What's Space Got to Do With Digital Music Distribution


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Greetings

Well, I'm not talking about the last frontier.  While doing a bit of an audit on the digital music distribution platforms that my songs are on, I realised I couldn't find all my tracks on my artist page. I did a search of the missing tracks and they were there on the stores. So what was going on? 

At first I thought this was a mess up by the store. So I started comparing the major platforms, iTunes, Amazon , Spotify and Deezer. Except Spotify, they all had the songs on a separate artist page. So, then I logged into my account with the distributor and looked at the release details for each track. When I looked closely at the track details there was a subtle difference some had 'Miss Tun Pickney' and others 'MissTun Pickney'. One with a space between 'Miss' and 'Tun' the other without. Just a missing space but what problems it created!

MP3 Download-Artist Page
Miss Tun Pickney Artist page
I contacted the distributor and asked them to rectify this as the artist page was wrong for four tracks and I could not believe that I would have made the same typo four times. However, they begged to differ and made it clear that what was done was done and that I only had two options, explained below.

I still do not believe that I made that error four times and looking back at the release process it really was a check the details, click the send button and that's it. Now I know the onus is on the artist to get the details right but, it would have been nice to have a 'Are you really really sure' pop up window  like they have on most apps when you are going to delete something.Anyway, we agreed to disagree, though I knew that I only had the two options I was given. However, this didn't stop me from deciding to change to a different distribution company.

The process with this new distributor was much more robust. You entered the track details and clicked send as usual but, this was just an interim step. You then received an email confirming your wish to release the track with a request to double check the release details. Finally, you received a final email asking for you to approve the track for release with another request to check the details. For me, this was a much more artist friendly approach.


So what Are the options to Fix an Artist Page?

A. Contact each store individually. This as you can imagine would be a nightmare unless you only distributed your song to a small number of stores. Even then, unless, they have Artist services e.g. Spotify for Artists, it is difficult to get a response.

B. Take down the song and distribute again.  This means cancelling the distribution with your distribution company and creating another distribution (another fee and UPC). The stores take down the original entry and add the new entry. 

I tried A. with Apple Music and they sorted it. But I had subscribed to their beta Apple for Artists. So contacting them was easier. In the end option B. was easier for me. I was told that  the streaming stats would be lost. But I found that the history continued on the new distribution, in the case of Spotify anyway. But it was a lesson learnt. I now TRIPLE CHECK, CHECK and CHECK AGAIN all the song details before clicking that final approval button.

Keep feeling the vibe
Dingazz

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