The best - and the worst!
I would like to share what you need to know about DistroKid. They are the best - and the worst. If we talk about the speed to get your music out to stores they are the best by far - it’s not just a slogan. But they are not treating their users with respect. Not at all to be honest. If you do something they don’t like they cut you off and doesn’t refund your money. As soon you do something ”wrong” you are out without any warning or explanation and they keep your money - and that’s a fraudulent behavior that should make us skip them as a music distributor.
This is the way they operate: At first they don’t give you any warning or explanation, they just stop process your songs. And when you try to contact them it’s almost impossible. You will find out that their Chatbot Dave is totally worthless. He will give you the same standard answers whatever you ask him. And often he doesn’t even understand your questions. Then you will find that they have a e-mail adress, support (at) distrokid.com, and hope that you will be able to reach them. But when you have sent your mail you will find out that you will only get an automatic answers saying that the e-mail adress is unmonitored. Back on square one… Then you try to reach to them via social media, and it’s actually possible, but that’s when you will find out how bad they are. They will send you send you a standard form that the stores no longer accept your releases from DistroKid due to ”editorial discretion”. That’s a vague wording meant for you not to understand so you can’t question anything - and that’s the justification they hide behind. That’s how they work. Just google and you will find out that there's tons of users who has received that message and are banned. And 95 percent of them doesn’t even know why they are banned.
So as I wrote in the beginning - that are both the best and the worst. With better management they would be absolutely outstanding without any competitors. But I guess that their competitors are happy that they treat their customers like they do. It would be so easy to have a working customer service and see that the users get warnings when they doesn’t follow the rules. Then I would have given them 5 stars and wouldn't think of another music distributor.
In my case I think I was banned because of ”flooding”. That means that you release too many songs, and that’s because I did many rookie mistakes. I released my songs and found out that they were in the wrong file format, so I took them down and uploaded them again. Then I discovered that you should master your song before you release them, that’s why I took them down again and uploaded them once again. Then I was banned due to ”editorial discretion”. *LOL* Now I use Ditto Music.
I hope that you are helped by this review.
6 May 2026
Unprompted review