You finally made the switch. Maybe your old distributor raised their annual fee, maybe you found one with better playlist pitching, or maybe you just got tired of a confusing dashboard. Whatever the reason, you pulled your catalog from one distributor and uploaded it to another — and now you're wondering where your royalties went.
This is one of the most common (and most costly) moments in an independent artist's career, and almost nobody explains it clearly before you make the move. Streaming royalties don't just follow you to a new platform. They move through pipelines, and when you switch distributors, those pipelines change — sometimes breaking things that were working fine before.
Here's what actually happens when you change distributors, and what you need to do to make sure you don't leave money behind.
Your Distributor Doesn't Own Your Royalties — But They Control the Pipeline
First, the good news: your royalties belong to you. Your distributor is not entitled to keep money you earned before you left them. What they do control is the delivery channel — the connection between the streaming platforms and your bank account.
When you have music live with Distributor A, that distributor has agreements with Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, and everyone else. Those agreements determine how money flows. Revenue from your streams goes from the platform to the distributor, and then from the distributor to you.
When you leave Distributor A, that pipeline closes — but it doesn't close instantly. Royalties are calculated and paid out on a delay. Spotify reports streaming data monthly, but pays out on a 2-3 month lag. So when you pull your music in January, there are still royalties from November and December sitting in a queue that haven't been paid yet.
Most reputable distributors will continue to pay out money owed to you even after you've left — but you need to confirm this. Check your distributor's terms of service under cancellation or account termination. Some distributors hold a "reserve" amount for several months before releasing final payments. Others require you to keep a minimum balance in your account before you can request a withdrawal. If you close your account without reading the fine print, you may forfeit that final payout without realizing it.
The Handover Gap: What Happens Between Old and New
There's almost always a gap when you switch distributors — a period when your music is technically between homes. Your old distributor has started pulling your tracks from platforms, and your new distributor hasn't finished pushing them back up yet. During that gap, your music may be unavailable on some or all streaming services.
No streams means no royalties. That's obvious. What's less obvious is that the gap often doesn't look like a gap from the outside. Your song might still show up in search results on Spotify during the transition — but clicking play returns an error, or plays nothing, or buffers indefinitely. Listeners don't stick around for that, and that lost traffic doesn't come back.
The other thing that can get disrupted during the handover is your play count history and playlist placements. Some platforms display cumulative stream counts; others reset them when a new ISRC is used.
The ISRC Problem Nobody Warns You About
Every recorded song is supposed to have an ISRC — an International Standard Recording Code. It's a 12-character code that uniquely identifies a specific recording. ISRCs are how streaming platforms track plays, how SoundExchange matches digital royalties, and how the rest of the music ecosystem recognizes that this particular file is the same track that's already registered in various databases.
Here's where distributor switches get complicated: some distributors assign their own ISRCs to your tracks when you upload them. If you registered your songs using those ISRCs — at SoundExchange, at your PRO, at the MLC — and then switch to a new distributor that assigns different ISRCs, you now have a mismatch.
Your new streams are generating royalties under a new code. Your old registrations are pointing at the old code. Collection societies don't automatically connect those dots. The result is royalties that are earned but unmatched — sitting in a general pool rather than being routed to you.
Before you switch distributors, find out whether your current distributor owns those ISRCs or whether you can take them with you. If they own them, you have two options: get the codes from your distributor before you leave, or re-register your songs at SoundExchange and the MLC with your new codes as soon as your new distribution is live.
Streaming Royalties vs. Publishing Royalties — Two Completely Different Flows
Switching distributors affects your streaming (master) royalties directly. But it can create ripple effects on your publishing royalties too, and most artists don't realize the two systems are completely separate.
Your streaming royalties come through your distributor. Your publishing royalties — the songwriter share, performance royalties, mechanical royalties — flow through your PRO (ASCAP, BMI, SESAC), the MLC, and SoundExchange. None of those organizations talk to your distributor. They work off song registrations and ISRCs.
If an ISRC changes when you switch distributors, and those streams come from internet radio stations or services that pay SoundExchange, your digital performance royalties can go unmatched. SoundExchange is required to pay the rights holders it can identify. If it can't match the code on a stream to a registered owner, the money sits in the unmatched fund.
The same issue can hit your mechanical royalties at the MLC. The MLC is responsible for matching every on-demand stream to the correct songwriter and publisher. That matching relies on metadata and ISRCs. A code mismatch is one of the most common reasons songs end up with unmatched mechanicals.
This isn't hypothetical. The MLC reported over $424 million in unmatched mechanical royalties when it launched in 2021. A significant portion came from exactly this kind of metadata gap — ISRCs and song registrations that didn't line up cleanly.
How to Switch Distributors Without Losing Money
If you're planning a switch — or you've already made one and you're not sure your royalties are flowing correctly — here's what to do.
Before you leave your old distributor:
- Download or document every ISRC your old distributor assigned to your tracks
- Make sure your bank account is connected and verify the final payout schedule
- Read the cancellation policy — specifically what happens to accrued but unpaid royalties
- Don't delete your account until you've received every payout owed to you
When uploading to your new distributor:
- Use the same ISRCs if possible — most modern distributors let you enter existing codes instead of auto-generating new ones
- If you can't keep the same ISRCs, update your SoundExchange, MLC, and PRO registrations with your new codes immediately after your music goes live
- Make sure your metadata is consistent — same spelling of your name, same song titles, same featured artist credits
After the switch:
- Log into SoundExchange and search for your artist name — confirm your tracks are still showing up correctly
- Log into the MLC portal and verify your works registrations are linked to active ISRCs
- Check your PRO catalog to make sure performance royalties are still routing correctly
- Give it 60-90 days and compare royalty statements from before and after the switch to catch any drops not explained by a change in stream counts
When to Get a Professional Set of Eyes on Your Catalog
For artists with a handful of songs and simple registrations, a careful DIY audit like the one above is usually enough to catch and fix problems before they compound. But the more catalog you have — especially if you've released with multiple distributors over time, collaborated with other writers, or been signed to a label at any point — the harder it is to spot where the gaps are.
Royalty gaps from a distributor switch don't always show up as a sudden drop. They often show up slowly, as income that never quite matches your stream counts, or a payment that's slightly less than expected for reasons that are hard to pinpoint from a dashboard. By the time you notice, months of income may have already gone unmatched.
That's exactly the kind of problem a catalogue audit is designed to find. A proper audit goes through your registrations at every collection point — your PRO, SoundExchange, the MLC — cross-references your ISRCs with what's currently live on streaming platforms, and identifies where royalties are likely being lost. If you've switched distributors in the last couple of years and you're not sure whether your registrations held up through the transition, it's worth getting that checked before more money piles into the unmatched fund.
You can learn more about how a catalogue audit works and whether your catalog qualifies at musicsplitsheets.com/pages/catalogue-audit.