Transferring From Another Distributor

On behalf of everyone at Symphonic Distribution, we are thrilled to be able to work with you! As you will see, Symphonic Distribution has a lot more to offer than what you previously had, and we are excited to help grow your revenue in various ways. With Symphonic, you'll have a larger distribution network as well. This article summarizes a few important topics regarding your transfer. 

First, we make it simple
We've made it as easy as possible for your content to be transferred or ingested into our system. You can use our proprietary TransferTrack tool to transfer your entire catalog.

You can also transfer one release at a time and reference our detailed release creation full upload guide.

If you have a significant number of releases and require additional assistance with transferring, please contact us. We may be able to help. Be sure to provide as much information as possible about your catalog and release schedule.

Transferring partners
Only Beatport, Traxsource, and JunoDownload can transfer labels from one distributor to another. Symphonic will need to request this transfer, and it can take a few weeks for it to be fully completed. If you've already got an account with us and are looking to transfer your label over, please submit our partner approvals form to get started.

Partners that don't transfer
The remaining Digital Service Providers (iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, etc.) do not transfer content between distributors. With that said, you'll need to reload your catalog to our system. Symphonic makes this process easy, and all you'll need is a UPC or link to your release on Spotify. From there, we will try and fill in the information as best as we can to make your transfer smooth!

Royalties from catalog transfer
Symphonic does not start collecting royalties for back catalog transfers from Beatport, Traxsource, and JunoDownload until the transfer is complete. For any new releases submitted to Symphonic, we begin collecting immediately. Please note that some distributors may report and pay differently than we do. In many cases, if you have doubts or your royalty earnings change after the transfer, it is likely because of the method that a previous distributor was reporting vs. ours.

Preparing and uploading your catalog
It is important to have your cover art and audio files in proper specifications for our system.

• The cover art should be a minimum size of 3000 x 3000 pixels. If you're looking for a full list of specifications, click here.
• It is helpful to have the audio in 44.1khz over 16-bit or 24-bit stereo (pretty much the standard master that you should have in your catalog). Our system accepts both .wav and .flac formats. Check out our full list of audio specifications. 

If you do not have any audio or some of the release details, you may want to try requesting this information from artists or purchasing the audio to upload again. We can then coordinate with you to receive your catalog (DropBox, Google Drive, etc.).

Prioritize new releases first
We recommend you work on submitting new releases first. If you're transferring over Beatport releases and need to know what is already in Beatport's system awaiting to go live, we can provide you that information. If your release(s) are already on Beatport, you would need to send the release to the remaining DSPs. You can do that once you reach the release availability and partner selection step while creating your release.  

What about my Spotify streams and playlists?
For information on retaining Spotify streams, playlisting, and more, please click here.

When do I take my content down from my old distributor?

Once you receive an approval email from us for your release, please wait until both releases are live on DSPs and see if they have linked by comparing the play counts before removing or taking down the content from your old distributor.