DistroKid, the world's largest independent distributor, placed 37 union employees on “administrative leave” just an hour before the union was scheduled to meet with the company's lawyers for new contract negotiations, according to an Instagram post by the DistroKid Union on Saturday (Oct. 26). The information provided in this Instagram post was verified by two DistroKid employees.
The union says those workers are to be “replaced[d]…with an overseas workforce' and that this move has affected about a 'quarter' of the company's staff. Another source close to the situation believes the total is closer to 15% of the staff affected. According to an employee at DistroKid, those affected were part of the company's quality control and artist (customer service) teams. Another employee claims that Quality Assurance Engineers were also affected. The union adds in the post that DistroKid told them the reason they want to eliminate these positions is to “spend their wages on marketing.”
In response to of Billboard request for comment, a DistroKid spokesperson said: “DistroKid is committed to continuously enhancing support for independent artists around the world by extending 24/7 customer service with faster response times. To achieve this, we have identified solutions that allow us to provide more scalable and exceptional services, ensuring that artists around the world receive the high-quality support they deserve. This includes making difficult decisions that may affect valuable team members as we continue to focus on providing the best possible artist experience.”
In the last year or so, DistroKid has hired a third customer service team, based in the Philippines, to help with artists' needs. This move to administratively license 37 projects seeks to eliminate its in-house team of US-based Artists and replace them with more third-party and international workers. The company believes this will help them with the influx of international DistroKid users who need 24/7 services in multiple languages.
The DistroKid Association was founded in February as part of the National Association of Broadcast Engineers and Technicians, an association within the Communications Workers of America (NABET-CWA). According to a NABET-CWA announcement about DistroKid's union formation, “employees at the company were subjected to a vicious anti-union campaign that included multiple, one-on-one anti-union meetings and near-constant anti-union propaganda. The company president also sent several anti-union letters to workers.”
“Despite efforts to dissuade workers, they returned with a 45-28 vote in favor of joining NABET-CWA. This effort succeeded thanks to the concerted efforts of the organizing committee, which kept the entire campaign under wraps from management until the announcement, a rare early coup for the team,” the statement continued. DistroKid's employees all work remotely, but their union joined NABET-CWA local 51016, based in New York.
This news comes after a few years of rapid expansion for DistroKid, which now distributes 30-40% of the world's new music. Two years ago, it introduced DistroVid, which enables artists to upload an unlimited number of music videos to leading digital service providers for a flat fee. Then last year, the company released an iPhone app that featured an AI-powered mastering tool, Mixea, to help artists prepare their songs, and announced that it had acquired web music platform Bandzoogle, an e-commerce business that helps artists to create websites and sell their music and merchandise.
Update: This article was updated at 1:55 p.m. and to include the claim that there were also QA Engineers, a different role from the QA team, who were placed on administrative leave.
