When will you receive your Statement?
We issue Statements on the 9th of the month, every month.
How long does it take the DSPs to report after the music is streamed and or downloaded?
It varies. Most DSPs have a lag of 60 to 90 Days between when streams are played/sold and when they are reported and paid out to Distro Sync.
In general:
- Apple, YouTube: 2 months (you would be paid in March for January)
- Amazon: varies between 2-3 months
- All other DSPs: 3 months (and in some cases, the smaller DSPs can take much longer as they can run into reporting issues)
Here is an example to indicate the time from stream or download to payout.
Imagine that a stream/download happens in February. All DSPs report (at minimum) per month. There is no difference whether your music was streamed or downloaded at the start, middle, or end of the month. Many DSPs will then issue reports around mid-late April, but we won’t actually receive payment for this report until mid-late May. Since we currently start our royalty run around the 30th of the month, if we haven’t received payment by that date, then we will not include that DSP in that run. So it is fairly typical that you will receive your statement and payment in our Jun 09 royalty run for most DSPs. Apple & YouTube are exceptions and tend to be only 2 months post facto.
When will you receive your payment?
We trigger your payment within a week after generating your statement. The exact date of arrival may vary depending on your Country and Payment Method defined in PayPal, NEFT/IMPS, and Payoneer.
Important steps in the process one must understand:
- Most DSPs will send us the revenue report for February streams/downloads sometime around mid-April.
- The bigger DSPs (Spotify, Apple, YouTube, Deezer, and Amazon) shouldn’t experience any delays, but all other DSPs are susceptible to delays.
- Note that some DSPs report only quarterly, and many DSPs can be delayed in their reporting or payment.
- There are times when the DSPs discover missed transactions months or years later. The DSP will then issue an adjustment report (and payment) for these transactions.
- When Distro Sync receives historical reports and funds we will also include those in your statement and you will see this reflected in the Transaction Date column of the detailed transactions part of your statement.
- After we receive the DSP’s revenue report in mid-April, we still need to receive their payment before we can generate your statement.
Additional notes
- As a result of the above, your month X statement will include streams/downloads from many different prior months. This information is displayed on your statement’s detailed (raw data) page along with the relevant DSP.
- Your statement’s detail page will allow you to see exactly what DSPs were included in the report by looking at the summary tab. If you look at the ‘sales raw data’ tab you can filter on columns B and C to see the reporting month and the DSPs transactions that are included in the statement.
- We can only include in your statement what has been paid out in the month previous to when we send out your Distro Sync Statement.
- Our general payout policy: Distro Sync will payout funds within 30 days of receipt of funds from DSPs or Merlin. For example, funds received up to May 30 are reported in Distro Sync’s June statement.