How I ditched my distro

The Scream, by Edvard Munch (1883) was an inward expressionist painting, which was created from a real life experience he had while on a walk. The painting shows an unhinged and frustrated expression, and extreme emotion, expressed by Munch as a statement about humanity. A 1895 pastel of the 1883 work was sold at Sotheby's auction in NY for $120 million dollars in 2012.

Munch, who was an art-nuveau painter, created this horror painting, depicting insanity, despair, madness. Imagine for a moment if Sothbey's, instead of auctioning off this masterpiece in 2012, stated instead, "No, it's has too much use of yellows and oranges, and buyers don't like those colors. Change it to chartreuse and burnt umber."

Excuse me?

This is a really bad example of what I've gone through the last year with Ditto music. Yes, this is going to be a bit of a whine session about how horrible Ditto is, but truth is, it's not really all Ditto's fault. Ditto Music, if you don't know, is an online music publishing company. Like Distro Kid or others out there, artists pay them to publish their music and artwork and distribute said art and music to various venues such as Spotify, Amazon Music, and iTunes Music. Ditto outlines the requirements of your submissions in their EUA (End User Agreement) which you have to check the "I agree" box if you want to continue. These requirements are NOT over the top and unusual. In fact they're pretty common. The online stores like Amazon and iTunes Music provide requirements to companies like Ditto so the artists don't get too crazy, don't go too out of bounds with their art or music. So the iTunes and Amazon Music's of the world can provide consumers with a consistent product, regardless of genre. Consistent. Product. Homogenized. Bland. Cookie Cutter. No too creative. You get the idea.

Sure, Ditto takes 5-7 (business) days to even do a cursory look at your artwork and music before they send you an email saying "there was a problem with your submission". Yes they ignore multitude of support tickets that were submitted identifying the email you received, refuting their claims as to why the songs were not submitted and why me, (in this case) the artist must rectify the "problem" before the submission can continue. You see >5 seconds of silence is a "problem", and not part of the song or consciously put there to create impact or create space within the song.

For example, Ditto stated that my artwork was "pixilated" and therefore needed to be rectified. In fact, I modified the picture, a very nice clear, color photo close up picture of a snake, coiled shot in profile, and pixilated it. On purpose. Why? Because that's the way I, the artist, want the picture to be seen as a reflection of the music. It's just like the fictitious Sothbey's "imagine" scenario. "Sorry too much orange - change it."

No. I'm the artist. I state how I want the graphics to look. I create the music how I want it to be heard with Scott's input of course. If I want the artwork to be pixilated, it's pixilated.

Ditto also stated there was >5 seconds of silence at the end of a song. They assume, this was a mistake. They assume that something must have gone wrong because, who in their right mind would want >5 seconds of silence at the end of a song? In fact, in a previous submission, Ditto claimed this same thing at the beginning of a song, where there was a low sound effect which slowly faded in. I had to open a ticket and point this out and it was finally accepted after 14 business days of delay. In a different instance, the silence was a very long fade out which lasted 20 seconds. Ditto failed to identify these as something the artist wanted to do on purpose and assumed it was overlooked.

If I create a song (and I'll make this stupendously absurd as an example) that is 10 minutes of varying wet and dry fart sounds, with varying lengths of silence between the farts - then THAT is my song. It's art. It can be anything I want it to be. It's one of the freedoms artists of all types have. If a glass blower only creates glass shaped like phalluses, then that's their art. If a sculptor sculpts nothing but decapitated heads with spikes through them, that's their art. If a musician records nothing but bodily sounds for an entire album, that's their album. We are the artists. Conforming to things like "you can't have >5 seconds of silence" in a song would reject songs like:

The Beatles - A Day in the Life (that long E major piano chord held for nearly a minute)

Metallica's - Sad But True (various sections of silence)

Roxie Music - Every Dream Home a Heartache

Pink Floyd - Speak to Me (beginning)

Supertramp - School

Things Ditto Music could have done better was to first, not be so lazy and slow in reviewing. They also could actually respond to tickets and address artists issues - they did not. They make claims like "You have copywritten material" in your song. This happened to be old school recorded finger snaps that Scott and I did around a microphone. As far as I know, no artist has copywritten and/or trade marked finger snapping on a recording. Sure Queen, is best known for finger snaps on Killer Queen and Under Pressure, but what about Billy Joel "The Longest Time" or the Temptations "My Girl", or Cheap Trick "I Want You to Want Me"? Ditto - no one owns finger snaps. Get over it.

They did finally drop the finger snap "copyright" item but by that time, and now 10 business days after submission, I'm just fed up. My one year with Ditto Music is up on June 29th, and it's June 22. Time to ditch. Cancelled.

I went to Distro Kid - they have many of the same requirements, since the online stores and services push these requirements on distribution companies like Ditto and Distro Kid - but let's see if I can get a better turn around time and some common sense from Distro Kid.

And just so everyone knows, I'm really, REALLY tempted to do a 10 minute song with nothing but farts every 30 seconds.

So tempted.