Topic
When someone puts your track under a TikTok or an Instagram Reel, money only reaches you if a licence and a distributor sit in between. Here is how the licensing works on both platforms, what the pay is based on, what the platforms forbid, and which distributor routes get your music into the libraries.
Workflows
You cannot apply for a YouTube Official Artist Channel yourself. Your distributor, label or a listed music partner asks for you. This guide sets out the requirements YouTube publishes, how a request through a distributor works in practice, what to fix before you ask, and what can take the badge away again.
Workflows
None of the big three distributors publishes an appeal process for an AI flag. Here is what DistroKid, TuneCore and CD Baby each say in their own help pages as of 24 Oct 2026, the evidence pack to build before you write, a reply you can adapt, and the moves that make a wrong flag worse.
Workflows
Four of the best-known DIY distributors charge in three different ways: a yearly subscription, a one-off fee plus a commission, or a subscription with a cut on the side income. They also set three different AI rules. Here is what DistroKid, TuneCore, CD Baby and Ditto say on their own pricing and help pages as we read them on 24 Oct 2026, and how to work out which model costs you least.
Workflows
You never tell Spotify or YouTube how you used AI. You tell your distributor, and it turns your answers into DDEX fields that every store reads in its own way. Here is the path one answer takes, the three places it can lose detail or go missing, and what to check before and after release, as we read the primary pages on 24 Oct 2026.
Workflows
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