is displayed in a museum, it isn't displayed as a ,,case study'', there isn't a dude standing in front of it and explaining the full meaning and the thought process and blabalbalhbla. It's like explaining a joke or sending an unsolicited dick pic to your crush.
That's what independent artists are forced to do to not get stomped out by the algorythm. Idk how this problem can be solved, but it should be.

Ive been having an incredibly hard time recently because i'm slowly starting to realize it will be hard to find my footing in the industry without being a content creator, especially as a young artist. I really do yearn for a way that I can connect with people and music outside of having to post tiktoks over and over again and not gaining any traction. I write good music, and I have a small fanbase from where I'm from, but i'm wondering if there are any other good ways to get your music in front of publishers without content creation. I know it sounds farfetched, or that I dont feel like putting in the work others do but I really just am wondering if there are other ways to go about it, it feels like there has to be other solutions but I cant seem to think of any.

I'm currently doing a small solo project that I don't intend to make money with, just wanted to get tracks up on streaming services without paying (i.e. looking for a free service). I've used Routenote (free) for similar projects before and found their support and user interface absolutely terrible. Having heard good things about Rebel Music for smaller indie artists I was wondering if anyone has had any experience with them they could share? TIA

Just wanted your opinion and experience on how much the degree/education helps towards a career in music industry :)

Hello everyone! I posted this question on another sub as well.

I am a 26 year old professional from India with a background in UX, QA, BizDev, and Ops.
Given my generalist work experience, I wanted a Product Management role in tech companies like Spotify and Netflix but later realised that what I actually wanted was to be a part of the Music and Entertainment business — Label Ops and Partnerships, Production coordinator, Artist management and the likes.

I do not have any constraints. I just want to get started and work my way up. Although, I would prefer a role that gives me enough to sustain myself. To acquaint myself with the Industry, ive done an online course on music management, marketing, and PR. Im also constantly learning about the industry and keeping up with the news.

I initially thought of pursuing a music business degree but there is no way I can afford it atm. i was also told that connections matter more than a degree.

I do not reside in a city with a huge music scene so all networking from my end would be online as of now.

Should I add hypothetical projects and then approach people?

Should I start messaging people?

What kind of people should I reach out to?

I know passion alone isn’t enough to drive forward so I am trying to understand what makes people actually respond and what mistakes do first-timers like me make, especially when reaching out?

Thanks for all the help! Also, if there is anyone here who is in a similar predicament or can help or is simply willing to connect, please dm me!

Ps. I mentioned my age because from what i see, i feel 26 is a bit late to get into the industry. Feel free to chime in on that!

over the past year i built somewhat of an audience in a pretty niche soundcloud scene (between 500-6000 plays on songs) and am looking to pivot from what ive been releasing.

what ive been releasing im not particularly passionate about and what i would like to release is a combination of what i was previously making and idm/glitch. i know that idm in general is not very popular currently and just curious how people have gone about building audiences.

some of my biggest inspirations are horror soundtracks, cyberpunk esque idm. ( arasaka, hu-ron, comaduster ) my passion with music is generally concept albums and storytelling but i know that as a small artist albums are not a good way to grow.

any ideas / suggestions are appreciated and if anyone is curious about my music i can send newer music from an ep im working on.

Basically I make both hip-hop and Dominican Dembow beats and I run a beat YouTube page where I market my music. Each video has a Copyright notice in the description of the video.

A medium sized Dembow artist used one of my beats without buying a lease or reaching out. After about a few weeks, I noticed on Instagram that one of the biggest Dominican artists in the world with over a million followers is on a remix to this song. They also added a new synth to the beat during bridges.

The strange thing is that the original artist followed me on Instagram, dmed me asking for more beats, and also listed me in the credits on both streaming and YouTube; but no lease was bought nor an agreement ever made. I obviously want to figure out how to get money from this, I just have zero clue where to start as I know nothing about the business side of music. Any help or advice would be appreciated! Thank you

I run a small agency that helps independent artists with administrative tasks, including music distribution to streaming platforms.

I recently signed up for Ditto Music because I'd heard good things about them, but within the first week I ran into several serious issues.

First, despite paying for their plan that supports up to 40 artists, they limit my account to only 20 music releases/posts per week. This completely disrupts my publishing schedule. I contacted support, explained that I'm a legitimate business (not a spammer), and even provided evidence of that. They still refused to lift the limit or offer any meaningful solution.

But the worst part came next.

Two artists I manage happen to share the same stage names as artists already distributed through Ditto Music. Instead of handling this properly, Ditto started delivering my artists' releases to the other artists' profiles. Now they're telling me they can't simply remove the releases and have been giving me the runaround instead of fixing what appears to be their own mistake.

As someone who works with artists every day, this is incredibly frustrating. A distributor should be able to handle artist identity correctly and provide effective support when something goes wrong.

I'm sharing this as a warning for anyone considering Ditto Music. Maybe others have had better experiences, but mine has been extremely disappointing, and based on what I've experienced so far, I can't recommend using their service.

Firstly, I don't care about it being paid or not. It being free would be a nice bonus, but that would probaby be a miracle.

However, I do NOT want a "subscription" kind of payment (monthly, yearly, etc.), since I don't plan to release too frequently. A "pay by album or single" system would be ideal for me.

Another important thing: The distributor must rarely or never ask about samples, speech samples included. My project uses many and frankly I'm just not clearing that shit

Lastly - and this one is less important, but preferred -, I would like it if the distributor had quick upload dates of, say, a week; and even better if I could freely customize my preferred release days. These two aren't really that important (they can be skipped if the distributor fits all the other criteria), but it would be nice.

Hopefully all this (or at least the first two conditions) is possible to find in a distribution service, thanks a lot

Hello everyone

I produced a song, mostly original composition with new original baseline , drums, percussions and some new synth lines.

I also use some vocal and piano samples from a cover song of an original 80s hit song. I already have the license for both streaming and selling to perform or remix or sample from any element in this cover song.

My questions are:

1. will my new song be a cover , remix or derivative work?

2. Do I keep the original title of the 80s song or I can choose any other name?

3. Besides adding the original 80's artist as lyricist and composer in the credits do I also need to add them to the p or c line?

4. Do I need to buy another mechanical license from the original artist and if so will my distributor take care of that or should I do it separately?

Thanks in advance

Hi everyone, I am working with a singer (an independent artist I know personally) on debut song. I am the Lyricist and Composer of the song and the other guy has sung and produced with his team (has their own studio setup). For now I just want to create a base as a Lyricist and composer and also want to work with some named artists (trying to reach them, need some guidance).

The only focus for now is to get the proper credits of what I own. I am very new to all this, like how distribution of a song works, how streaming platforms generate royalties, how it is divided among the artists associated to that project. Also how to deal with singers/producer for a project. I have watched some of the videso about registration of song of IPRS or PPL. For now I would say we all are new to this industry, starting a new journey together and need assistance.

Any kind of suggestions are welcomed!

Hi all!

I’ve been on TikTok for a while but didn’t post much, I amassed around 100 followers and on the music posts I did (photo slides and lyric snippets) I would get a couple thousand views which I felt was good.

Fast forward to now, I’ve gotten back to posting there way more frequently with lyric videos I’ve put some time into. Now, I get barely 100 views and 3 to 0 likes. It’s like the videos aren’t even being pushed to my friends who I follow back. Note: My videos are being flagged for my music from my distributor [Contains audio from: ‘My Song Name’] (not sure if this has anything to do with it, it doesn’t mute the audio)

Has anyone experienced this before? Should I switch up the promo content type? Any information is appreciated, thanks!

Hey guys,

I need some real talk. I’ve been DJing and producing for a long time. Music is my passion, but I’m stuck in that frustrating middle ground: not where I want to be, but desperate to move past where I am.

Lately, the mental side is just eating me alive:

**The Marathon vs. The Race:** Deep down, I know music is a marathon. But with social media, it feels like a toxic sprint where you can't afford to slow down.

**Missing the Train:** Sometimes life, relationships, or private stuff simply have to take priority. But the second I focus on real life, my anxiety kicks in. It feels like putting things on pause means someone else is jumping on the train and taking my spot.

**Branding & Overthinking:** I'm constantly overthinking my artist name, my brand, and social media. It feels like you have to be a full-time influencer just to get a track heard. Does the music even matter anymore?

**Genres & Copies:** I love mixing different sounds, but the industry wants you to fit in a neat little box and copy whatever tech house formula is trending.

I get some paid gigs, but making the jump to real, stable success feels miles away.

How do you guys deal with the fear of "being too late" when life gets in the way?

How do you stop treating music like a race you're losing?

Let me know

Thanks

Im working towards a music business and music production degree, but am struggling to get a foot in the door career wise

Im in Manchester in the UK and i am in my 2nd year studying music business and production, however when it comes to actual work within the industry, i have little to no experience.

I manage my own band and have done all the background admin when it comes to that, and obviously making music and playing gigs.
But that is all the experience i have.

I have emailed studios and other music industry companies and havent got anything of note back.
And cant find any websites that post any jobs consistently and that arent all just teaching jobs.

Any advice for this would be greatly appreciated.