Issues with SoundCloud distribution? This is what I struggle with

It sometimes becomes painfully clear that SoundCloud takes the description you attach to your music very seriously. If a track distribution gets rejected, the first thing you should check is what you wrote in that section. They react to specific words like “remix” and “alter ego” (apparently). If you’re trying to distribute music you didn’t create yourself but have the right to redistribute through other agreements and contracts, you should be careful with how you present the work.

A featured “remixer” (meaning the artist) must be someone other than the original creator (so I can’t remix my own track and label it as remixed). That gets it rejected immediately, partly because it lacks “signed agreements” for the work. This means I’d need to write a contract with myself and prove I have the rights to do so. I haven’t verified if that even works, because I honestly couldn’t be bothered to deal with their crap.

Erik Vilde’s “En vacker dag” did, in fact, have a signed contract, which I assume is what primarily enabled its distribution, but SoundCloud still turned out to be incredibly stubborn. It seems the contract itself isn’t accepted locally by them when it comes to monetization on their own platform. And we even used DocuSign with digital fingerprints to release the original on Spotify.

But the latest thing I discovered was during the release of “Bass Assassin Protocol” (which had a different title at first), where I use two artist names that I’m planning to claim after next week once it drops. The description said my “alter egos” were involved. That caused the release to be denied, along with the fact that the artist names were written in the title. But the reasons were obviously bogus.

You’re apparently not allowed to name artist aliases as alter egos. Meaning, if you include yourself under another artist name and describe it as an alter ego in the description, it gets denied. But if you list them as featured artists without mentioning that they’re alter egos, they’re treated as separate artists and the release gets approved.

Why SoundCloud operates like this is beyond me. My guess is it has to do with strict regulations further down the chain, and SoundCloud acts this aggressively because they know how hard it is to get releases approved otherwise. But I seriously hate it, because sometimes their rules make absolutely no sense.

So why do I go through all this trouble then? Well, because as a remixing artist, I want to be able to distribute tracks differently than if I were the primary artist on someone else’s work. It’s out of respect for my collaborators that I want to present the tracks differently when they’re released. But apparently you’re not always allowed to do that, which means you have to cheat with both the titles and artist names.

So far it’s worked out, but I doubt this will hold forever. One day, some artist I represent is going to be seriously pissed…

Initially posted at Facebook: