Sunday, May 6, 2018

Is Tunecore a Scam? Yes It Is!

 A scammed Tunecore customer speaks.

I won't call it a scam, but I have had some questionable experiences while using their service. I am a songwriter and copyright holder of some compositions and their sound recordings which I paid Tunecore to to distribute digitally. I had roughly 300 dollars in sales in iTunes, Amazon MP3 etc...,
and when I tried to make a withdrawal I never received a check. I waited 2 weeks and never got my money. I contacted Tunecore and they told me that my account had been frozen. I asked why ? and was told that a copyright claim had been filed with them by another party.

I promptly sent Tunecore a picture of my physical U.S. Copyright Certificate with filing number and proved to them that I am actually the songwriter and copyright holder... but they didn't listen or seem to respect my copyright. About a month later, the issue had still not been resolved. I then called Tunecore and asked to speak with someone. "They are in a meeting. They will call you back when they get out. What is your number?" is as far as I got. No one called me back or explained anything to me. Also, when I initially tried to make a withdrawal from my account via check, may account was debited the amount of the check, but I never received the check. So in my opinion Tunecore, stole (for lack of a better term) "X" amount of dollars from my account and hasn't paid it back, nor have they sent me the check. "Yes sir, it's on hold sir". By Tunecore doing this, in my opinion they are really saying to me "We don't really respect your copyrights and we're going to keep your money"

It's really not a super huge amount of money so it's not really worth suing for, but it's still MY money and I still want it.

Another scammed Tuncore victim speaks. 

They are definitely a scam! I had thousands of spins and streams they took my money then when I asked them to take down my music and stop collecting my royalties they told me that I was stuck with them for over a year and a half. so when you distribute with tunecore you lose the right of your own music.

You will be stuck with them for 18 months they will keep collecting your royalties and give you a legal document stating that is what you signed when you clicked the yes to distribute your music button on their page. Beware of tune-core. What type of site would not want to give the artist control of their own music and then they give you kibbles and bits and wont give you detailed reports all the reports don't tell you the total it only tells u what they are issuing you. Big issue there. They wont tell you what the total amount they collected is. They will only tell u what they are giving you. There are a lot of people that work for tunecore posting comments here and its not real music artist.

If you google "tunecore scam" you will find real music artists that experienced this type of unethical distribution. Nobody knows that the fine print on their page gives tunecore the right to keep collecting all your royalties even after you requested for them to take your music down. What type of distribution company would want to keep collecting music artist royalties against their will? Then they told me that the artist keeps a 100% of their royalties if that was true then why do they want to keep collecting my money and issuing me 7 bucks out of so many views I got. I did the math and it doesn't add up right. Tunecore is a complete scam.

Yet another Tunecore victim tells the awful truth about Tunecore!

I'll narrate my experience with tunecore, bmi, and Nielsen soundscan in sadness. I had a very terrible experience with tunecore, bmi, and Nielsen soundscan. It started in 2011 I went to the internet to make my music career better because most of the musician go to the internet to promote their music. First I stumbled on tunecore without making proper research on the scam company, so I was excited that this company will help me distribute my music all over the world for people to hear my voice not knowing that they are nothing but thieves and liars. First they will tell you to sign up for free and distribute you music all over the world, then the next thing they do is to tell you to do is sign up for bmi account to help with the royalty collection. Once you have signed up for the bmi account which is not a free sign up they will ask you to link the account together. The moment you link the account together you have lost control of your royalty. They fill the royalty for you and dividing the money made from the royalty into two and also make sure that you don’t get a cent from your money. The next thing they do is to show more stores that you need to sign up for.

Now let's talk about ‘‘BMI’’. Once you notice that you don’t have control over your royalty, you try telling them to unlink your BMI account from your TUNECORE account. BMI will tell you that they can’t unlink the both account because if they do Tunecore will stop to bring artist to their website for sign up. So they simply tell you that they can’t which is another lie. That’s what they did to me. So I wrote to Tunecore demanding that they separate the accounts, Tunecore told me that I have record contract with them and that it cannot be terminated, so they refuse to unlink the account. All of sudden Tunecore has changed from music Distribution Company to a record label. Tunecore and bmi are in this together and Tunecore is the one in charge of the scam game. 

Nielsen soundscan is the company that tracks the sale of music and other media in America. For some time now I have been doing my research to find other company in America apart from Nielsen soundscan that can track my song but I find none. That is why they can lie about the sales data result in American and no one can find out because most news media get their report from them. I registered all the songs I published in the internet with soundscan for tracking but when the time comes for tracking the sales of my songs they tell me that they can’t find my songs. I registered UPC and isrc code of my song with Soundscan. I also uploaded all the songs I published in the internet in mp3 format for encoding so they can also track the airplay of my song. Nielsen soundscan refuses to track the sales data, airplay data and the streaming data of all the songs I published in the internet. Whenever I ask them for sales report they tell me I made no sale, if I ask for streaming and airplay report they tell me that have they can’t find the song I uploaded into the bds account they created for me because they have deleted it on purpose, they also keep asking me to re upload so tracking of the previous ones will be forgotten and be counted as new upload. They also try to scare you away with their price for tracking; they do this because they are in the scam game with Tunecore because if you don’t have proof of the sell of your music how can you fight for your money.


Everybody is talking about how Tunecore dealt with them, but no one is talking about how to deal with Tunecore. My Tunecore account that was linked to bmi account was separated by the help of the BBB Better Business Bureau. So if you happen to be one of the victims of Tunecore, you make your report to RIPOFF, BBB, FBI, e.t.c. Making this report will not make any difference so ask them to delete or close your account. They will ignore you because they did it to me. I believe that once your account is still open they will continue making money from your music. So ask them to close the account or delete the account from their website. If they ignore you then you do a WHOIS search on Tunecore to find out who is hosting their website and their admin e-mail, send a message to admin email requesting that they close your account. Also send an email to the hosting company narrating your ordeal with Tunecore and plead for their assistance in helping to close your account with tunecore. If all the victims of Tunecore will report to the hosting company, I think they might help in their own little way. Go to Google and type “WHOIS TUNECORE” you will see the company that is hosting their website and report the abuse to them and also send email to admin email and request they close your account

Another Tunecore victim exposes their scams.

Tunecore does not report sales. THEY STOLE A LOT OF MONEY FROM ME, I STOPPED USING THEIR SERVICE 3 YEARS AGO BUT THEY CONTINUE TO SALE MY MUSIC, NEVER USE TUNECORE, THEY ARE ALSO BEING INVESTIGATED BY THE FBI FOR ACCOUNTING FRAUD.


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