If you upload music and the royalties never quite add up, or your song doesn't come up when someone searches for it by voice on Alexa or Shazam, the problem is almost never the platform. It's the metadata — the information attached to your audio file: title, artist, songwriters, ISRC, splits — and it's what decides where your money goes and who finds you.
The good news: this is 100% something you control, and fixing it costs nothing — just attention to detail before you upload.
1. Bad metadata = royalties nobody claims
Every time someone streams your song, that stream turns into money that has to be split between songwriter, producer, and artist, according to the percentages (splits) you declared. If those splits aren't captured, or your name shows up differently across releases, that money doesn't disappear — it just sits unclaimed until someone manually fixes it. With thousands of songs uploaded every day, no one's going to chase down your specific case.
2. Your artist name has to be identical, every time
"DJ Rulo," "Dj Rulo," and "DJ RULO" are, as far as the system is concerned, three different artists. Every time you upload a release with a slightly different version of your name, you're fragmenting your own catalog: streams don't add up to the same profile, the algorithm never builds enough history to recommend you, and your PRO (the organization that collects your performance royalties) may not match it to your registered legal name.
3. The 4 fields that cost you the most money when they're wrong
- ISRC: your recording's unique identifier. Without a correct one, platforms like YouTube can't run Content ID matching, and your music can play without generating a single cent of royalty.
- Composition splits: who wrote what percentage of the song. If a collaborator is missing or the percentage is wrong, that share of publishing royalties goes unpaid.
- Legal name vs. artist name: your PRO needs your exact legal name to match it against your IPI/CAE number. If it doesn't match, performance royalties (radio, streaming, TV) go uncollected.
- Genre and release date: these determine whether you're even considered for editorial playlists on release day — a mistake here takes you out of that window permanently.
4. How each platform actually uses it (and why it hits you directly)
Spotify checks your credits before considering your release for editorial playlists — if the songwriter credit isn't there, your song is at a disadvantage from day one.
Shazam and Alexa depend almost entirely on the title and artist name being written exactly the same everywhere. One inconsistency and a voice search simply won't find you.
YouTube Content ID uses your ISRC to identify your audio across millions of videos uploaded by other users. Without a correct ISRC, that content doesn't get monetized in your favor even when your song plays in the background of hundreds of clips.
Checklist before your next upload
- Your artist name is written exactly the same as in your previous releases
- Every songwriter and producer is credited, with splits that add up to 100%
- Your legal name (the one on your ID) matches what's registered with your PRO
- The genre you picked actually describes your song, not just the most generic option
- Your cover art has no text (names, features) that isn't also reflected in the metadata
At DISTROMASTERS we validate your technical metadata before it goes out to stores, but the source data — songwriters, splits, your legal name — depends on what you give us at upload. Five minutes checking this before you publish is the difference between collecting every royalty you generate and leaving it unclaimed.