What happens to your masters if your distributor shuts down

53 · 2026-09-21 · 18 min read · Español

Nothing happens to your masters. A distributor holds a licence to deliver your recordings, never the recordings, and a licence ending is not a transfer of anything. What ends is the delivery: the stores are told to take the releases down, the dashboard closes, and whatever the distributor collected and had not yet paid you becomes a debt it owes. So the work is not saving the catalogue. It is getting the register, the statements and the balance out before the door shuts, and re-delivering under the same codes so the record picks up where it stopped.

A distributor takes a licence, not ownership. US law defines a transfer of copyright ownership to exclude a non-exclusive licence, and the major self-release agreements say in their own words that no copyright interest is taken.
What a shutdown ends is delivery. The agreement’s own end-of-term clause is the mechanism: the distributor notifies the stores to remove the recordings, and owes you an accounting for what was earned during the term.
Two documented closures ran in the same order: new uploads closed first, live releases came down weeks later, and the wallet stayed open longest. Read the dates in your own notice in that order.
Money the distributor collected and had not paid is a debt. In an orderly closure you withdraw it before the stated date; in an insolvency you are an unsecured creditor, paid from what is left after every higher class.
Performance, mechanical and digital-performance royalties never passed through the distributor and do not stop. Your ISRCs survive unchanged, and Spotify links a re-delivered track to its old play count when the audio and metadata match.

Do you still own your masters?

Yes. A distributor holds a licence to distribute your recordings, and a licence ending changes nothing about who owns them.

The law is unusually direct about this, because it had to define the word. In the United States Copyright Act, the definitions section says what a transfer of ownership is: “an assignment, mortgage, exclusive license, or any other conveyance, alienation, or hypothecation of a copyright or of any of the exclusive rights comprised in a copyright, whether or not it is limited in time or place of effect, but not including a nonexclusive license.” Read the last five words twice. A non-exclusive licence is the one thing on that list that is defined as not a transfer, and a non-exclusive licence is what you gave your distributor.

The agreements say so themselves. DistroKid’s distribution agreement grants the company a “non-exclusive, sub-licensable right and license during the Term and throughout the Territory to: reproduce and distribute your Recordings, to Digital Stores” — and then, in capitals, because somebody knew which sentence people would search for: “DISTROKID DOESN’T TAKE ANY COPYRIGHT OR OTHER INTEREST IN ANY OF YOUR MUSIC, ONLY A LIMITED LICENSE TO DISTRIBUTE.” During the Term. A limited licence. Two phrases that describe a thing with an end built in, and the end is not a transfer.

Read yours, not a summary of it, and the version you agreed to rather than the version live today — the piece on who owns the master when you self-release has the rule and the producer clause that usually complicates it, and this page assumes the answer there was you. And if the word reversion has crossed your mind: nothing here was granted away, so there is nothing to recover. That piece is for people who signed something. You subscribed to something.

One honest complication, in the same section so nobody has to hunt for it. The same agreement lets DistroKid “assign, delegate, pledge, encumber, sublicense and otherwise transfer, this Agreement and/or any or all of our rights and obligations in order to operate the Service and Site.” So a company that buys a distributor’s business can step into its shoes for the rest of your term, delivering under the licence you gave. That is a licence changing hands. It is not ownership changing hands, and it ends when the term does.

Somewhere in every thread about a distributor closing, somebody says the catalogue goes down with the ship — sold off with the office chairs to pay whoever the company owed. Call bullshit on it. A trustee sells what the company owned, and the company owned a licence to deliver your recordings. It never owned the recordings.

What actually stops working, and in what order?

The delivery: new uploads close first, live releases are taken down next, and the wallet stays open longest. Two documented closures ran exactly that way.

Start with the clause that does the work, because a shutdown is not a special event in these agreements — it is the end of the term arriving for everyone at once. DistroKid’s: “We may also terminate the Term if our Service is discontinued for any reason.” And what the end of a term does: “After the end of the Term, we will notify all applicable Digital Stores to remove your Recordings and will have no further obligation to you other than to account and pay for monies earned during the Term.” Two duties survive the door closing — telling the stores, and paying you what was earned — and nothing else does. The same section adds that the stores may remove recordings at any time under their own policies, and that customers who downloaded a track may keep it. Both are true whether the distributor is alive or not.

Now the calendar, from two closures that gave one. In September 2024 Warner Music Group closed Level, its self-release distributor, and Music Business Worldwide reported the notice: no new submissions or edits from the day of the announcement, 26 September; “all live releases will automatically be taken down from DSPs on Monday, November 18, 2024,” with users “welcome to request a takedown of their content before then”; funds to be withdrawn “before Friday, July 11, 2025”; the service itself closing on 31 July 2025. Seven and a half weeks from the email to the automatic takedown. Nine and a half months to the wallet.

Two years earlier, Universal Music Group’s Spinnup had done the same in a shorter frame. Its users were emailed on 18 May 2022 that the platform “can’t accommodate all current Spinnup users,” and departing artists were asked to take their releases down and move them “by July 19, 2022,” after which “we will need to begin taking down any remaining live releases from departing artists.” Two months. The guidance that came with it was to download your assets, transfer your releases, and manage incoming royalties over the months that followed — which is this page, written by the people closing the door.

Read your own notice in that order: the day uploads stop, the day the releases come down, the day the money has to be out. The first is usually today. The second is the one that decides whether your re-delivery is live before the old copy disappears. The third is the one people miss, because it is the furthest away and nothing on it looks urgent. Not every closure gives notice, and how long a store takes to act on a takedown once it is sent is its own question with its own numbers, none of which this page states — so the dates in your notice are the only clock you have, and they are the distributor’s clock, not the stores’.

Where does the money it already collected go?

To the distributor, because stores pay whoever delivered; what it has not paid you is a debt, and in insolvency you are an unsecured creditor.

The stores are explicit about the route. Spotify defines recording royalties as “the money owed to rightsholders for recordings streamed on Spotify, which is paid to artists through the licensor that delivered the music, typically their record label or distributor,” and describes the second hop as somebody else’s business: “Once we pay rightsholders according to their streamshare, they pay artists and songwriters according to their individual agreements.” Every stream your record earned last month is, right now, either in the distributor’s account or on its way there. It was always going to pass through that account. The question a shutdown asks is whether it comes out the other side.

In an orderly closure it does, on a schedule. The agreement’s surviving duty is “to account and pay for monies earned during the Term,” and Level’s version of honouring it was a wallet that stayed open for nine and a half months with a date on it. The date is the whole instruction. Money not withdrawn by then was not going to be mailed to you later.

In an insolvency it is a different afternoon. What a distributor owes you and has not paid is an unsecured debt, and unsecured debts are paid after every secured and priority claim. The United States Courts describe chapter 7 in their own plain language: the trustee “gathers and sells the debtor’s nonexempt assets and uses the proceeds of such assets to pay holders of claims (creditors),” and “there are six classes of claims; and each class must be paid in full before the next lower class is paid anything.” To be in the queue at all, unsecured creditors “must file their claims with the court within 90 days after the first date set for the meeting of creditors.” Canada runs the same shape under different names. The Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy: “To recover money owed to you, you must complete and submit a Proof of Claim to the LIT,” and “After all secured and preferred creditors have been paid in full, ordinary creditors divide the remaining funds among themselves in proportion to how much each is owed.” The Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act gives the tense: the trustee declares dividends “from time to time as required by the inspectors.” Godot kept better hours.

The amount is stated straight, because the wait is the only part that is funny. The US Courts’ page says that where “all the debtor’s assets are exempt or subject to valid liens” the trustee files a no-asset report and “there will be no distribution to unsecured creditors.” A proof of claim is a form, and the form asks what you are owed and how you know. Your statements are how you know. That is the operational reason the export list further down says every statement and not the recent ones — and it is why a statement that arrives short for this reason is not one of the six causes the statement piece walks. It is a seventh, and the check for it is a company registry rather than a line item.

Which of your royalties never touched the distributor?

Performance royalties from your PRO, mechanicals from The MLC, and digital-performance and neighbouring-rights money from SoundExchange and Re:Sound — each pays its own registrants directly.

A distributor collects one stream: recording royalties from the stores it delivers to. The map of every stream counts seven, and the other six are collected by organisations that pay their own members and have never heard of your distributor. Your PRO pays the performance royalty on the song to the writer and publisher it has on file. The MLC pays the US mechanical to the publisher it has on file. SoundExchange pays the featured artist’s share of the digital-performance royalty directly, not through a label or a distributor — the piece on what owning a master gets you has the statute — and Re:Sound does the Canadian equivalent for performers and makers.

So a distributor’s death interrupts exactly one of seven streams, and if your name is in the other registers, you lose nothing on those six for a single day. That is the good news, and it is only good news for the reader who registered. The one who never did has a different problem that predates the shutdown, and the map is where it is answered.

What happens to the codes, the play counts and the playlists?

The ISRCs survive unchanged; Spotify links a re-delivered track to its old play count when audio and metadata match; it promises nothing about playlists.

The codes first, in one sentence, because they have their own piece. Every ISRC already assigned to your recordings is permanent, the prefix a distributor assigned it under was never yours, and what happens when that prefix is no longer yours walks every consequence — including the one mistake that turns a re-delivery into damage, which is letting the new distributor mint fresh codes for recordings that already have them. The UPC is the other code on the release, it came from the distributor’s prefix too, and the piece on UPCs owns what it can and cannot do; whether a new distributor will carry the old one is that distributor’s policy, and no company’s is stated here.

The play counts are a store question, and Spotify answers it. Its page on re-uploading music: “You can re-upload music without losing your play count through a process called track-linking,” which works when “the audio and metadata of the old and new versions” match, “including duration, title, and artist name.” Same file, same title, same artist, same code. Then check the number beside the song on your artist profile once the new version is live. Level’s own notice said the same thing from the other side of the counter: export “your assets and metadata” to keep “play counts and playlist placements.”

Two limits, stated once. Spotify’s page names no ISRC and says nothing about playlists, so this page promises neither; a placement that survives is a placement that survived, not one you were owed. And a re-delivered release carries a date field that decides how the stores file it — the original release date, which is the one field on the new form that has to say what the old one said.

What do you export while the login still works?

The register of codes, the metadata, every statement, the artwork and audio you delivered, the agreement version you accepted, and the balance.

If the only register of your codes lives in somebody else’s dashboard, you have been exposed for a while, and the shutdown is just the day it shows. The day that dashboard closes, what you know about your own catalogue is what you managed to copy first. So copy, in this order:

The register: ISRC and UPC for every track and release. The prefix piece names the seven fields the standard says the assigner owes you; the codes are the two you cannot re-deliver without.
The metadata as delivered. Titles, artists, version names, and the original release date for every release, which is the one date the new form must repeat.
Every statement, not the recent ones. They are the proof of any claim for an unpaid balance, and they are the raw material of any audit you ever run.
The audio and artwork you actually uploaded. The file on your drive and the file you delivered are not always the same file, and track-linking wants the delivered one.
The agreement, as the version you accepted. Yours is the version that binds, and the site’s copy will not stay up to be read later.
The balance, before the date on the notice. Not after. There is no later.

Deliver the new copy before the old one comes down, then let the old one go. And put the register somewhere the next dashboard cannot take it with it — the audit checklist asks for exactly that once a year, and this page is what the question costs when the answer was no.

What if it vanished without a word?

The music stays up and the stores keep paying the account that delivered it; re-deliver the same ISRCs through a new distributor and request takedown.

Go back to Spotify’s sentence. It pays “the licensor that delivered the music,” and it “has no knowledge of the agreements that artists and songwriters sign with their labels, publishers, or collecting societies.” Nothing in that mechanism checks whether anybody is reading the licensor’s email. The account keeps filling. Nobody is home.

There is no door at Spotify to collect through — it does not pay artists, it pays the party that delivered — so the route is the one above, with the same codes: re-deliver through a new distributor, and have that distributor ask for the orphaned copy to come down. Spotify’s page routes every re-upload question to your distributor, and when the old one is gone the new one is the only one you have. If the register went down with the dashboard, the codes that reached the stores can be read back from outside; finding an ISRC on streaming is that errand, with its own warning that a lookup shows what a store was handed and only a register shows what was assigned.

One gap, stated plainly. How long a store keeps a dead licensor’s catalogue live, and what it does with the money it can no longer pay out, is published nowhere this piece could read. No claim is made about either.

What to do before it happens

Keep the register outside the dashboard, read your agreement’s termination and assignment clauses, and file every statement the day it arrives.

Keep your own register. Every ISRC, every UPC, every original release date, in a file the distributor does not host. Update it the day a release goes live, not the day a notice arrives.
Read two clauses of your agreement today. What happens at the end of the term, and what the company may assign or transfer. Save the version you read.
File every statement when it arrives. A statement is a receipt for a debt, and the receipts are what a claim is made of.
Check the other registers once a year. If your name is at the PRO, The MLC and SoundExchange, six of seven streams never notice a distributor closing.

None of that is dramatic, and none of it is your distributor’s job. A distributor delivers your recordings and pays what the stores pay it. It has never been where your catalogue lives, and the day it closes is a bad day to find out you thought it was.

FAQ

Can a bankrupt distributor’s trustee sell my masters?

No. A trustee sells the debtor’s assets, and your recordings were never among them: US law defines a transfer of copyright ownership to exclude a non-exclusive licence, which is what a distributor holds. What an agreement may allow to move is the distributor’s own side of it — DistroKid’s lets the company assign or transfer the agreement — so a buyer of the business can step into the distributor’s shoes for the rest of the term. That is a licence changing hands, not ownership, and it ends when the term does.

Will my play counts survive moving to a new distributor?

Spotify says they can. Its page on re-uploading describes track-linking, which keeps the play count when the audio and metadata of the old and new versions match, including duration, title and artist name. Deliver the same files with the same ISRCs and the same titles, and check the count on your artist profile once the new version is live. The same page promises nothing about playlist placements, and neither does this one.

Do I need to re-register with my PRO, The MLC or SoundExchange?

No. Those registrations are in your name, they never named the distributor, and each organisation pays its own registrants directly. A distributor’s closure interrupts the one stream that ran through it — recording royalties from the stores it delivered to — and none of the others. The map of which collector holds which stream is its own piece.

Sources

United States Code, Title 17, § 101 — Definitions — the definition of a “transfer of copyright ownership,” which lists assignments, mortgages and exclusive licences and ends “but not including a nonexclusive license.” Read at the Legal Information Institute.
DistroKid, Distribution Agreement — the non-exclusive, sub-licensable licence during the Term (§ 5.a.i); the capitalised sentence that no copyright or other interest is taken; termination of the Term if the Service is discontinued; the end-of-Term duty to notify stores to remove the recordings and to account and pay for monies earned (§ 4.d); that stores may remove recordings at any time and that customers who downloaded may retain them; and the company’s right to assign or transfer the agreement (§ 10.e). Quoted as read on the date at the top of this piece; the agreement changes, and yours is the version you accepted.
Spotify for Artists, Royalties — that recording royalties are paid to artists through the licensor that delivered the music, typically a label or distributor; that rightsholders then pay artists according to their individual agreements; and that Spotify has no knowledge of those agreements.
Spotify for Artists, Re-uploading music — track-linking; the requirement that the audio and metadata of the old and new versions match, including duration, title and artist name; and the instruction to reach out to your distributor. The page names no ISRC and makes no statement about playlists.
Music Business Worldwide, Warner Music Group is shutting its TuneCore rival, Level Music (26 September 2024) — the announcement date; no new submissions or edits from that day; the automatic takedown on 18 November 2024 and the invitation to request one earlier; the withdrawal of funds before 11 July 2025; the closure on 31 July 2025; and the advice to export assets and metadata to keep play counts and playlist placements.
Music Business Worldwide, Universal dumps DIY distribution, as Spinnup goes invite-only (May 2022) — the email of 18 May 2022; the statement that the platform could not accommodate all current users; the 19 July 2022 date for departing artists to take down and transfer; the takedown of remaining releases after it; and the guidance to download assets, transfer releases and manage incoming royalties.
United States Courts, Chapter 7 — Bankruptcy Basics — the trustee’s sale of the debtor’s nonexempt assets to pay creditors; the six classes of claims under § 726, each paid in full before the next; the 90-day window for unsecured creditors to file claims; and the no-asset case in which there is no distribution to unsecured creditors.
Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy Canada, You are owed money — Bankruptcy — the Proof of Claim submitted to the Licensed Insolvency Trustee, and the payment of ordinary creditors in proportion after secured and preferred creditors are paid in full.
Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act (Canada), s. 148(1) — that the trustee declares and distributes dividends among the unsecured creditors from time to time as required by the inspectors.

Every page cited here was read on the date at the top of this piece. One distribution agreement is quoted, by section, because it is the one that could be read; TuneCore’s distribution terms are not on its public Terms page and its help centre refuses automated reads, as does DistroKid’s, so nothing here is cited to either help centre and no claim is made about any other company’s terms. What an insolvency trustee or a buyer can do with a distributor’s licence turns on the agreement and the jurisdiction, and this page states only what one agreement permits. None of this is legal advice. If a distributor holding your catalogue has entered insolvency, find a music lawyer in the right territory before the claim deadline, not after.

Keeping the register

Everything the export list above asks you to copy out of a dashboard is a thing a catalogue should have carried on its own all along. CatalogTracker keeps the ISRC on each track and the UPC, the release date, the original release date and the distributor reference on each release, on your own device rather than on the company’s servers, exports the lot to JSON or CSV, and holds the agreement you accepted as an uploaded document beside the releases it covers. It delivers nothing to anybody. It means the register exists before the email does. In development for iPhone.