Review Insights · App Store
DistroKid
DistroKid Holdings, LLC · 23,892 ratings · ★ 4.9
4.9
★★★★★
23,892 ratings
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Top complaints - extracted from 29 negative reviews
Recurring phrases mined from 1-2★ reviews. The bigger the percentage, the more users have the same problem. Fix the top 2-3 in your version and you have product-market fit on day one.
1
"music"
11 negative reviews mention this · 38% of all complaints
★★★★★ "“Editorial Discretion”. I’ve been uploading music for a few months. Singles and a few concept Albums then with no warning my music gets stuck in “processing” for weeks. I email to clarify, and am told that I have to find a new distribution service due to “editoria…" - Stah-Warts
2
"customer"
8 negative reviews mention this · 28% of all complaints
★★★★★ "“Editorial Discretion”. I’ve been uploading music for a few months. Singles and a few concept Albums then with no warning my music gets stuck in “processing” for weeks. I email to clarify, and am told that I have to find a new distribution service due to “editoria…" - Stah-Warts
3
"service"
7 negative reviews mention this · 24% of all complaints
★★★★★ "“Editorial Discretion”. I’ve been uploading music for a few months. Singles and a few concept Albums then with no warning my music gets stuck in “processing” for weeks. I email to clarify, and am told that I have to find a new distribution service due to “editoria…" - Stah-Warts
4
"account"
7 negative reviews mention this · 24% of all complaints
★★★★★ "“Editorial Discretion”. I’ve been uploading music for a few months. Singles and a few concept Albums then with no warning my music gets stuck in “processing” for weeks. I email to clarify, and am told that I have to find a new distribution service due to “editoria…" - Stah-Warts
5
"money"
7 negative reviews mention this · 24% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Nobody home. You cannot talk to a live person it's always AI. And when they mess up which they do a lot, they want the customer to fix it. Can you believe that? They messed up, but want you to fix it. You pay them money to promote you and use someone el…" - ROCKSTAR REAPER
6
"distrokid"
7 negative reviews mention this · 24% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Great but could be better. Ok first off DistroKid is great music distribution tool especially for independent artists and bands but their customer service could be so much better given the fact that they are a $1Billion company having a lack of customer service and n…" - RnbArts222
7
"been"
6 negative reviews mention this · 21% of all complaints
★★★★★ "“Editorial Discretion”. I’ve been uploading music for a few months. Singles and a few concept Albums then with no warning my music gets stuck in “processing” for weeks. I email to clarify, and am told that I have to find a new distribution service due to “editoria…" - Stah-Warts
8
"customer service"
6 negative reviews mention this · 21% of all complaints
★★★★★ "“Editorial Discretion”. I’ve been uploading music for a few months. Singles and a few concept Albums then with no warning my music gets stuck in “processing” for weeks. I email to clarify, and am told that I have to find a new distribution service due to “editoria…" - Stah-Warts
9
"song"
6 negative reviews mention this · 21% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Waste of money. So irritated because I can’t get any of my accounts to connect, great that my song is out, but I feel like I need to hire a technical support assistant just to make sure everything is connected correctly. Can’t get the damn link to connect …" - KiraRae1996
10
"help"
6 negative reviews mention this · 21% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Great but could be better. Ok first off DistroKid is great music distribution tool especially for independent artists and bands but their customer service could be so much better given the fact that they are a $1Billion company having a lack of customer service and n…" - RnbArts222
11
"able"
5 negative reviews mention this · 17% of all complaints
★★★★★ "“Editorial Discretion”. I’ve been uploading music for a few months. Singles and a few concept Albums then with no warning my music gets stuck in “processing” for weeks. I email to clarify, and am told that I have to find a new distribution service due to “editoria…" - Stah-Warts
12
"paid"
5 negative reviews mention this · 17% of all complaints
★★★★★ "“Editorial Discretion”. I’ve been uploading music for a few months. Singles and a few concept Albums then with no warning my music gets stuck in “processing” for weeks. I email to clarify, and am told that I have to find a new distribution service due to “editoria…" - Stah-Warts
📋 All 29 negative reviews
Every 1-2★ review we fetched. Use the copy button to grab them all for your own analysis (paste into ChatGPT/Claude with a prompt like "summarize core user problems, group by theme, ignore bugs, focus on missing features").
“Editorial Discretion”
I’ve been uploading music for a few months. Singles and a few concept Albums then with no warning my music gets stuck in “processing” for weeks. I email to clarify, and am told that I have to find a new distribution service due to “editorial discretion”. No warning, no pathway to fix said issue, and no clarification on to what that issue even was. Since then Ive emailed three separate times trying to get some information or clarification as to why after multiple months all of a sudden my account is frozen. Asking if there is a work around, if Im able to use my other artist slots being as I paid for Three Artists but only ever utilized One. Then asking if all my services are essentially being blocked will I be able to get a refund for the remainder of my subscription. Nothing, no Email back for over a week with three different contact attempts. The only thing I got back was an email asking me to rate their customer service for an issue they didn't even attempt to resolve. 1 star until something changes. Give them zero is that were available at this point.
Nobody home
You cannot talk to a live person it's always AI. And when they mess up which they do a lot, they want the customer to fix it. Can you believe that? They messed up, but want you to fix it. You pay them money to promote you and use someone else's name to promote your music, you as the customer are supposed to fix it. Does that sound right? This app has no one that actually cares about their customers. Don't waste your money. They're not gonna make you famous. Because they can't even get names right. And they're not gonna fix any problems. PEOPLE, start filing complaints with APPLE,FTC, and the FCC. Get them removed from Apple. There's enough people complaining to get them removed get a class action lawsuit. You'll get their attention then. And believe me I'm the one to get their attention. I have congressmen in my family and a prosecuting attorney. That has reached. I will get these people in court. They are flat out theft by deception. They are committing crimes.
Worst communication I’ve ever had
They won’t let me release songs anymore but they won’t give me a reason, they just won’t release my music anymore. horrible distributor with horrible customer service do not recommend
Bad review and i DEMAND a fix for my problem
At first distrokid allowed me to get music on streaming platforms but as soon as i drop my album, out of nowhere they sign me out, once i logged back in they take me to the 3 deals and are giving me no other option but to pay for one of them, MIND YOU, i already had my subscription paid for, and it doesn’t renew until a year and this happened in januray.
Bad Customer Service
They don’t have any customer service they only have AI Chatbot. My music had been on hold for six months before I finally canceled my account. spent almost $500 for nothing.
Terrible support
Don’t both contacting support whenever your music gets took down. They took all of “1saturn” music down for no absolute reason, no email, no message, not even a notification, just deleted every. single. song. Utterly disappointing how unfair they treat upcoming artist, but I bet if someone like drake where to buy listeners it would slide 😂😂
Honesty no bot here
All I want is to lower my plan because I don’t have it but it says unavailable I wrote a song for my mom and I can’t stream it because I can’t downgrade my plan I am 17 years old and just wish that it was easier I have reached out to help only to receive the same advice I got the first time I even added a picture of the problem and they reply with if you need more information about plans click here and it shows the plans not me being able to downgrade it hurts my heart that I have to lose my song I made for my mother because it was special to me and her it was something to honor her name and how she stepped up and took on me my brother and 2 kids that weren’t even hers it’s sad to see It go and I wish that DistroKid fixes this issue
Difficult to Manage
Accidentally uploaded a song with my real name as the artist and it won’t let me change the artist name.
You hacked my bank account
You hacked my bank account dont use
DistroKid Stole my Money
I was trying to upload a song and clicked one button by accident. Without warning $95 charge to my card. I contacted support and they said tough luck. Absolute thieves.
Just use United masters
Robbed me of 100 dollars with a 50 dollar subscription and 2 25 dollar subscription and there’s no way to get in contact with the other than a bot
Credit Card
Cant release without credit card
Terrible
My album was up on Spotify for a year and a half and then one day I went to share it and it was gone. DistroKid doesn’t have any customer service team to help. I’m just out of my money I pay to subscribe and I’m left in limbo wondering if I have to reupload to a competitor. It exists on Spotify, but you can’t play it. I’ve emailed DistroKid a dozen times over the last three weeks and they’ve done nothing. No follow up when they said it would be back up in a week.
No customer service
Can’t seem to get help with any technical issues happening during launch of our music. Chatbot is extremely frustrating and not helpful at all. Asking for “real” person only gets you more bots. It’s been a disappointing and expensive experience for our launch and really affecting the first few crucial weeks negatively.
TERRIBLE
It’s been taking a whole month to upload one song
No help !
They let someone take my YouTube channel and post their own music on it while mines is still there all I asked was the account to be deleted or restored and I can’t get no help know I have to delete all my work
Not unlimited
They will block your releases on the stance of editorial discretion, then lock your account so you can not do anything. I had the ultimate account, and they did this. Inexcusable. Find another distributor, they don’t live up to their promises.
Way too slow
I made an account but the 2-step authentication takes way too long
Attention
There is something wrong with the app it’s not loading and hasn’t been for 2 days just wanted to let yall know
Scam
If I could leave zero stars I would, but I can’t post unless I leave a star. Once you buy the app, it won’t let you upload until you fill out way more information and give them way more money. Total scam.
Slimey and greedy
This company DISTROKID IS SO SICK. How are you not able to charge my card for my current plan but once I upgrade to the highest paid plan you are finally able to charge me??? I want a downgrade of my plan and a refund of my money. Or I am writing articles about your slimey practices and making detailed videos going into the extent of your disgusting violation of breach of trust. If you never used this company before do not use them. They are God aweful and have zero customer support.
Takes way too long and lies about payment
I’m never EVER using this lying app from this lying company AGAIN! Now I see why more and more people are leaving them out just not using them in the first place
You need to pay
I’m honestly frustrated with DistroKid’s system.
I create my music in GarageBand, without using any AI tools, yet my releases keep getting flagged as “AI-generated” or rejected for that reason. This is really unfair because everything I make is original and created by me.
It feels like the detection system is too aggressive and doesn’t properly distinguish between real human-made music and AI content. Not everyone who makes clean or loop-based music is using AI.
On top of that, DistroKid is a paid service. We are paying a yearly subscription expecting reliable distribution, but instead we face rejections that don’t reflect the actual work behind the music.
Because of this, it’s very discouraging for independent artists who are just starting out. There should be a better review system or at least a clear way to appeal these decisions.
Right now, it feels like we’re being penalized for something we didn’t even do.
I create my music in GarageBand, without using any AI tools, yet my releases keep getting flagged as “AI-generated” or rejected for that reason. This is really unfair because everything I make is original and created by me.
It feels like the detection system is too aggressive and doesn’t properly distinguish between real human-made music and AI content. Not everyone who makes clean or loop-based music is using AI.
On top of that, DistroKid is a paid service. We are paying a yearly subscription expecting reliable distribution, but instead we face rejections that don’t reflect the actual work behind the music.
Because of this, it’s very discouraging for independent artists who are just starting out. There should be a better review system or at least a clear way to appeal these decisions.
Right now, it feels like we’re being penalized for something we didn’t even do.
Does not have human support!!!!
They have a whole bunch of individual issues and instead of having Human Resources the have Ai bots calling themselves trying to help but you end up in a chat for over an hour just to get nowhere!!
Waste of money
So irritated because I can’t get any of my accounts to connect, great that my song is out, but I feel like I need to hire a technical support assistant just to make sure everything is connected correctly. Can’t get the damn link to connect to Spotify artists, says that it’s connected to my YouTube, but I don’t see it, and it’s not on Apple Music.
Great but could be better
Ok first off DistroKid is great music distribution tool especially for independent artists and bands but their customer service could be so much better given the fact that they are a $1Billion company having a lack of customer service and not having a business phone number is just terrible and causes frustration to artists , example I have not been able to use my account for a few years now due to me not having access to my email and every time I ask for help it’s just another run around and the same response from their agent and this has been really frustrating I have funds in my account ,streaming revenue numbers and a good following and i haven’t been able to use my account. for 5 years now.
Bad Freezing
I just tried to upload 15 songs putting in all type of information as asked , 1 wrong error during upload and it froze which involved me closing the app and reopening it to having to restart which is very frustrating.
Paid for $89.99
On the app it says if purchased. If I log in on their website it says enroll and upgrade. I’m done giving these people money.
No All-Time Streams?
i used to be able to see how many streams in total now i cant. it seem like yall are removing more features than adding
Sentiment summary
97%
Positive (4-5★)
1%
Neutral (3★)
2%
Negative (1-2★)