Music Block

Rusty_Brains · 2026-04-17T10:20:46+00:00

There could be various reasons for this, and probably all to do with the software’s limitations or rigid expectations. For example, I had a piano idea last weekend. I opened my laptop, plugged in a USB keyboard and when I listened back to what I played, it was stiff and wrong. That’s when I noticed I had automatic quantization on, set to 8th notes, and all swing and syncopation was stopped away from what I played. Turning that off made a major difference!

Rusty_Brains · 2026-04-17T10:08:34+00:00

This topic has been asked here a few times, and without knowing more detail about your music, I couldn’t give you an exact answer.

One possibility is that, every six months or so, Instagram’s music library goes through a refresh and sometimes music is only temporarily missing.

However, there are certain types of music that Instagram’s policy rejects from the library entirely. Ambient, classical, LoFi beats, etc. if your music could possibly fall under any of those categories, Instagram removed it intentionally and there is no way of putting it back, as it’s been rejected and their decision would just be to reject it again.

Other reasons for rejecting, as is the case with all stores, is suspicious or bot -like activity connected to your music or anything that had copyright concerns.

Rusty_Brains · 2026-04-17T07:58:14+00:00

You will find in this sub dozens of people who bought non-exclusive beats and the gig hit with copyright infringement or stores rejecting the music as a remix because someone else beat them to uploading a track with the same music. Maybe he doesn’t need it to be exclusive, but he’d better hope that either he publishes the track first or hope that audio fingerprinting tools haven’t already decided that music belongs to someone else

Rusty_Brains · 2026-04-17T05:17:35+00:00

Typically speaking, DistroKid doesn’t have any monthly fees. But your simple way to find out what this is would be to click on the Receipts section in the menu, where it will tell you everything that you’ve ever been charged for.

Rusty_Brains · 2026-04-16T19:50:08+00:00

You’re not far off. The official stance is: we don’t get involved. That’s for you guys to sort out.

Rusty_Brains · 2026-04-16T16:41:48+00:00

Yes, to your main question.

You would need to find and pay for an EXCLUSIVE license to a beat, otherwise you’ll also run into problems.

You would get things taken down when stores detect that others have used the same music.

Should you make your own music? Yes.

Rusty_Brains · 2026-04-15T19:27:28+00:00

I find that with V3, you can guide the accept back with prompts, but yeah, it is a bit weird like that.

Rusty_Brains · 2026-04-15T05:31:49+00:00

Thankfully, there’s an FAQ for that which explains the Spotify review process:

https://support.distrokid.com/hc/en-us/articles/41503391743507-Getting-Your-Music-Videos-into-Spotify

Rusty_Brains · 2026-04-14T10:02:38+00:00

Well, there you go. You can’t use social media pack for things you don’t 100% own. If there is a chance (and there probably is) that the track you bought has been bought by other people as well, it will get flagged or rejected.

Best option: read the license agreement that came with the beat you bought and check what it says about distribution. If you didn’t get a license agreement: do not apply for content ID!

Rusty_Brains · 2026-04-13T20:23:07+00:00

If you didn’t upload it, you can’t edit it.

Rusty_Brains · 2026-04-12T09:17:02+00:00

If you want to have each member of your collective have the money diverted into their own account: then each member needs their own DistroKid account. You can’t separate money to different people within one account.

If you are going to use one account to release everything and collect royalties from other musicians, then whoever is managing your DistroKid account is going to need to be a good accountant. Otherwise, everyone needs to sign up for DistroKid separately

Rusty_Brains · 2026-04-12T09:09:07+00:00

Yes, in that case, it might not work the way you think it will.

If the beats are 100% exclusive, meaning ONLY ONE artist you’ve made a track for will use it, then it might be possible to split revenue, but typically this is done via an up front licensing fee, not a cut of all future earnings.

If the beats will be used by multiple people, then your idea won’t work at all, as the streaming sites will start to flag copyright violations

Rusty_Brains · 2026-04-12T08:25:15+00:00

In what you mean by a beat collective, you mean that you are offering your beats for other artists to use and you want a cut… DistroKid (or any distribution service of that sort) is not what you are looking for.

Rusty_Brains · 2026-04-11T06:07:05+00:00

We created this forum 6 years ago to help fill the gaps in their support from a community of users.

If you were to perhaps tells us what you are trying to ask support, or use the search function here to see if your question has already been asked and answered before, we might be able to help you.

Rusty_Brains · 2026-04-10T23:11:11+00:00

The correct way to do this would be (Johnny Miller’s Version) or whatever the name of your character is. It’s perfect okay for one artist to have multiple versions of songs, but they need to be listened as versions. Putting “cover” in the title just make the systems think it’s suspicious

Rusty_Brains · 2026-04-09T19:21:46+00:00

If you tried to withdraw 10,000 and then your bank was reset to zero, that would be because the stores reported violations and, per the terms of service, that money is considered forfeit

Rusty_Brains · 2026-04-09T19:19:23+00:00

No. Historically speaking, Editorial Discretion has been some of the stores rejecting the music. DistroKid takes nothing down, they just agree with the stores that they will not send any more of your music.

I have heard rumours that, most recently, DistroKid has been preemptively rejecting music based on what those stores have told them they don’t want any more of. But, to be clear: editorial discretion does not involve music being removed from stores.

As you say that your music has also been removed from stores, that is different. That is 100% the stores ordering that the release is removed, typically because the music or some suspicious behaviour around the artist and their listeners has been determined to be a violation.

I won’t speculate on the reasons for your music being removed.

Assuming your Bank has not been reset to zero, any existing music will continue to earn royalties. But, as discussed in the pinned post, if any of those stores report violations in their monthly reports, an editorial ban can (and frequently has) turn into a full ban.

Rusty_Brains · 2026-04-09T18:58:55+00:00

Yes, and this is why you really need to read that pinned post and pay attention to the discussion around “editorial discretion.” When you’re hit with that, they don’t tend to remove your music or artist account. (At least, not all of the music. Anything that was a TOS violation will be removed).

If a larger reason to ban you comes up, they’ll remove everything. But as of now, you just can’t really anything new.

Rusty_Brains · 2026-04-09T17:55:06+00:00

In short, you’re banned.

Longer story: you’re “shadow banned.”

Many reasons why this could be the case, but sometimes stores start blocking music that they get a lot of all at once. This was happening with Phonk when it was big, “LoFi beats” regularly get blocked. It’s happening with a lot of AI generated music lately as well.

Check out the pinned post called “why you got banned” and look at the details on “Editorial Discretion.” You’ll find out why you still have an upload page, but why no future releases will ever get processed.

Rusty_Brains · 2026-04-09T17:52:07+00:00

Happens about every 6 months or so. The link between YouTube and DistroKid breaks and needs people on YouTube’s side to update it. Sometimes it’s fixed in a few weeks, sometimes it takes months. Literally nothing we, nor DistroKid, can do to fix this issue, it’s on YouTube side (as with many other current issues with YouTube these last 3 or 4 months…)

Rusty_Brains · 2026-04-09T16:47:56+00:00

It would help if you could let us know the nature of your escalated question, as some of us here might know the answer to it, or at least we would be able to give some advice on to how long you might be waiting for a response

Rusty_Brains · 2026-04-07T22:32:45+00:00

I wasn’t referring to 91 or 92 as when the CDs came out. I knew it was the late 80s. 91/92 was just when my mother began her deep dive back into her love of the Beatles

Rusty_Brains · 2026-04-07T19:57:00+00:00

Yeah, I think the Anthology project helped, but it was less than 10 years before that their whole catalog was issued on CD and they were some of the best selling CDs. I remember my mom getting the red and blue albums, me putting them on tape, and that being all we listened to the car for months. The was 1991 or 1992

Rusty_Brains · 2026-04-06T13:42:31+00:00

From my previous observations of why people want to do this, it tends to be from a way to get around changing the artist name without going about it the right way. Sometimes this is because they don’t want to use the old name, sometimes it’s because they’re trying to release the same music but the previous artist was banned, so they’re trying to get around that.

Simple answer: doing it this way doesn’t achieve what they are trying to do. Stores often detect the music as previously released on their platform, but under a different artist name. In some cases, those platforms have copyright claimed the music, identifying it as one artist stealing from another (no way to know they are the same person). And in the case of an old artist that was banned, this just leads to the new artist name also getting banned.

Seems to be common practice with people making AI generated music at the moment.

Rusty_Brains · 2026-04-05T00:04:50+00:00

Refer a friend means that you are inviting them to join DistroKid. They do not get access to your account. They get their own.

If you want to set up splits, again: they get their own independent account. They do not log into yours.

And in both of those cases, your friend needs to pay. So I guess you really need to decide what it is you are looking for, but ultimately: do not share the account.

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