March 2024 Follow-up posts!
Yesterday I
woke up with a positive mind. Had just finished the last preparations for my
upcoming release HOMETOWN for Tuesday the 13th of February.
Imagine my surprise when I received an email from my distributor, amuse.io saying my account has been deactivated! I can no longer access my account, create new releases, and withdraw royalties! And if I have releases live through Amuse, they will be removed from all streaming platforms.
According
to amuse actions that can lead to an account being deactivated include (but are
not limited to): Uploading material that I don’t own the rights to OR Engaging
in forced streaming activity OR uploading content that is intended for such
purposes.
I still can’t believe that this is actually happening. After two years and 11 song releases through this platform. I do have full commercial rights to my songs, so this can’t be the reason. Do I promote my song on social media? Of course, I do, like every other artist I’m using Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and TikTok and I run campaigns through sites like GROOVER and reach out to media outlets, radio stations, and playlist curators. Didn’t know that this is a crime and gives a distributor the right to treat me like a criminal! And my last promo for my song Ping Pong & Puzzle is going well because it is an AMAZING track.
Big names like Adele, Ed Sheeran, and Taylor Swift have millions of streamings daily and no one says anything BUT when an Indie artist is finally seeing a little success, they remove the tracks from the stores?! Does this even make sense?
While I was researching the net yesterday, I found two posts from other artists having the same problem as I have! I guess this is amuse policy! I will include the posts here at the end of my post. It looks as if this is a corrupt fraud system that needs to be investigated closely!
I feel so helpless. Not only do I have to postpone my next release, but now I have to remove all the music stores from my website, blog, and socials for no reason! I have no idea how long it will take until my tracks are completely removed from the stores but don’t worry, when one door closes, a window opens! All my tracks will be soon available again.
Hours of work in 2 years were for nothing while amuse has charged me for a full year only a week before this mess! Very fishy!!!! It stinks!
When I began my journey as an indie lyricist back in January 2022, I was overwhelmed with all the new information. There are plenty of distribution platforms. I found a list of all the free and paid ones and chose amuse, mainly because of the global superstar Will.I.Am who is one of the owners. I thought to myself, hey he seems to be a decent and trustworthy guy. Also amuse is a Swedish company like Spotify and what could possibly go wrong?
Well, two years later, I have learned my lesson. But this awful treatment is a NO-GO. You can’t treat artists like criminals. I have never ever experienced such nasty, rude, and disrespectful behaviour. As if this is not nasty enough, I can’t even contact anyone from amuse. There is no customer care phone number or email.
UPDATE March 5, 2024: I don't exaggerate when I say this has been an unpleasant, annoying, and upsetting experience. I have found a NEW distributor and ALL my tracks will be released on March 13 th 2024 through the new partner.
However cleaning up the mess done by AMUSE is very time-consuming. I'm
contacting each music store directly to make sure that the TRACK LINKING based
on the METADATA will function correctly.
Unfortunately, it is not that easy to contact the stores as an
artist directly. This is taking a lot of time of research and mailing back and
forth. Still not sure if and when this mess is completely over!
UPDATE March 21, 2024: Finally, my 13 tracks are now correctly published and available on streaming platforms again! This experience was eye-opening in every possible way.
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Don't use Amuse.io - all music removed, end of discussion. Assuming my money is gone too
I've been using Amuse pro (paid version) for about 2 years, was using the free version for 6 months or so. I had 6 artists uploading music.
I started uploading ambient music and field recordings with my latest artist page and noticed that every release was getting denied for release. I was given seemingly random reasons, that when I asked them about it, eventually they said it didn't actually matter, and they would proceed to release.
For example, I had an album with different sections from the same field recording of bird sounds getting flagged for duplicate tracks, even though none of them are even the same length. Aside from them being different field recordings from the same session, they’re also EQ’d, compressed, mixed and mastered different and again, all different length. They said "thanks for clarifying, we'll send to stores." I ended up having to ask about all 10 of my denied releases, and every single time they just said "thanks for clarifying, we'll send to stores."
So yesterday, I get the email that my account is frozen due to "fraudulent streaming activity," but can still withdraw money. At this point, only about 10 of my releases were actually live on stores, and I was getting no more than 100 streams per day across all platforms on this new artist. So I think they literally just got annoyed with having me email them about every release. But why deny the releases in the first place if all I have to do is ask what the issue is to get it approved?
I wake up this morning to all my music removed from stores.
"Hi there,
Our system is giving indications that fraudulent streaming activity is taking place on some of your uploaded content.
This paired with suspicious and generic content being uploaded continuously has led to our decision to takedown your releases and deactivate your account.
We will not revisit this case, thank you for understanding.
Regards,
(Name)"
"fraudulent streaming activity" - I'm getting 100, maybe 200 streams per day across all platforms on this new artist account. $1/ day? So all my artists are removed. This is including the 5 artists that have been up for the past 2 years without issue. I have 1 singer songwriter page that gets 50 streams a day, why is this taken down too? I assume my money is gone, which is annoying. but it's only like $200 for the past few months so lesson learned.
"Suspicious and generic content being uploaded" -so bird sounds, one of the biggest markets on streaming services is suspicious? Literally plastered all over Spotify, and it's suspicious? What exactly is meant by "generic" content?
Crickets from support.
I should note, that this very conveniently comes 3 days after Amuse charged me for 1 full year's subscription to the Pro account. I will absolutely be challenging this charge through my credit card.
Amuse used to be good for me. Until my account was causing them too much work (me asking why a release was denied, then having an agent have to answer "oh sorry yeah we'll send to stores"). Then, 3 days after my billing period for the next year *poof* music gone, end of discussion, thanks for the $80 + whatever streaming revenue they're about to steal from me. Genius business plan.
Amuse is great if you want a free way to upload an album or two for your friends to listen to, and make $0.50 a day. But I wouldn't trust them if you expect to upload a lot, or make any money.
Leaning Tunecore or distrokid now, but this is 200 hours of work I was just dealt getting all 6 artists ISRC codes, titles, artwork etc onto the new store. Thanks Amuse
A post on reddit.com (four years ago!)
Do NOT use Amuse.io to distribute your music!
Hey everyone, I’m going to share with you my unfortunate situation and how it was handled by Amuse support after battling for months and wasting so much time with them as my distributor.
I started releasing music through this distributor known as amuse.io, they are free and seemed to be trustworthy. For a large part my music was not on streaming services such as Apple or Spotify due to the charge, however, I ended up using amuse since they were free, I started seeing many fans moving over to store releases and saw plays daily.
I was then hit with a decent number of streams with people apparently listening from all over the world from the US all the way to New Zealand, I began picking up plays from many different countries. I noticed this and didn’t think much of it, I just thought that what I’m doing seems to working and continued on about my day. However, a few months after releasing my tracks through them, I received an email titled “Warning: fake streaming activity”. This email shocked me at first as I wasn’t sure exactly what was going on. I have been promoting my artist page throughout my social media over the past few months and gaining a following more than before. The email stated that 99.9% of my streams are fake bots and if I don’t stop these bots they will remove everything and delete my profile. You can understand my frustration here with this regard; having my tracks and profile being deleted for something that is completely out of my control and something I wasn’t even aware of (I didn’t even know these types of bots existed until they mentioned it to me).
Finally a ticket I opened requesting help from support had its titled mysteriously changed to “Account closed, releases removed” for no apparent reason, as you can see the support agents are acting coy about the situation and left me in the dust while they close my account and pocket all the money from the stores. Countless hours that I've sunk, into promoting my artist page and setting everything up and the countless hours I've spent on each track just wasted because of Amuse’s incompetency. Amuse as the company should have been able to block all this fraudulent activity (and if this activity is even fake or if they are just using that as an excuse to pocket the money generated and close my account), I am in no way equipped to even begin dealing with this issue and I wasn't even aware of the problem until this case was opened and I got the email.
I am not fussed about the royalty generated by the streams, however it must be noted that I have been scammed out of approximately a few hundred (potentially thousands) dollars, as the streams proved I generated a decent sum but was not paid a single cent. I opened another thread about this on Reddit back when my tracks were still up and received a response from an Amuse representative claiming that they don’t take any money from the artist and all the money can be withdrawn. Alas, it seems they pocketed all the money I made from my streams and removed all traces of me and deleted my profiles and all of my tracks without second thought. I am deeply disappointed by the treatment from Amuse, I have wasted many months, so much time with them only to find them stab me in the back like this.
I am really disappointed in Amuse.io, anyone else looking to distribute their music, please avoid them: use something like landr (which is free/paid) or distrokid (paid but cheap yearly rate).
TLDR; Amuse deleted all my tracks and profile without second thought just because I started picking up more streams, they removed all traces of me after they pocketed every cent (out of the thousands of dollars generated). Use landr (free/paid) to distribute your music or distrokid (paid).
Scam and exploiting music artists. Once you’ve signed up the ticking time bomb starts and it is a matter of time before you have to change your logins or number, you’ll never get help from support as a premium member, which isn’t part of the agreement, but that’s the last time you’ll access your Amuse.io account, and the releases will remain on platforms in case you blow up and your music starts making more money, which they will benefit from. Is it a Swedish thing to do such acts of evil for profits?
I echo the above opinion on amuse they are crooks! Do Not Use Amuse They will at their own discretion remove all your music from distribution and keep your royalties… They are criminally incompetent and if you are in their cross hairs lookout they will accuse you of cheating without proof and when you ask them for proof and how they came to their conclusions they will tell you it’s none of your business! How it’s none of your business what becomes of years of your hard-work is beyond me. Amuse is a disgusting excuse for a distributor to dish out such a serious attack on the music of an independent artist who trusted them with their music is criminal. I have been a professional musician with album releases under my belt and a 30 year career as a recording artist. They had the gall to accuse me of fake streaming numbers on Spotify funny thing is Spotify did not agree with them and upheld my streaming numbers. Amuse in a move to steal my royalties would not respond to my requests for how they came to their conclusions how I faked my streaming numbers. Considering I was in the top 10 most requested on major radio stations they still kept my royalties they are the worst thieves I have ever come across in modern distribution.. I have switched to Dittoe Distribution and suggest you steer clear of the crooks running amuse Distribution they are destined to fail if they need to steal money from the struggling artists on their service. There is nothing free about their service they will get paid even if it means they will steal your royalties to get their money… they set me back years by removing 30 of my songs from release and leaving me without a single song in distribution… I can’t tell you how much I regret ever getting involved with these low life criminals. Do Not Trust Them! You’ve Been Warned
Do Not Use Amuse They will at their own discretion remove all your music from distribution and keep your royalties… They are criminally incompetent and if you are in their cross hairs lookout they will accuse you of cheating without proof and when you ask them for proof and how they came to their conclusions they will tell you it’s none of your business how can it be none of your business when your it’s your music, music it took you years of hard work to get published has been erased from the public eye. This is a disgusting excuse for such a serious attack on the music of an independent artist who trusted them with their music. I have been a professional musician with album releases under my belt and a 30 year career as a recording artist. They had the nerve to accuse me of fake streaming numbers on Spotify, the funny thing is Spotify did not agree with them and upheld my streaming numbers. Amuse in a move to steal my royalties would not respond to my requests for how they came to their conclusions how I faked my streaming numbers. Considering I was in the top 10 most requested on major radio stations they still kept my royalties they are the worst thieves I have ever come across in modern distribution.. I have switched to Dittoe Distribution and suggest you steer clear of the crooks running amuse Distribution they are destined to fail if they need to steal money from the struggling artists on their service. There is nothing free about their service they will get paid even if it means they will steal your royalties to get their money… they set me back years by removing 30 of my songs from release and leaving me without a single song in distribution… I can’t tell you how much I regret ever getting involved with these low life criminals. Do Not Trust Them! You’ve Been Warned
Amuse is complete BS SCAM SCAM SCAM SCAM I went through the exact same thing. I have one song, they have kept the $2.50 it made and charged me $59.99 US dollars and refused a refund or a down grade in plan. Amuse also continues to charge 15% on any song you uploaded even after you cancel they are in breech of contract. They rip off every one who signs up and there are a few artists that get forwarded on their play lists. I emailed customer service many times, amuse io is highly unethical and lacks any integrity. They will not close my account after many requests of cancellation. They are online thieves, worst experience ever!! I hope and pray they get shut down, they suck beyond belief! Horrible company!!
