Artists change distributors for many reasons: price, service, a label deal, or simply wanting everything in one place. The worry is always the same. Will play counts, playlist placements and the profile survive the move? Usually they can, if you keep the identifiers the same and do the steps in the right order.
What losing streams actually means
When a move goes wrong, it's rarely the money for past streams that disappears. Platforms have already counted those plays, and they are reported for the period in which they happened. What you can lose is the continuity of each track:
- The play count shown on a platform can reset to zero if the platform treats the track as a new product.
- Playlists, including listeners' personal ones, may still point to the old version, which becomes unavailable once it's taken down.
- Saves and library adds can stay attached to the old version.
- For a while, the same song may appear twice on your profile.
Your artist profile, its followers and your access to artist tools belong to the profile on each platform, not to the distributor. Those don't move anywhere.
Keep these things identical
Platforms recognise that a "new" delivery is the same recording mainly through its codes and metadata. The closer the new delivery is to the old one, the better the chance of a clean match.
- ISRC for every track. This is the single most important item. Use the existing codes and don't let the new distributor generate fresh ones.
- UPC for every release. Keep the same barcode for each single, EP or album, if your new distributor accepts existing UPCs.
- Audio. Upload exactly the same master files. A new master can be, for the platform, a different recording.
- Titles and artist names. Same spelling, same capitalisation, same featured artists, same version labels.
- Track order and release type. An album stays an album with the same tracklist.
- Original release date. If the new distributor has a field for it, enter the original date so your catalogue doesn't look brand new.
- Artwork. Ideally the same file.
Credits deserve the same care: songwriters, producers, featured artists. They may not decide whether a platform matches the track, but if they change between deliveries, your credits pages and royalty data stop agreeing with each other. Copy them exactly.
Before you start, export everything from your current distributor: a list of releases with UPCs, ISRCs, titles, dates and credits. Keep it in one spreadsheet. You'll use it at every step.
The safe order of steps
The rule is simple: deliver first, take down second. Never the other way round.
- Check that the new distributor accepts your existing ISRCs and UPCs.
- Upload each release to the new distributor with identical codes and metadata.
- Wait until each release is live on every platform that matters to you. Check them one by one, because timing differs per platform.
- Confirm the match where you can: the play count is still there, the song isn't duplicated, playlists still work.
- Only then ask the old distributor to take the releases down.
- Check again a week or two later that nothing has disappeared.
During the overlap you may briefly see duplicates. That's normal and usually resolves after the takedown. If you take down first and upload later, there is a gap when the songs are missing, and platforms are much more likely to treat the new delivery as a separate product.
If your catalogue is large, move in batches. Start with a few less important releases, see how each platform handles them, then move the rest. No distributor can guarantee a perfect match, because the matching happens on the platform's side, but this order gives you the best odds.
YouTube Content ID
Content ID needs extra care. A recording can be managed in Content ID by only one party at a time. If the old distributor's reference is still active when the new one adds the same track, you get an ownership conflict, and claims on your music can stop working until it's sorted out.
Ask your old distributor to release the tracks from Content ID as part of the move, and tell the new one that the tracks were managed elsewhere before. Do the same for whitelisted channels: the new setup has to include them again.
Money during and after the move
Expect income from two places for a while. The old distributor still receives reports for streams that happened while your releases were with them, because platforms report with a delay. The new distributor's reports start only from the period when its delivery went live.
Before you leave, check your old agreement for how this trailing income is paid out and whether your account stays open long enough to receive it.