I
used to earn a royalty for every stream of my music on
YouTube. But then, around last June, something changed; I stopped
getting paid for over half
of my music's streams. I recently contacted my digital distributor for
an
explanation, but they never replied. Over the following month, I sent
them two reminders to reply and opened a second support ticket, but I
never heard from them.
My
distributor's reluctance to address the issue has given me cause for
concern. Profits seem to be getting skimmed out of my pocket which
is a serious breach of ethics, so I'm going to start pulling my music
off
the service. As soon as I can make it happen, my 2016 album The
Holidays in Music, and my 2018 album Positively
Polka, will be deleted from YouTube.
UPDATE
March 9:
Both
albums have been succesfully removed from YouTube. I am thinking about
eventually removing the rest of my music from the service as well, but
that leaves
me in between a rock and hard place. YouTube
is the world's biggest
platform for music — if you have an album or single out, people expect
to find it on YouTube. By
taking my music off YouTube, I'll stop YouTube from taking advantage of
me, but it will also make my music less discoverable.
Later
this spring, I will be digitally distributing my 2022 album, Escape to Polka Paradise. It will
be distributed to all the major platforms except YouTube, iHeart Radio,
and TikTok. [The reason I no longer distribute my music to iHeart Radio
is explained in this article. TikTok employs
a non-standard model of paying streaming royalties which also takes
advantage of artists.]