Why did you get banned? (Or, How to avoid getting banned)
With stores and distributors [recently joining forces to crack down on streaming fraud](https://musically.com/2023/06/15/spotify-and-amazon-music-sign-up-for-music-fights-fraud-taskforce/), we have seen a lot of people recently coming here to talk about how they were banned. This post’s aim is to breakdown **why people get banned** and **how this can be avoided**. (This is based on years of experience in the music business and conversations that I've had with people who work for some of the streaming services and the distributors. It will be long, but I'll try to keep it to the point and to highlight important bits).
DistroKid and the stores all have their own **Terms of Service**. If you are caught violating them, your account will be banned, **often without warning**. So, in no particular order, here are the reasons people get banned:
1. **Streaming Fraud**: This can be due to bots that came from “promotional services” that inflate the number streams you have, bot-farming where an individual or a collective streams music repeatedly. This can also come from “Search Engine Optimization” where the artist will label their song with certain tags. Often when people say, “I had over 1 million streams of my song on Spotify, why haven’t I been paid for them?” it is due to a streaming fraud issue. Good to Know: Amazon and Spotify, in the first instance, will not pay out for these fraudulent plays, and Spotify has even started to issue warning letters to the artists they are catching. If the artist carries on, those stores will delete and ban the artists. Apple Music will hide the music that is victim of stream manipulation, so it looks like those songs have been removed from the platform.
2. **Copyright issues**: When someone makes a claim to one of the stores that an artist has infringed on their copyright, the store informs DistroKid and DistroKid is required to take the content down. This could be sped-up/slowed-down music, music that uses samples, people flat out uploading someone else’s music, etc. But this can also include a form of Search Engine Optimization where the uploader includes a “featured” artist who had nothing to do with the track, or an artist’s name in the title (like “Dr Dre Type Beat). DistroKid will not get involved in your copyright dispute. And yes, this does mean that angry people can take down someone’s music out of spite due to a false claim (seek legal advice if you believe this is the case).
3. **Editorial Discretion**: In some cases, DistroKid will take your music down before the stores do. Have a look into the Terms of Service at what counts as content that stores do not allow (it’s not a long list and could be due to objectionable content of the music’s subject matter, using the same royalty-free samples are other artists, uploading music of a genre which the store has felt they have enough of, etc). Sometimes you’ll get the message that says “Stores are no longer accepting your music. Find another distributor,” and this could have something to do with the content that you’ve put up or some suspicious activity on your part.
4. **Flooding**: The Beatles only wrote and recorded 213 songs. Just because DistroKid allows Unlimited Uploads, this does not mean that you should upload 500 songs at once. There is a lot of music out there under the guise of “LoFi Beats/Sleep/Meditation” where the creator will upload hundreds (sometimes thousands) of songs that all basically sound the same. Then you’ll notice that those songs go onto Playlists where they are played on a loop. The stores have had enough of this and have begun treating this the same way as they would Streaming Fraud.
In all of these cases, the **stores will send DistroKid regular reports** of all its artists that have been caught.
To answer the common question of: “***Why was it okay to upload my music in the first place?***” Because DistroKid works on an Honour System. They don’t check over your music at the point that you upload it (they get thousands of new songs a day, so how could they possibly check everything?), so they expect that you have followed the Terms of Service in the first place, have uploaded music that was 100% your own, and that you won’t do anything to get in trouble. It might take months before the team at DistroKid can catch up with the reports and take action.
To answer another common question: “***Why did I get banned after I tried to make a withdrawl?***” The act of withdrawing money, especially a large amount, may require DistroKid to do some additional checks that the money wasn’t acquired through any fraudulent practices (this is basically The Law). If your name is in the clear, you’ll get your money. But if your name is on one of those reports and DistroKid just hasn’t had the time to get around to banning you, they will ban you and zero out your account.
That's all for now. This may evolve over time.