Complaints

The complaint text that is displayed might not represent all complaints filed with BBB. Some consumers may elect to not publish the details of their complaints, some complaints may not meet BBB's standards for publication, or BBB may display a portion of complaints when a high volume is received for a particular business.

• Initial Complaint

  Date:07/05/2022

  Type:Service or Repair Issues
  Status:

  ResolvedMore info

  Complaint statuses

  Resolved:

  The complainant verified the issue was resolved to their satisfaction.

  Unresolved:

  The business responded to the dispute but failed to make a good faith effort to resolve it.

  Answered:

  The business addressed the issues within the complaint, but the consumer either a) did not accept the response, OR b) did not notify BBB as to their satisfaction.

  Unanswered:

  The business failed to respond to the dispute.

  Unpursuable:

  BBB is unable to locate the business.

  I have been using this distribution company called Tunecore for close to 4 years now to distribute my music onto all streaming platforms. I had been getting constant streams and making money from it and on June 29th they took down every single one of my songs and albums. 4 years of emotion and work. Gone in a second. I have been paying renewal fees that occur annually on the date of the release. Each release obviously has a different drop date but I still had been paying every single fee they had been throwing my way. They are now telling me that I can re-upload the songs with the same information and it will be back up but then they decided to reject and deny every NEW release Ive tried to put out since this happened. All I want is for all of my music to be put back up. They are refusing to tell me why everything was taken down and are saying they have the right not to tell me. this is my music; all of it and no matter how much Ive been paying them for distribution, I guess it didnt matter cuz they did this to me. Please god help me I just want to have my music, the original releases, put back up and I want to be able to release music again. Like I said before they all were taken down around June 27th. Please do anything and everything you have to it doesnt matter as long as u can get them to put my music back up. Thank you so much for your time, let me know if you need more info.

  Business Response

  Date: 07/18/2022

  Hi ****,
   
  It looks like our Fraud Prevention team has shared the following information about why your releases were removed, as recently as July 6:

  After an internal review of your account, we have determined that there was evidence of abnormal activity. As a result, all of your content was taken down from all stores.

   
  As a reminder, by agreeing to the TuneCore Terms and Conditions, you have agreed that in the event that TuneCore has any reason to suspect your account or releases have been subjected to, involved in, or generated revenue through streaming manipulation, - or other improper conduct - that we may block your ability to withdraw funds, take down your releases, and/or permanently close your account.
   
  We have made an internal decision to close your account for violating these terms, and we will not send any new content from your account to stores.

   

  I'm afraid that at this time you will not be able to use TuneCore's platform to upload new releases.  I'm very sorry.

  Customer Answer

  Date: 07/20/2022

  Better Business Bureau:
  
  I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID ********, and find that this matter has not been solved and my songs have not been put back up. I am not satisfied at all.
  
  *********************************
  
  
  
   
  
  

• Initial Complaint

  Date:06/28/2022

  Type:Service or Repair Issues
  Status:

  AnsweredMore info

  Complaint statuses

  Resolved:

  The complainant verified the issue was resolved to their satisfaction.

  Unresolved:

  The business responded to the dispute but failed to make a good faith effort to resolve it.

  Answered:

  The business addressed the issues within the complaint, but the consumer either a) did not accept the response, OR b) did not notify BBB as to their satisfaction.

  Unanswered:

  The business failed to respond to the dispute.

  Unpursuable:

  BBB is unable to locate the business.

  I paid $10 to have my song listed for 1 year. They took it down after 1 month and provided no reason. This is obviously just a scam to take your money.

  Business Response

  Date: 07/18/2022

  Hello,

  I'm afraid I cannot find any TuneCore accounts associated with the email address ***************************************.  Can you let me know your account email and the release's UPC so I can take a closer look?  Thank you! 

• Initial Complaint

  Date:06/21/2022

  Type:Service or Repair Issues
  Status:

  AnsweredMore info

  Complaint statuses

  Resolved:

  The complainant verified the issue was resolved to their satisfaction.

  Unresolved:

  The business responded to the dispute but failed to make a good faith effort to resolve it.

  Answered:

  The business addressed the issues within the complaint, but the consumer either a) did not accept the response, OR b) did not notify BBB as to their satisfaction.

  Unanswered:

  The business failed to respond to the dispute.

  Unpursuable:

  BBB is unable to locate the business.

  I never received the service i paid for. On June 6th, 2022 I purchased two single releases outright as I have for years. At the base level of service, that means the songs (once approved) should've been sent to stores immediately. One song was. The other needed an adjustment which was fixed and approved promptly. On June 7th, TuneCore released "unlimited" subscription plans to compete with rival distributors. Out of 5 yrs of loyalty I upgraded to a Rising Artist plan, which cut out features that were once free like simply listing your records label name. The plan to do that would cost an extra $50 on top of the $40 album i distributed on June 2nd, the $20 worth of singles on June 6th and $15 "unlimited" plan for a whopping 3-digit fee for under 10 songs total in literally under a week. I accepted what I paid for without reading the fine print and simply removed all upcoming, incomplete releases. But ONE of the two singles (which has my label name attached; as always) seems to be caught in a loophole. It has been pass the amount of business days needed for any stores to accept the release. It has not been found on any of the stores. The support team is simply ignoring all requests sent now and once the most I got is a link showing the differences of the new plans. That's irrelevant as I won't be doing future business with them after this. At this point its looking like I have to get a legal advisor about an unfulfilled service i outright paid for but I wanted to make it fully clear on record about the con game at its best. I've pleaded with them to just fulfill the service or refund $9.99 but I'm aware they don't process refunds so here we are. I have no clue why a company would risk a class action of people who paid for things they didn't receive at this point in their business structure. If something was paid in full before any subscription services went public then that product needs to be served. If it's a glitch then it needs to be investigated and then resent.

  Business Response

  Date: 06/23/2022

  Hello,

  Can you let me know the UPCs associated with the request so I can take a closer look?

  Customer Answer

  Date: 06/26/2022

  Here's the *** of the fully paid for single release (prior to the subscription roll out that cut out features): ************ ...

   

  AND Order Number (as shown in original attachment): *********

  Bought with a credit i purchased just days prior which was Order Number *********

   

  Just noting again that I would be open to just receiving my $9.99 back if the current programming cant release the song AS IS even though it should have been.

  I'll just delete the release afterwards.

   

  Thank you. 

  Business Response

  Date: 07/18/2022

  Hello,

  Thanks for letting me know about this - I escalated your release to the head of our content review team, who has reviewed it again and sent it to stores.  This was an administrative mistake on our side, and we appreciate the opportunity to fix it.

• Initial Complaint

  Date:06/01/2022

  Type:Order Issues
  Status:

  AnsweredMore info

  Complaint statuses

  Resolved:

  The complainant verified the issue was resolved to their satisfaction.

  Unresolved:

  The business responded to the dispute but failed to make a good faith effort to resolve it.

  Answered:

  The business addressed the issues within the complaint, but the consumer either a) did not accept the response, OR b) did not notify BBB as to their satisfaction.

  Unanswered:

  The business failed to respond to the dispute.

  Unpursuable:

  BBB is unable to locate the business.

  I contacted Tunecore multiple times by email in March 2022 informing them to remove my two albums (Week 1 and Week 2 by King ******* from their service with no further billing. They ignored my emails, kept the music through their distribution and charged me $50 in April of 2022 and $50 in May of 2022. I would like a full refund and my music to be released from their distribution service. Please advise, thank you.

  Business Response

  Date: 06/23/2022

  Hey *****,

  So sorry about this - I can help.  Can you let me know the email address associated with your TuneCore account, ********************* didn't pull anything up.  Alternately, if you share the UPCs in question, I can process your refunds with this information, too.

• Initial Complaint

  Date:05/31/2022

  Type:Billing Issues
  Status:

  AnsweredMore info

  Complaint statuses

  Resolved:

  The complainant verified the issue was resolved to their satisfaction.

  Unresolved:

  The business responded to the dispute but failed to make a good faith effort to resolve it.

  Answered:

  The business addressed the issues within the complaint, but the consumer either a) did not accept the response, OR b) did not notify BBB as to their satisfaction.

  Unanswered:

  The business failed to respond to the dispute.

  Unpursuable:

  BBB is unable to locate the business.

  I have never used or heard of tunecore before in my life I do not no how they got my debit card details but they are taking numerous amounts of money from my debit every couple of days Ive tried contacting them with several attempts but no reply this is outrageous and not acceptable

  Business Response

  Date: 05/31/2022

  Hello *******,

  Thanks for getting in touch, so sorry for the issues here.  Our team responded to your support ticket in April (attached) asking for additional information to help us find these charges and figure out what account they are coming from. I'm afraid that we did not get any new emails from you since April 25.

  We do not have a direct email for our support team, I would recommend submitting a new request with the requested details noted in the attached ticket to our support team here: ************************************************** we will then be able to further investigate.

• Initial Complaint

  Date:05/11/2022

  Type:Customer Service Issues
  Status:

  AnsweredMore info

  Complaint statuses

  Resolved:

  The complainant verified the issue was resolved to their satisfaction.

  Unresolved:

  The business responded to the dispute but failed to make a good faith effort to resolve it.

  Answered:

  The business addressed the issues within the complaint, but the consumer either a) did not accept the response, OR b) did not notify BBB as to their satisfaction.

  Unanswered:

  The business failed to respond to the dispute.

  Unpursuable:

  BBB is unable to locate the business.

  On May 4th, Tunecore informed me that they would be removing an entire album of mine because ******* notified them of potentially artificial streams.I have worked with one promotor in my entire career who has provided a complete list of campaigns and promotional activities. I have also submitted my album to ********************************************************************************************* the same playlists for a long time, and guaranteed that it was all authentic plays.I am not able to determine where any artificial streams may have possibly come from. Tunecore has not responded to my support email for 5 days after stating a 2 day response time and I am worried they will simply not respond to me at this point.Distrokid, a competing distributer takes the responsibility of gathering clients campaign data and promotional history and negotiates with ******* to determine legitimacy of plays, and form fair resolutions such as removing stream numbers or withholding royalties from artificial streams.Tunecore on the other hand, receives this notification from *******, and kicks you off their platform without warning or an option to communicate with them. They will not provide an explanation, will not accept campaign data, and will not look into this on behalf of their clients.Keep in mind that ANYONE IN THE ***** can spend as little as $5 USD to direct obviously fake streams to any artists music if they wish harm upon their career. These artificial streams can be used as a weapon and Tunecore chooses to punish the artists rather than commit minimal effort to identify the perpetrators and reduce artificial streams.All artists sharing my promoter still have their accounts up, and all playlists that my songs were in are continuing to run. Although my music has been removed. This leads me to believe someone maliciously directed artificial streams to my music (if there were any) and Tunecore punished me as a result.

  Business Response

  Date: 05/11/2022

  Hello *******,

  As noted from our Fraud Prevention team earlier today, please see the following email they sent:

   
  "Thank you for your email.  If you believe your release was removed in error, please provide a detailed report of all promotion (paid or unpaid) that was done for the release(s) in question as well as links and screenshots to any playlists the release(s) may have been added to.
   
  Once we receive this information we will perform an internal review of the content and try to locate the source of any abnormal or artificial streams."

   

  The most effective way to work towards a resolution on this issue is to reply to that email directly, as TuneCore's fraud prevention team is not able to triage this issue through the BBB platform.  Thank you!

• Initial Complaint

  Date:05/05/2022

  Type:Service or Repair Issues
  Status:

  AnsweredMore info

  Complaint statuses

  Resolved:

  The complainant verified the issue was resolved to their satisfaction.

  Unresolved:

  The business responded to the dispute but failed to make a good faith effort to resolve it.

  Answered:

  The business addressed the issues within the complaint, but the consumer either a) did not accept the response, OR b) did not notify BBB as to their satisfaction.

  Unanswered:

  The business failed to respond to the dispute.

  Unpursuable:

  BBB is unable to locate the business.

  I have been trying to get our band paid for a song we put out last year that garnered over 300K streams on spotify. when the royalties did not show up in our account, i started to contact Tunecore as they are our music distributor. When i finally got a response from them they stated that Spotify was holding our royalties due to some suspicious activity. they did not provide the email nor the message from Spotify, they just sent links to a section of their own website as to how we should teach our listeners about how they listen to music. i spent months and months contacting them and would get no response. I even went to Spotify and they could not help me as Tunecore was my distributor and only they could help me. Tunecore stated that there was an issue with fraudulent streams, however if that was the case, Spotify would have made a change in our total streams which currently still sit at over 300K. They are just holding our money, i have kept all the emails and even had to resubmit issues through their site numerous times to restart the conversation about the issue and it always ends with them not responding. this is such a disservice to independent artists and they should be ashamed of themselves. I have spoken to a good friend that is an entertainment lawyer in hopes that we can start a class action suit against them with many other artists that have been treated the same way.as stated, i have ALL the emails saved

  Business Response

  Date: 05/09/2022

  Hello ******,

  TuneCore's fraud prevention team, in conjunction with the Spotify Fraud Prevention team, has identified abnormal store-end activity on your release.  This means TuneCore has been notified that Spotify has removed streams from your royalty calculation, and as a result we are unable to release funds associated with that activity at this time.  i encourage you to share any documentation around promotion and marketing activities that you may have directly with our Fraud Prevention team for review.  

• Initial Complaint

  Date:05/04/2022

  Type:Product Issues
  Status:

  AnsweredMore info

  Complaint statuses

  Resolved:

  The complainant verified the issue was resolved to their satisfaction.

  Unresolved:

  The business responded to the dispute but failed to make a good faith effort to resolve it.

  Answered:

  The business addressed the issues within the complaint, but the consumer either a) did not accept the response, OR b) did not notify BBB as to their satisfaction.

  Unanswered:

  The business failed to respond to the dispute.

  Unpursuable:

  BBB is unable to locate the business.

  I recently had some music taken down from digital distribution and logged into Tunecore to see why. First, I discovered we used an old email as our contact info. The email is no longer valid and so I can't change the email to a new one. Tunecore only allows you to receive correspondence through the email listed so if that email isn't working, you can't make requests. Further, their customer service portal uses your email as well. Additionally, you can't change to a new email without submitting the request through the old email.Our music was taken out of distribution without my knowledge and since they only correspond through email, I didn't know. I have called repeatedly but their phone support points you to, you guessed it, your email. I simply need to have the email address changed to a current one so that I can make decisions about our distribution and money disbursements. The album in questions is **** ** **** ****** *****************

  Business Response

  Date: 05/24/2022

  Hey *******! So sorry for all the trouble here - I will have a member of our team reach out to the address you shared here so we can get this all settled up for you.  Keep an eye out for a note from our team in ticket #*******.

• Initial Complaint

  Date:05/04/2022

  Type:Product Issues
  Status:

  AnsweredMore info

  Complaint statuses

  Resolved:

  The complainant verified the issue was resolved to their satisfaction.

  Unresolved:

  The business responded to the dispute but failed to make a good faith effort to resolve it.

  Answered:

  The business addressed the issues within the complaint, but the consumer either a) did not accept the response, OR b) did not notify BBB as to their satisfaction.

  Unanswered:

  The business failed to respond to the dispute.

  Unpursuable:

  BBB is unable to locate the business.

  This is my most recent request for assistance from tunecore, and it explains the situation thoroughly:I need my money. Your website doesn't work on my phone or my expensive macbook pro. i try to sign up for Payoneer, and the website link from tunecore.com to connect to payoneer does not work. Ive tried registering for payoneer. it DOES NOT WORK. I need my money. I need to speak with an actual person. My name is ***************************, artist name *****************, phone number ************, email ************************** Ive sent emails to you already. Im copying and forwarding this to the Better Business Bureau & the **** ************************************** and I'm getting ready to drive to ****************************************************** &/or **********************************************, **.with my lawyer & get my money that way, since you set up a fake link so you can hold on to millions of people's money & collect the interest on it. What you're going to do is fix this. I want my tunecore account set up for ACH transfer by one of your 'brilliant' employees. You are going to contact me. I will give you my bank information, and you will put that onto my account, and I will have my money in 3-5 business days. Or your fraud will be heavily exposed. As you can see, I get a LOT of streams now, and growing. My next track will be released through distrokid and it will be called "Distrokid rules, Tunecore is by far the worst, ever, and thieves." FIX THIS. It is my money. It is not your money. And in the class-action lawsuit i will file against you if you don't fix this, we will be demanding damages as well, and all the interest you collected by hoarding peoples money, we will get that back too. Good day. I hope you fix this.

  Business Response

  Date: 05/24/2022

  Hello,

  One of our specialists has already replied to this issue and resolved it on May 9, and additionally we can see that you have successfully connected your Payoneer account to your TuneCore account.  In order to withdraw your funds, you will need to navigate to Money & Reports > Balance > Withdraw Money.  If you need to change your funding source in your Payoneer account, you will need to contact them directly for further support.

  TuneCore is unable to fulfill your request for a direct deposit / ACH transfer, we do not have the ability to process withdrawals in this way.  You can withdraw to your bank account via your Payoneer account, however.  I can see that your recent withdrawal request, submitted on May 9, 2022, was approved and sent to Payoneer on May 10, 2022, and your remaining account balance is $0.19.