DistroKidReviews 10

UPDATE:
Now, the company charges random taxes alleging "tax withholding". So, the same amount you cashout may be charged 3$ to over 10x more depending exclusively on Distrokid´s humor. I recently sent them proofs that this tax withholding was being randomly charged with unmatching amounts and all I got after almost 10 emails of ctrl+c and ctrl+v replies was "it was a technical issue", but no refunds or apologies. Also, they don´t even reply to FTC inquiries about it. The service was getting 1% better along the last year, but here we are again with the WORST company and staff ever. PREVIOUS REVIEW:
There´s only ONE thing that Distrokid does properly: charging. They are fast to charge, and that is all.
I´ve been using it since 2022 and actually with a large catalog, it´s being terribly hard to find another company that can honestly host my songs and charge the same prices of DK. But, after more than 2 years, here is the disease disguised as "distrokid":
-Nevermind if you have 1 day or 1 year of use, be sure at least once per month one of your songs will go to the wrong artist profile or won´t even be uploaded properly to the major stores.
-DK says that "as soon as they receive from the stores, they pay the artists". Also not true: it´s very natural to see a lot of other distributors receiving and paying the artists and DK always at least a week late than all others. Their support do not reply quickly and exactly, giving ctrl+c and ctrl+v replies and ignoring major issues.
-If, by any means, you have an issue or question about a specific store, you´ll ask for the store support, and they will reply that you need to ask directly to your distributor. So, you go to DK to solve your questions and: you´re ignored or, once again, ctrl+c and ctrl+v unuseful replies. Honestly: if you have time and money to spend anywehre else, avoid Distrokid. They are clearly focused on exclusively earning easy money and ignoring their users. I am waiting for a reply of ticket ******* since June 24th (almost a month now!) and they are just pretending it never existed. AH, and it is pretty normal to DK to disappears with some royalties along the way, specially from those platforms that do not have a panel like "Spotify for Artists" and similar. Can´t wait to find a better deal anywhere else ASAP.

No where can I leave a review but here. No surprise there now that I think of it. And they keep saying I need to update my payment information to keep my music online when my song hasn't been in any streaming service! Ridiculous! Still can't find my music! Just scammers!

Communication via DistroKid -- all via email -- is painstaking and they clearly don't care about helping customers. When I finally do receive responses to my request to resolve an issue with my song on YouTube, they're either vacuous, inattentive messages that clearly have had no human intervention, or they state that the issue was "closed." It shouldn't have been closed because it's still pending. It's now about two months since I first approached them with the issue. They say they've contacted YouTube and that YouTube says to give it up to two weeks; I've heard this a couple of times, beginning two months ago, and they just continue to say "Thank you for your patience!" It's actually insulting. The correction that needs to be made involves credits and should be simple to make. DistroKid is exasperating and clearly doesn't care. DistroKid's management might want to think twice about its current customer "service" strategies.

They deleted my favourite artist's music from all platforms except tiktok. $#*! them and i hope they close down. They treat small artists like $#*!.

If your song does well the metadata goes off shore and gets stolen giving your royalties away. You cant get it back and then there are all the auto subscribes you never asked for. Overall It's a bad site for the industry and for artists.

As of now, there is no longer any customer service. You just get sent around and around by a chatbot, no contact form. I'll be switching distributor

There have been several instances of licensing fees charged to my credit card well-after the title had been removed from stores. DK never references which title for which they are charging so as to perhaps sneak it by the customer/music artist. I've complained but it still happens.

Furthermore, their $12 annual license fee is flat so a struggling artist needs $12,000 streams annually, often without label support or procurement, just to break even. It would seem that under consumer law that licensing be done on a per-stream-basis. Bur DK is clearly and solely a profit-driven business where music artists should consider a better alternative out there.

Not a fan of having to pay a flat rate annually to keep my music on streaming platforms.
Not just that, but I have found that they don't pay out nearly as many royalties as the competition.
If you want better services from them, you're going to end up paying way more than what you'd expect. And most of their fees are reoccurring. No thanks. There are better options out there.

Upon CC info expiring and visiting the website, the first thing you are met with is a large pop-up urging you to continue payment... OTHERWISE, YOUR MUSIC WILL BE REMOVED FROM STREAMING SERVICES. Then, exit out of that window, navigate to another page, and BOOM! Same, incessant pop-up. Overly-aggressive marketing like that shows this company just wants money.
Compare this approach to a competitor like "CD Baby" that I have used along with DistroKid. They aren't aggressive like that, and also want to help you succeed as a musician and send out important notices and information, tips/tricks in a productive, friendly, non-aggressive manner.