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Spotify removed all my work ๐Ÿ˜ญ

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Spotify removed all my work ๐Ÿ˜ญ

I am an artist who has been regularly releasing music, tirelessly  promoting through my social media. I am completely devastated, my mental well-being is seriously taking a toll. For some reason last night I got an email saying โ€œ Spotify has detected suspicious activityโ€. It should be noted that I have around 11,000 monthly listeners of which I built up tirelessly. I have never bought into any streaming services to artificially boost my streams at all as this is breaking terms of service which I agreed to when signing up. I didnโ€™t receive any prior notice or information about anything, Spotify has just up and removed all my tracks! I need them reinstated as I have not broken any rules that I agreed to when signing up. I will send whatever documents necessary to prove I have not bought into anything suspicious (bank statements/PayPal statements etc) I have sent Spotify support an email regarding this but havenโ€™t gotten any response. I need immediate assistance because all my hard work is gone and my mental health is suffering. Please somebody reach out.

18 Replies

Hey @Yfnite 

 

I'd recommend getting in contact with Spotify for Artist team on this, just go here and scroll down to find the Contact Us button. ๐Ÿ™‚

 

I hope you get this resolved!

 

All the best and have a nice day ๐Ÿ™‚

SebastySpotify Star
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Hi thanks for the response. So far I have contacted Spotify for Artists support already and they mentioned I need to contact my distributor but the only problem now is I have already contacted distrokid 2 days ago and I have not got any response. So now Iโ€™m stuck and I really donโ€™t know what to do. I wish all these problems would just go away.

My worst nightmare, Spotify Artist support team are saying to tell my distributor to contact the Content Team to reinstate my releases but when I ask DistroKid support about this they just keep closing my tickets.

Really sad to hear that you're lost in closing-ticket limbo man. Keep trying and keep bothering Distrokid for a action. I am pretty sure that soon enough they will have to respond to you. If I were you, I'd also tweet the situation and tag them so it's public. Sometimes twitter does miracles 

Do you think I can just close my banned account on distrokid and open a new one with my secondary email?

Even tho what you are suggesting can be possible, I would first wait for the distrokid response. Reinstating your artist account would be far more easier - especially since they told you to ask Distro to contact the Content Team. Seems like it's resolved from their side. It could be that Distrokid actually "shut down" your account and pulled the music and not Spotify.

In cases of "suspicious activity" the distributor (in this case Distrokid) receives a notification from Spotify (account flag). I guess a distro-guy done messed up and instead of contacting you (highly unlikely since they are very impersonal) simply shut down your account.

That's why I mentioned Twitter. 

Wow, I didn't think about it like that but it makes so much sense, I got no prior emails, no warnings, no nothing, apparently Spotify removed my first 10 tracks and then DistroKid put the nail in the coffin by just outright removing the upcoming tracks for December. I made a tweet, here's hoping.

Do you know what category to put account restoration under in their ticket form? All the categories are just relating to uploading issues or billing and refund etc, no options for account related which is why I keep getting my tickets closed?

Ok now I just got a response from another Spotify Artists support agent saying they can't reinstate my releases. :'( :'( :'(, so I guess I should just create a new account?

Hey @Yfnite 

 

I've looked into this and yes, the Spotify content team is not able to do so because the distributor would need to allow the tracks to be cleared and reinstated. There is not much the team can do at this point, unfortunately.

 

However I would suggest to start from scratch and maybe under a different distributor instead. You can check out this article on distributors for assistance. ๐Ÿ™‚

 

Let me know how you get on ๐Ÿ™‚

Have a nice day!

SebastySpotify Star
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Hi yes I'm planning to start from scratch again with a different distributor(s) but all my old tracks that have ISRC's are banned for life then?

Do you think the royalties are gone as well?

Honestly I'm sick to my stomach, I just got my 2019 wrapped and I can clearly see it says "Your music took a world tour, fromEcuador to Indonesia you were heard in 78 countries (that's like an AUX cord stretching 11,893 miles.)", yet they have the audacity to claim I'm faking streams?! wth!!! My music is still banned. Canโ€™t even use DistroKid anymore. All other distributors are not even replying, Spotify themselves keep saying for me to contact my distributor but literally no one is doing anything, no response from anyone. Thanks Spotify.

Hey @Yfnite 

 

The questions regarding ISRC and royalties can be answered by DistroKid only as they handle both.

You could try reaching out to them and ask these questions:

  1. whether these  ISRC codes actually mark the tracks as banned;
  2. whether it is possible to dissociate the tracks from the codes (so that you can have new codes assigned to your tracks upon switching distributor);
  3. what is going to happen with the songs royalties, based on the distribution, royalties and payment agreement you have with DistroKid.

 

I hope this gets resolved somehow!

 

Let me know how things go, have a lovely day!

SebastySpotify Star
Help others find this answer and click "Accept as Solution".
If you appreciate my answer, maybe give me a Like.
Note: I'm not a Spotify employee.

Hi Iโ€™ve tried contacting Distrokid and they keep closing my tickets with the same copy-paste generic answer saying thereโ€™s nothing they can do. Itโ€™s really bad. Iโ€™m on SoundCloud already. Iโ€™ve switched to LANDR and now Iโ€™m just hoping these tracks will be approved fine. And that there wonโ€™t be any ISRC bans imposed on my music.

Hey maybe this will make you feel a little better. I know an artist on Distrokid who experienced this on one of his songs that had over 300K streams. He ended up releasing the song again through a different distributor (Tunecore). When the song was released again, it retained all of the previous streams in the stats. Somehow it still showed the previous 300K streams and continued from there on the new distributor. Not sure if he just lucked out or if this is a normal occurrence but worth some thought. Good Luck.

Hey Yfnite, how did it go? Can you re-upload your music under the same artistname, ISRC-codes to recover all the stats?

Ive got contacted tonight about "We've been notified by Spotify that they've removed your release due to what Spotify calls "artificial streaming" (aka streaming fraud):".

And right now I'm like; should I switch from Distrokid to Tunecore or something similiar.

This same thing happened to me? Does anyone have an update? I was reading how songs on botted playlists were affected. Even if they werenโ€™t responsible for doing it. Smh

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