A royalty drop after changing distributor is usually one of five things - reporting lag, a takedown gap, changed ISRCs, broken playlist placements, or streams that never moved because the migration was incomplete. Here is how to work out which one hit you, in order of likelihood.
The short answer
Check five things, in this order: (1) reporting lag - your new distributor's first full statements may simply not have arrived yet; (2) a takedown gap - your catalogue was offline between the old takedown and the new delivery going live; (3) changed ISRCs - if the new distributor assigned fresh ISRCs, your tracks restarted as new recordings and lost their algorithmic history; (4) lost playlist and algorithmic placements caused by that gap or those new identifiers; and (5) incomplete migration - some tracks, territories or platforms never actually made it across. Most post-switch income drops are one of these five, and the first is the most common and the most benign.
Cause 1: reporting lag (most common, least serious)
Distributors report royalties on a delay - typically the money for a given month arrives two to three months later, and your old distributor's final statements overlap your new distributor's first ones. For a quarter or so after switching, your income can look halved simply because two partial statements have not been mentally added together. Before investigating anything else, line up both distributors' statements by earning month (not payment month) and check whether the combined total actually fell.
Cause 2: a takedown gap
If the old catalogue was taken down before the new deliveries went live, your music was unavailable for days or weeks. Beyond the directly lost streams, a gap breaks algorithmic placement - Release Radar, Discover Weekly, autoplay and radio stop recommending tracks that disappeared, and that momentum rebuilds slowly. Check your streaming dashboards for a visible trench in daily streams around the switch date. The lesson for next time is to sequence the migration - new deliveries live first, takedown after - which a competent distributor or label services partner will manage as standard.
Cause 3: your ISRCs changed
The ISRC is the identifier that carries a recording's identity - stream history, playlist placements and matching at PPL and societies all hang off it. If your new distributor assigned new ISRCs instead of reusing your originals, the platforms treated your re-delivered tracks as brand-new recordings with zero history. Compare the ISRCs on your new distributor's dashboard against your old releases (the free ISRC Finder tool can look up what is live). If they changed, ask the new distributor to redeliver with original ISRCs - and expect some reconciliation work at PPL to merge the two identities.
Cause 4: lost playlists and pitching access
Editorial playlist placements sometimes survive a clean same-ISRC migration, but placements attached to the old delivery can drop when it is taken down, and any pitching relationship your old distributor had does not transfer. Check your playlist reach in Spotify for Artists before-and-after; if editorial placements vanished on the switch date, that is your revenue gap. Recovery is forward-looking - repitching future releases - which makes the pitching capability of your new distributor or label services provider a real financial variable, not a nice-to-have.
Cause 5: incomplete migration
Audit that everything actually moved. Common holes:
- Individual tracks or older releases that were never redelivered
- Platforms the old distributor covered that the new one does not - niche and regional DSPs (Boomplay, JioSaavn, Audiomack) are the usual casualties
- Territories excluded by default settings on the new account
- YouTube Content ID claims that lapsed when the old distributor's claim was released and no new claim was established
- Pre-existing splits or payees configured at the old distributor that were never recreated
What a switch does NOT affect
Your publishing royalties - PRS performance income and MCPS mechanicals - are collected against the works, not through your distributor, so a distribution switch should not change them. If your publishing income also fell at the same time, something else is wrong (or it was never being collected properly in the first place). Likewise PPL neighbouring rights follow the recording's ISRC; they are only affected if the switch changed your ISRCs, which is one more reason cause 3 matters.
Who this affects most
Post-switch royalty gaps hit hardest for:
- Artists with playlist-dependent catalogues, where placement loss compounds
- Labels migrating large back catalogues, where partial redelivery hides easily
- Artists who moved for a cheaper deal and lost niche platform coverage they did not know was earning
- Anyone whose old distributor auto-assigned its own ISRCs, making identifier preservation impossible without negotiation
How to get the gap diagnosed properly
If the drop persists past one full reporting cycle and you cannot isolate the cause, have the migration audited. Code Group Music's Catalog Assessment is free at codegroupmusic.co.uk/#catalog-assessment - tell us the switch date, old and new distributors, and we will check delivery completeness, identifier integrity and platform coverage against what your catalogue should be earning. Distribution via our own AudioSalad infrastructure runs on a 15% commission of royalties collected, no upfront fees, and migrations are sequenced so this article's problem does not happen.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long after switching distributors until royalties look normal?
Expect two to three months of messy, overlapping statements while the old distributor pays out its final earning months and the new one ramps up. Judge the switch only after aligning both sets of statements by earning month across at least one full cycle.
Do Spotify play counts reset when you change distributor?
Not if the migration preserves your ISRCs and the new delivery maps to the same tracks - counts continue seamlessly. Play counts effectively reset when new ISRCs are assigned, because platforms treat the redelivered tracks as new recordings.
Should the new release go live before the old one is taken down?
Yes. The safe sequence is new deliveries live first, verified on each platform, then takedown of the old deliveries so the platforms merge rather than gap. A takedown-first migration guarantees an availability gap and unnecessary algorithmic damage.
My distributor switch also broke my PPL payments. Why?
PPL matches recordings by ISRC. If the switch introduced new ISRCs, PPL now sees unfamiliar recordings unlinked to your performer registrations. Update your PPL repertoire with the new identifiers, or better, get the distributor to redeliver with the original ISRCs.
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