A great book to read regarding this matter could be “Music marketing for the DIY Musician” 
They say it may be a retaliation for this:
Spotify added audiobooks into its premium, family and duo plans, and the company claims that the move now qualifies them as a bundle, which pays a discounted royalty rate from normal standalone subscriptions, given Spotify now has to pay for books and music from the same subscription price.
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So I removed all my music through my digital distribution(Distrokid) around 3 weeks ago.
I got a confirmation and I thought that all was good.
But today I got an email from DistroKid(Bot) telling me that Spotify has removed my music due to me breaking the rules by using some kind of paid service to get my stream numbers up.
I never used those kind of services or tricks and my stream count will proof that so it pissed me off and I replied to Distrokid that it´s false accusation and I got offended by this.
1 1/2 hour later I get the same email again, telling me that Spotify has kicked me off due to me breaking the ruels.
It´s clearly a bot sending these mails out and it will take a long time before my first reply lands in an mailbox of a real person but I was wondering if any of you have had these emails lately/after leaving Spotify?
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I didn’t remove any music first, but I got that email a week ago about one of my older albums on Spotify. I have never used promotional services and my stream counts make that embarrassingly obvious. Exchanged a few emails with distrokid support and it was a complete waste of time, just cut and paste responses to an obviously ridiculous situation. Never had respect for Spotify but lost any I had for distrokid, they were useless.
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Yes, I’m with you on this.
I replied to the first mail and the 2nd but as now they wrote me the same BS message 7 times over night.
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I had the same earlier this year and Distrokid pulled all my releases since 2017. Total pain and never got a real response from them. I never used any service for artificial streams but did have one album I released last year start to get lots of plays. Now I’m back to square one…
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I was considering releasing the music my mate and I started to release on Bandcamp on other platforms… Then I backed off because the subscription-to-release thing seemed stressful to me.
This makes me even less attracted. I guess I’d use CD baby and pay for releases without being dependent on a company that could sue me, annoy me, remove my music if they pretend there’s something fishy or I can’t pay the yearly fee anymore…
Am I right thinking that using CD baby and paying a flat fee for a release would provide this peace of mind?
CD Baby is just like Distrokid but it has a different subscription model. If you just want the music out there, you can also use routenote. They offer a free model where they keep 15% from your royalties: RouteNote Pricing - Release Your Music Worldwide for Free
The service is slow and cumbersome but it works and so are the others as well.
PS: I never looked back so far, even after releasing my latest album. I mean, there were very few listens on Bandcamp, even with me promoting them a tiny bit, and I guess releasing more stuff into the void (aka the anonymous streaming platforms) wouldn’t have helped me feel better about it.
Unfortunate news. Aslice closing.
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Quick question… Which artist here on Elektronauts was cool enough that they didn’t push their audience to go on these crazy platforms?
I’ve read it 4 times and I don’t understand what do you mean, which platforms?
aslice or spotify?
or do you mean artists that don’t publish on streaming platforms encouraging their listeners to use other platforms? like bandcamp, soundcloud or physical media?
All those platforms where we’re not just listening to the music anymore but became a product for all sorts of things.
there’s plenty of people here only posting on bandcamp, which is nothing but music, if that’s what you mean.
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Never did. My first album was put on Spotify by someone, maybe my label [now defunct]. I claimed my artist page but never uploaded any other album. I really don’t trust this third-party deal, which leaves open the possibility of getting ripped off twice. I’m only using Bandcamp right now.
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way earlier in this thread people were lamenting the lack of curation on spotify. i have one acronym for you. NTS.
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Spotify rules
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