A Distributor That Punishes What It Cannot Explain
My experience with Symphonic Distribution has moved beyond disappointment into something far more concerning: a lack of transparency paired with responses that sound structured but ultimately avoid addressing the actual issues. In your reply, you refer to “open tickets” and encourage me to continue working through your support system. That is difficult to reconcile with what actually happened. Every ticket I submitted was about one issue, missing royalties for November 2025, which suddenly showed $0 despite being the exact point my track began gaining global traction. Those tickets were merged, left unanswered for 18 days, and ultimately marked as “solved” without any meaningful response. From my side, there was no resolution, only silence followed by closure. You also reference “detailed reviews,” “multiple data points,” and “signals beyond surface-level analytics,” yet no specific explanation has ever been provided. If such a review led to a decision as serious as account termination and royalty ineligibility, then it should be possible to clearly identify what policy was violated and what action triggered it. That level of clarity has never been given. Instead, the only direct communication I received was a final notice citing “account irregularities,” “DSP policy circumvention,” and “improper activity,” followed immediately by a statement that this would be your final communication and that I am no longer eligible to receive royalties. Let’s address the data you chose not to engage with. The track generated over 15 million user-created contents on Meta platforms while it was active, and more than 2 billion total views based on your own analytics system. On the streaming side, performance is independently verifiable through Spotify for Artists, Apple Music for Artists, and YouTube Analytics (Official Artist Channel), all reflecting consistent and organic growth. There is nothing in this data that suggests manipulation. Even within your own detection systems, any flagged irregularities were reportedly below 1%, which is negligible at this scale. This leads to a very basic question. Am I being accused of violating terms simply because my music connected with millions of users worldwide who chose to use it in their own content? Why did my November 2025 royalties suddenly report as zero dollars at the exact moment the track entered its organic viral phase, especially on Meta? And on what basis am I declared ineligible to collect royalties? What specific action justifies that conclusion? You may not consider this relevant, but I do. After the catalog was taken down, I received direct messages from listeners asking where the song had gone, how they could still find it, and whether it was possible to purchase it elsewhere. These messages came from people I have never interacted with, from places I have never heard of, simply because the music connected with them. For an independent artist, that level of connection is not casual. It is rare. It takes time, intent, and a deep level of creative effort to write something that resonates with people emotionally and personally. When that finally happens at scale, it represents a meaningful moment, not just in numbers, but in impact. What is difficult to understand is how easily that entire outcome was treated as irrelevant. From the outside, it appears that a situation involving real audience connection, measurable reach, and clear engagement was reduced to a generic classification, without explanation, without dialogue, and without acknowledgment of what was actually happening. You state that feedback is taken seriously and that communication is being improved, yet the only consistent experience here has been unanswered tickets followed by a final and irreversible decision without explanation. That is not a communication gap, it is the absence of communication altogether. At this point, the issue is not only about withheld royalties, but about the integrity of the process itself. I still retain full analytics records from your platform and DSP dashboards, and none of that data supports the implications made. If there is evidence to justify these actions, it should be presented clearly. Now that my catalog has been removed, I request that all associated Content ID registrations, particularly on YouTube, be fully cleared. I genuinely hope no independent artist finds themselves in a situation where meaningful connection with listeners is treated as insignificant, and where the moment their work truly reaches people is also the moment clarity disappears.