When you want to switch distributors you’re often faced with a lot of unknowns. What happens to my old albums? Will I loose my stats? What happens to my unpaid royalties? Let’s answer some of these questions.

Submitting your first album

When you submit your first album with the new distributor, regardless of whether it’s new music or music you’ve previously released, a few things can go wrong. These issues mainly relate to what profile the stores will map your release to.

There’s a few ways to ensure it lands on the right profile:

  • Provide all of the links of your existing profile to the new music distributor. When they deliver the content, some stores allow them to map it directly to a profile.
  • When you submit your release with them, ensure you spell your artist name exactly as it currently appears on stores!

If it lands on the wrong profile, don’t worry, it can be fixed! Just ask the new distributor to reach out to the stores and map the release correctly! This is a super simple process and most stores love distributors when they do this! 😍

Keeping your old stats

You released an album over 2 years ago, it got 1 million streams and you want to keep those sales stats. Is it even possible? Yes 🎉!

All you’ll need to do is grab the ISRC that was assigned when you delivered your music with your old distributor. Generally this can be found in one of two places.

The first and most logical in our opinion is your release screen on their platform, this should contain all the necessary information about your album. If it doesn’t exist there or they don’t have a page like that, simply download or request a royalty statement and the code should appear there.

Now when you release with your new distributor, be sure to tell them of the ISRC!

The release is showing as a new release? What gives?

This happens when you didn’t provide the Original Release Date to your distributor. Generally, you’ll have two options when delivering content.

  • Go-Live Date - this is the date which the release will appear on stores with the distributor
  • Original Release Date - the date in which the album originally went live on the store.

You’ll need to make sure the original release date is set otherwise, it will appear as a new release on stores!

Duplicated Releases

When you change distributors, it’s likely your release will duplicate on the stores for a short period of time. This is because, both your new and old distributor both hold copies of your release. You’ll need to inform your old distributor to remove the content from stores.

When there’s duplicated releases on stores, the royalties for this can be a little funky, so pay attention!

If one of your listeners streams from your old distributors version of the track, the old distributor will get the payment for that stream. However, if one of your listeners streams from the new version your new distributor will get the payment for that stream.

Duplicated releases often won’t stay up for long however, sometimes some distributors are a little slower than others at removing content from stores, so remain patient! 🙌

Unclaimed Royalties

Most distributors report on your earnings and make a payment to you, 3 months after the month’s end. This is because the music stores both don’t release the funds or the reports to the distributor until this time period. So you may wonder, what happens to my royalties after I cancel my release with my old distributor?

Your old distributor continues to get the money for your release from the stores up until it’s removed from stores.

Your new distributor will only be able to claim royalties from the point in which their version of the release went live.

Your distributor still has an obligation (in most cases) to pay you your owed royalties. If a distributor says “we didn’t get those royalties”, it’s normally BS and you should totally call them out on that! (Link them this article if you want!)

Closing your account

Before you close your account with your old distributor, ask them the question of what happens to any other royalties that may come after you close your account?

If they say you won’t get them, don’t cancel your account, you’ll want those royalties! If you’re paying for the account, call the distributor out and say you want all of the royalties, regardless of the payment! We believe this is a fair system!

If they say you’ll get them, wave goodbye and close the account!