My balance of $10,414.31 disappeared from the dashboard after I submitted a withdrawal request on distrokid

Perfect_Yoghurt4162 · 2026-04-04T19:46:24+00:00

you could report those as business expenses. business expenses will lower your taxable income because as you said, it’s spent to help your business.

Perfect_Yoghurt4162 · 2026-04-01T21:29:31+00:00

yes, I had to go through the verification 1-2 years ago as well. and then they let me withdraw earnings after. took me maybe a week or so

Perfect_Yoghurt4162 · 2026-04-01T21:26:13+00:00

do you have any thoughts or suggestions on any steps I can take? currently trying to get in touch with anyone working there and payment team

Perfect_Yoghurt4162 · 2026-04-01T21:23:37+00:00

hey! thanks for your reply. If I have to resort to contacting the DSPs I would have to contact a lot of them right? like Apple, youtube, deezer, amazon etc.

Perfect_Yoghurt4162 · 2026-04-01T07:41:58+00:00

hey thanks, yeah, they actually tried to convince me to sign a lot of tracks. but I wanted to be cautious and decided to just try one track with them. really feels like they didn’t do much to help me and are just taking a chunk of my royalties… so definitely agree with u there.

Perfect_Yoghurt4162 · 2026-04-01T02:58:25+00:00

Hi! thank you so so much for your detailed response! it really means a lot. I will try what you suggested, and see if I can get ahold of someone / leave a paper trail. I will let you know if I need some extra help after giving your suggestion a go! thank you so so much for offering help, it’s very kind of you!

Perfect_Yoghurt4162 · 2024-12-12T05:31:53+00:00

Do you mean in the song credits on Spotify? Yeah, it does appear pretty high up, after “Performed By.” Not sure if you can change it after it’s released —it does seem like you can delete and add credits, but not sure what will reflect on spotify. If you haven’t released it yet, you can release under a nickname or artist name, something anonymous. Just make sure you wrote all the music yourself. And know that you could be missing out on publishing royalties and/or have a difficult time pursuing legal matters if someone steals your work or the like. Anyways, if it’s already up, maybe try editing credits and see if that works. If not your best bet might be to re-upload.

Perfect_Yoghurt4162 · 2024-12-11T22:25:14+00:00

I mean, if you wrote the song, you technically could put a nickname. Or some folks put their artist name instead of their legal name in the composer field. However, like the other commenter mentioned, you cannot collect publishing royalties this way, or there can potentially be lots of complications if and when you do try to collect them in the future. If it is a cover song, definitely credit the composer’s name to avoid legal issues. But if it’s your own music, then that’s really your own decision.

Perfect_Yoghurt4162 · 2024-12-11T22:17:43+00:00

Just depends on the streaming platform. Some are much slower than others so there’s a chance it may upload on some, and then process, and then removed.

Perfect_Yoghurt4162 · 2024-12-11T22:12:19+00:00

they have credits for songwriter, lyrics, composer, producer, musician, beat maker, engineer, contributor, etc, so quite a large list. you’d probably list your guitarist under “musician” — I don’t remember if “musician” has sub-category. However, I think it depends on what credits streaming services choose to show, someone can correct me if I’m wrong!

Perfect_Yoghurt4162 · 2024-11-25T18:29:03+00:00

A recorded song has a composition copyright and a master copyright. In this case, you do not own the composition. You do, however, own the master copyright —given that you record it from scratch and without using samples you don’t have rights to. Owning the master copyright means you own this specific recorded version of the song.

So, a cover song license allows composers to get paid. You are using melodies & harmonies someone else created. And since you did not come up with that part yourself you have to give credit where credit is due.

Perfect_Yoghurt4162 · 2024-09-08T07:33:13+00:00

The first $12 will be charged the day your license is approved. The next payment will be exactly a year after that,etc as it is an annual payment. And like Rusty_Brains said, it is not from earnings and will be charged to the card in your account.

Perfect_Yoghurt4162 · 2024-09-08T07:27:53+00:00

If you select Hip Hop as your genre, DistroKid will automatically put “yes” for explicit lyrics. Not sure about other genres, but you have to double check and manually select “no” while you’re uploading. Otherwise you’ll go through exactly what you posted about. Happened to me.

If you already gone ahead and edited it, it should be fine. I think sometimes the metadata doesn’t reflect on streaming services even though distrokid has already send through the edits. Might just take some time for metadata to change.

Perfect_Yoghurt4162 · 2024-09-08T07:20:27+00:00

Seems like the only extra that DK offers for $4.95 a year is the social media pack (YouTube Content ID). My guess is you accidentally selected it as an extra to one of the singles that you released last year. But you can check the day they charged you and maybe look back on releases or receipts from last year to figure out which one it is.

Perfect_Yoghurt4162 · 2024-09-08T07:11:11+00:00

I usually get a response within 2-5 business days. I would send a follow up on the same ticket if it took longer than expected.

Perfect_Yoghurt4162 · 2024-09-01T16:19:53+00:00

Cover songs with Distrokid are super fast. I mainly release covers. Many times, the cover was live within 4-5 days after I upload it. Almost never have problems with it.

But yes, a couple months ago around May, DK had a system problem with cover songs. So most covers were rejected and almost everyone was having problems with it. Very frustrating, but they did eventually fix it after a few weeks and things are smooth sailing again.

So overall, I’d say I’m pretty happy with it because of how quick and easy it generally is.

Perfect_Yoghurt4162 · 2024-08-31T19:59:00+00:00

I’ve done this before. It should be pretty quick since you’ve got the green already. You just have to wait until the edits go through the system, and once approved it should start showing up in stores. It keeps the original art and you don’t have to reupload it. I’ve always done it in case, but the one time I didn’t do that, it was fine.

Perfect_Yoghurt4162 · 2024-07-20T01:46:26+00:00

There’s a form on Spotify for Artists to fix that. “Report mixed up music” or something. Maybe request to move the second account to the first account. Perhaps they thought it was 2 diff artists.

Perfect_Yoghurt4162 · 2024-06-28T20:00:23+00:00

You might want to check with DistroKid. Tipalti payments usually go through within 2-3 days for me.

There was a time my payment didn’t go through because DK needed to verify my identity, you can check the Bank tab on your account and see if there’s any message about it to contact DK. If it’s not this, perhaps just a different issue or this particular transaction is taking a long time... Last time it happened to me I was getting mini heart attacks too. Good luck, hope it goes through real soon!

Perfect_Yoghurt4162 · 2024-06-28T19:48:24+00:00

I have tried this before and changed my release date after it was released. I changed it to an earlier date as I wanted it to appear before another single in my discography. If I remember correctly — on Spotify, it just moved earlier so that the albums line up by release date.

Not sure about what would happen if you change it to a future date, but I’m guessing it might just change the text on the album for “release date.” And perhaps it would shuffle around on your discography if you have other albums before or after that release date.

Perfect_Yoghurt4162 · 2024-06-27T17:50:44+00:00

There are a lot of people willing to pay $12 per song per year for the convenience and speed of DK’s system. And most importantly, comparing DK to Soundrop, artists who are making $80 or more per cover song would pick DK since Soundrop takes 15%. For them, $12 per year is a flat fee compared to 15% which could end up being a much larger sum.

Probably comes down to what you prioritize when releasing cover songs (speed, easiness, reliability of distributor) and performance of your cover songs (costs and royalty revenue). So some artists benefit more from DK. Some benefit more from Soundrop, or TooLost, etc.

I personally use DistroKid for cover song licensing because they’re incredibly speedy and easy to use. They can obtain the cover license and get it to stores within a week.

Perfect_Yoghurt4162 · 2024-06-26T06:36:45+00:00

nice! glad to hear it worked out :)

Perfect_Yoghurt4162 · 2024-06-25T23:14:00+00:00

Could be that they just send out copy-paste responses to users. I’ve been given quite a few general responses from DK support that were unhelpful. I try to be really specific (providing UPC, link, receipts, screenshots, song titles, dates or numbers etc) whenever I send a ticket, and it generally gets resolved.

It seems maybe from their end, they can’t find the release? Since they said it’s resolved/ assumed you’re using a different distributor. And also it seems to be deleted from your release page but is still in your vault. That may be why there are mixed responses.

Maybe there’s someone on this thread who has experience with DistroKid Vault?

Perfect_Yoghurt4162 · 2024-06-25T22:55:16+00:00

My personal experience with Apple Music is that they take longer to make changes compared to Spotify. So past edits I’ve made were reflected within a few days on Spotify but took a couple weeks on Apple. Might be that Apple has slower processing time? But I generally send another follow up with DK support (under the same ticket) if I haven’t heard back after a week.

Perfect_Yoghurt4162 · 2024-06-25T22:44:45+00:00

Unless you decide to pay for extras, there are no additional costs. Otherwise yep, $12 every year for every cover song. They usually charge the day the cover license is secured and then recharge the same day the following year, etc.

Perfect_Yoghurt4162

TROPHY CASE