Why is DistroKid Removing Indie Artist's Music?

In this video I'm going to be talking about what's been happening over at DistroKid. If you haven't been following along, essentially over the past few weeks people have been stating that their music has been getting pulled from DistroKid, not just from Spotify, but from their entire DistroKid account, meaning their music got pulled from every platform simultaneously. And at first this seemed like it was mostly just people who were doing things wrong, meaning people who didn't license a sample properly, people who didn't pay for the rights to use a beat, people who didn't properly disclose cover songs. Essentially, people breaking the rules whose music should be pulled because they did it wrongly and then they would have to, you know, go do things correctly and re-upload, or [music] they, you know, maybe they broke the law in some cases and and stole some music they shouldn't have taken. But, some recent news has come out that this apparently may be due to uh DistroKid being sued by UMG. >> [singing] [music] >> So, before we open up this can of worms, there have been people claiming that they haven't broken the rules and their music was still getting pulled. There was even one case of like a deathcore band or something uh being accused of stealing some sample from some like famous pop song, and then their album got pulled before it even came out. It was It apparently got pulled from stores and from DistroKid uh 2 days before it actually even went live. So, uh you know, imagine you're going to release your album, right, that you've probably been planning for over a year, right, in most cases, and it just vanishes from all stores and therefore you can't get your album live on the release date you told all your fans. Not that you did anything wrong, but because a system false flagged your music and identified some sample that wasn't actually there. A song or an album that you recorded from scratch with your own instruments and didn't use any samples. And and that's what has happened. There's been a whole bunch of other cases where people have said that they didn't do anything wrong and then they found out they actually did do something wrong, but there have been plenty of people who seem to just be getting caught in the in the trough of of issues. Like they're they're combing through all these issues and a lot of them are people getting flagged for things they actually did wrong, but there's always a little bit of people caught in the net, so to speak. Um so, this article came out and uh DistroKid confirms it has removed tracks in response to the UMG claims. And if you're not familiar with the UMG claims, I found this article here that sums it up. Universal Music Group sues DistroKid for deceptive trade practices in building an AI slop pipeline. And uh they claim in a federal lawsuit that the service infringes on the label's copyright by pumping out AI-generated slop that's siphoning revenue and listeners from legitimate artists and rights holders. Um and you know, I'm not going to say that they're necessarily wrong. Uh DistroKid is very likely the number one distributor of, you know, AI slop music, depending on how you you you you >> [laughter] >> you qualify that. Um but the that's that lawsuit, right? UMG is suing DistroKid. And it seems like as part of this process, um UMG has been issuing takedowns as part of that. Now, DistroKid outright disputes the allegations underlying that lawsuit. But let's just keep reading on here cuz there's some interesting information. So, um some of the artists whose tracks DistroKid removed said their music was not made using AI. So, remember, part of the lawsuit is talking about AI music, which UMG is arguing that uh there's copyright infringement from their music because their music was trained on by Suno, um which is kind of an interesting development. I don't know if UMG is still currently suing Suno or not. Uh so, it's you know, it's very weird, right? Like who who who is to blame here? Is it Suno or is it DistroKid? Is it the people prompting it? It's like it's a mess, right? Um, but this dude, musician Mac McGuire, said that six of his songs have been taken off streaming services. DistroKid did not contact him before or after the removals. He had to approach the company himself. He had a conversation with a bot, and one of the removed tracks was a cover of a Stevie Wonder song, Isn't She Lovely, which this guy said that he licensed. And interesting thing about DistroKid is if you if you do a cover song on DistroKid, they force you to do licensing through them. Uh, so the only way uh, either two options here. Either one, he licensed it through DistroKid, and DistroKid somehow invalidated that license and claimed that like it wasn't legitimate even though they issued it. Uh, cuz essentially DistroKid charges you to just do it for you. Um, or two, he didn't label it as a cover song appropriately, and then his song should be removed. So, I don't know which which the case of that is. Um, another one was built on a beat that McGuire bought on a marketplace, one that had also been licensed to other artists. And uh, this again seems like a case of like this could be an actual legitimate reason to pull it because like if the other artists uh, flagged it somehow, the um, then, you know, that then that's a very that's it's there's no way for DistroKid to be able to tell if who owns the rights to a certain sample, and that's kind of one of the risks you take when you're buying instrumentals for your songs. Now, a much more clear-cut case here is a further track was pulled over an alleged uncleared sample, according to McGuire, who said the song he had supposedly sampled came out 2 years after his. So, he's being accused of um, sampling a song that came out 2 years after his song, meaning that if anything that song sampled him. But what I would imagine is the case is he probably used some royalty-free sample pack and whoever released it after is just has a more aggressive like filtering system to detect cases or whatever. Or maybe it's a UMG thing where they're you know, if a UMG artist uses something from a sample pack, then their content ID flag system uh is going to basically just kind of dominate in that case like, "No, no, you stole it even though your song came out years before this song and both of you used a royalty-free sample pack, meaning both of you were legally allowed to use this case." Uh this is just kind of it's it's almost a joke at this point because it it it if if you're if anyone can use these sample packs and pay for them, then the whole premise of content ID is just kind of silly uh because like if you're using the exact sample, like you both have the rights to use it. And it's not the people who make the samples' fault. Like I used to make sample packs and and preset packs and loop packs and all that stuff. Uh but it's it's the content ID thing is just silly. Like we we can't just be auto-detecting samples the way we're doing cuz it like this is a constant problem. And and and if you're if you're into like music production, then you you probably know that one thing you're told often is like if you're going to use a sample, don't use it as is. Like time stretch it, pitch shift it, put effects on it, whatever. Like don't use it as is even if it works for your song because it increases your risk of being false flagged, right? Cuz like you do have the rights to use it. It's just that you don't want to deal with these annoying problems. There's a case of a rapper that he had an entire album pulled that had been up for 3 to 4 years without incident and there had been no copyright strikes or anything either. Now, having something online for 3 to 4 years doesn't negate any copyright issue. So, if there was an actual issue, then that's a different story. But the the thing is here, they're they're not the biggest problem I have with this is they're not checking with their customers. Most of these problems could be resolved, in my opinion, if they just reached out to the to the group uh that distributed it and said, "Hey, we got a Content ID claim. We got a copyright claim for your song. You have 3 days or 7 days or whatever they can justify doing to provide evidence that you're legally allowed to use the sample, you're legally allowed to cover the song, you have a license, you're legally allowed to to do whatever, um or we're going to pull it down." And most of the people who are doing things wrong are probably not going to fight it. They're just going to let it happen because they don't have any proof. So, they're probably just going to let it happen. The people who who did things the right way, they're probably going to have paperwork. They're going to have documentation that shows that they did things the right way, meaning they're going to dispute it right there, and then the song will never get taken down. Uh because one part of this is that a distributor does have a guidance on cop cop copyright removals. But once you file your counter notice, they're apparently obligated to wait 10 business days before reinstating any content or allowing you to re-upload the affected content. So, what that means is your song or album is going to be down for a minimum of two full weeks, right? 10 business days. That is two full weeks. And if, you know, if you're riding an algorithmic growth, if you're having a moment, if your song's going viral, two weeks of it being offline can completely kill any momentum and potentially kill your career, right? If this happens at the wrong time. So, it it's it's not really like an acceptable thing for them to just get a takedown request and insta take it down. Now, what I don't know is I don't know where the laws stand on this. Like, if they get a takedown for something, I don't know where they're legally allowed Like how much are they legally allowed to wait before they take action? So, like they might not be allowed to give their customers a 7-day grace period to submit counter-evidence before they take action. They might have to do something in a certain time frame. Um and then something that they basically cannot possibly interact with their customers fast enough. One thing about DistroKid is is they run on a very tight ship. They they don't have a ton of people there handling like manual conversations with people. Their support's pretty good in in the realm of like self-serve distributors uh like TuneCore and CD Baby and Too Lost and Amuse, DistroKid's support is actually quite good right now. It wasn't always the case. It used to be one of the worst ones, but it's better than a lot of them now. And that being said, they're they're known for automating as much as possible and being kind of cheap on the labor side and not having a ton of humans available. And you could imagine that, you know, let's say they're if if 0.1% of of artists are affected on their platform, I believe that's like 20,000 artists or something or 2,000 artists. They have over 2 million customers. Um so, you know, if you have 2,000 people getting releases pulled in the same couple week period, they you you can't just spawn dozens of employees to deal with all those reviews back and forth because this is like people submitting documents that they're legally allowed to license something and you having to validate that information and then fight that with UMG who's currently suing you for tons of money. And so, I have to imagine that DistroKid is playing it safe here and just like, "Cool, we're being sued by them. Let's just pull everything that they claim immediately and dealing with the fallout of that is less brutal than dealing with the fallout of them looking like they're not following through on on pulling down copyright infringement. It actually I wonder if my 2,000 estimate was was actually dead on because they said the complaint as the UMG's investigation has so far identified nearly 2,000 infringing DistroKid distributed recordings. Um they further alleged that DistroKid delivered nearly 12 million tracks to one unnamed streaming service in the in the 6 months before this was filed. Over half of all tracks delivered to that service, which is crazy, right? Then you know, I have to imagine that this is probably really just all streaming services. They said it's to one unnamed streaming service. Um it's typically people distribute the same music to every DSP. So like this is probably all of them, but it's kind of wild to think that in 6 months there there are 12 million tracks being distributed just from DistroKid, which let me get out a calculator. So pulling out a calculator here, uh 12 million tracks divided by whatever however many days are in 6 months, 6 * 30 here, is 67,000 tracks per day. Just from DistroKid, right? And I believe last number I heard was DistroKid distributes like 40 or 50% of all music. So if we like double that, that means there's about 130,000 tracks being uploaded per day across platforms. And and honestly, I I that's I actually thought it was a little bit higher than that, but it's it's close to what the numbers I've heard of are like about 150,000. So kind of a wild thing to think about. Um but it's you know, DistroKid is the dominant music distributor nowadays and it just sold for about, you know, rumored to be a uh $2 billion sale. sale. Um now when it was announced that DistroKid was getting acquired by a private equity company named CVC Capital Partners, >> [laughter] >> uh I made a video about it. I talked about how it I don't like it. Like it makes me nervous about their future. Like I'm a long-time DistroKid customer. I've been using them since 2017. I have I have over 100 tracks with them in my main account, and I have three accounts with them just for different like projects and then companies I'm involved in and stuff. And I've never had an issue. I mean like I've had minor issues. You know, thing with the distributor gets messed up or whatever, but then they promptly gets fixed. Um, and so nothing like nothing that's made me hesitant with them. Like some of my biggest grievance with them is like I don't like how they handle content ID because it's egregiously expensive in comparison to other distros. And overall like I still recommend them. But the thing with this is if if if you were going to sign up to a music distributor and you're thinking that there's a 0.1% chance that your music just abruptly vanishes at any time, are you going to use that music distributor? Probably not. And even though I I don't know how much of this is actually their fault versus if it's like UMG's fault. Uh, because like I think any distributor would kind of do the same thing DistroKid's doing under these conditions, right? They're they're kind of just protecting themselves in the face of like a massive company coming after them. Um, and DistroKid's the little guy here. Like UMG's very much the the big bad wolf in this in this case. Whether they're fighting for something that you agree with or not, DistroKid is in comparison quite a small company compared to UMG. So, I think any distributor would probably do the same thing. That being said, it makes me kind of nervous with all of my music there. That could any of my music get pulled for an uncleared sample or an improper cover song license or whatever, like something that I had nothing to do with because all I but I have never like taken a sample or or like gotten a free beat on the internet, recorded vocals or anything. Like I should have no issues, but um it's just a worry, right? I don't want my music to get pulled, and then I have to redistribute it, and then I lose a couple weeks of momentum for something that I never did wrong in the first place. Now, if you want to see how you can actually market your music using Meta Ads, check out this video right here to see that entire process from start to finish. And make sure you subscribe so you don't miss my next upload. Anyways, thanks for watching, and I'll see you in the next video. Bye.