“So, around 3 months ago, I uploaded a song on Spotify and Apple music. It had around 20k views/streams. However, my song just got removed 30 minutes ago from Spotify and is still up on Apple music – it also says on distrokid that the song is still up. I have not received any emails from anywhere about why and how. Help me out, please.”
“Same here. I feel I’ve done absolutely nothing wrong. This sucks so much…”
These were two of the many comments on the Spotify community section where users complained about their songs being removed without any explanation. What exactly should one do when their music gets removed from services like Spotify?
The main reason why songs get taken down is that Spotify removes questionable content due to suspicions of “artificial streaming.” This happens when:
- An artist uses the services of a marketing company on release for a certain fee.
- The artist pays for the service
- Stream farms and bots boost the streams through the service
- Stream numbers skyrocket
- The artist further buys into the service
In this article, we will cover alternatives and what you can do to resolve the situation.
Reach out to Spotify
It is not unusual for songs to be removed from streaming services. This happens for various reasons. The first thing you should do is contact their customer service and ask why the song was removed. Most probably, there was a concrete reason for such a thing to take place. Perhaps there was an error in the system, even better! Unless you used a marketing agency for stream farms, you should reach out to the streaming service because there is a high probability that they might redeploy your soundtrack. If this doesn’t work, you should consider alternative services to post your songs.
YouTube
If a single picture is worth a thousand words, how much is a video worth? YouTube is the second most popular search engine worldwide with 2 billion users. If your song has been taken down from Spotify, you can consider investing in a creative process and shoot a video for your track and upload it on YouTube. Not only can you gain a lot of views from the platform, but there is a monetization program in place as well. YouTube is famous for a good reason; it is a simple-to-use platform that has gained widespread popularity worldwide thanks to millions of content creators. Try it out; perhaps this is even better than Spotify. Here is a fascinating guide on how to reach 1 million views on YouTube; check it out.
SoundCloud
SoundCloud is the next alternative you should consider. Currently, SoundCloud boasts over 190 million tracks from 20 million creators streamed in 190 countries. A monetization policy is set in place for creators like yourself to earn those hard-earned bucks. To qualify for the monetization program, you need to be a SoundCloud PRO subscriber; your tracks need to be entirely original and have at least 500 plays in the past month. In addition to the mentioned, the plays need to be from countries where the advertising from SoundCloud is available. The more money SoundCloud makes off of paid subscriptions and advertising, the more money you will make. Unfortunately, you get only 55% of the revenue share. If your music makes $2000, you’ll receive $1100. That’s not too bad.
Final remarks
Do not fret if your music gets taken down by Spotify. As mentioned above, you can always reach out to Spotify and ask for a clarification as to why that happened. If this doesn’t work out, you can check out alternatives, and as we mentioned, there are monetization policies in place to make sure you earn those hard-earned bucks.
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