does anybody knows what is the agreement between Imusician as a distributor and Spotify?
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Thank you for your message. Someone from the iMusician Team will get back to you shortly, and take care of your request. Please be patient 
@Maurizio can you help here? 
Thanks!
Hello @MattiaBalboni,
Is there anything in particular you are curious about?
If you are inquiring about the exclusivity you can find the answer in our Terms and Conditions, section “Digital distribution”, chapter “Exclusivity & transferability”.
I was hoping to get answers or hints by other users…
actually i spent one month trying to get answers from Imusician, i’m followed via mail but still can’t get anwers that make some sense.
the “red spark” was that Spotify stats are WAY HIGHER than Imusician stats, and this is strange.
SPotify says that the numbers i see from spotify are the same that they send to the distributor (i asked directly) but the person who is following me said that there is a “filter” that Imusician does not know.
i think this is impossible: Imusician and spotify are two companies, they have an agreement…it’s not possible that some part of the agreement are not known by both of the companies…
more than that i don’t understand what is Imusician doing with me , now…i sent, as requested, many times the screenshot of specific releases on spotify so that Imusician could compare them, i made an excel file and sent it, and still i got answered “sorry, our tech staff is working on it”.
first mail was sent one month ago, now we are about a 17 or 18 mail conversation with Imusician.
i just want to know what is going on, cause right now what i can see is that Imusician states less (LOT LESS: we go from 20% to…well last time i checked dai 3 march was 0 streams on imusician…but about 100 on spotify…) streams than the reality. this makes me think that when we go to the payment i get the same results…it’s a lack of transparency that i would have never immagined from Imusician, and i’m out of patience.
I’m an amplify+ user, so Imusician got my money…
If i don’t get answers that make some logical sense i’m leaving this company.
PS: i know i’m not a successful asset for imusician and that i can be a pain in the a$$ . but io’m a costumer, you got my money, we don’t need to be friends…we atre working toghether…
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Hey @MattiaBalboni
It doesn’t matter if a customer is large or small, we always want to help - apologies it took so long to get a reponse.
Now that we have your exact question on statistics @Maurizio and I, (mostly Maurizio, he is the useful one 
) can dive through and try to get an answer for you. In the meantime I’ll respond to some parts of your post.
- Yes, we get the numbers directly from Spotify - and we’re not aware of any “filter” either.
- Yes, we are aware that there are discrepancies between what Spotify reports and what we see, you are not the first person to say this (and it does not impact all customers) and we genuinely are working on finding out why there are discrepancies.
I’ll ask @Maurizio and @Juan to take a look at this next week as a priority, and I thank you again for your patience (and sorry you have had to use so much of it).
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Exactly,
I promise I’ll do my best to answer your doubts once and for all.
I’m already in touch with Juan, we are checking your screenshots looking for discrepancies with the numbers received from Spotify, and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.
the person i’m talking to via mail is from your staff and stated multiple times that spotify hase a filtering mode that is unknow by imusician (in italian: “un sistema a noi ignoto”). Why did she write it multiple times, even today she just answered a mail sayin this?
Ok. first thing: next time say it clearly: “we have a problem, you are not the only one, we are on it”. i received various answers that were saying, somewthing like “there is no problem, you are wrong, it’s just a chronological problem…” and stuff like that. that made me feel like a person that is fooled around.
third: things are getting WORSE. the more i grow (i’m in some editor playlist now…Yeppa!) the worse it is.
fouth: lack of clarity + internet business +lack of transparency+ illogical answers (or false answers) = the idea of being in a no good situation.
i’m being diplomatic but i think you can understand what i mean
that is why i’m a little rough…
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to be clear.
on monday i had another e-mail exchange with Imusician and the answer was mechanical: “we are checking with our tech…”
i said myself: “on next monday it’s one month since we started this thing, and i feel really bad for the situation. i wait until monday next week and then i go away from Imusician”.
i will wait more time, ok.
i Hope you understand what i’m trying to say, i hope you understand what i’m affraid of.
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Hi @MattiaBalboni, On April 3 I had the same issue as you in March, it showed 0 streams for a long time, then it began to rise, now it shows 65. So I think there is a kind of time delay with the streams coming from the streaming platforms (and it is not only spotify as there are streams on that day from deezer and amazon music for sure and maybe others too) Hopefully iMusician can dig deeper into that! my very best to you and the iMusician Team, Andi
a certain delay …ok. but it always happends, it’s been going on for months, the number is always lower…i want to know why. if spotify gives them the right number from the dashboard (that’s what spotify does, as it is what spotify told me in chat) there is no way they can mistake.
i want to know why, cause i’m having …let’s say…trust issues. like nick fury, but not that bad…
example: 30 march is 79 on IM and 153 on Spotify. 3 april is now 104, was 0 2 days ago, but spotify says 114.
i could go on for days like this…I don’t want to be there checking everything everyday, it’s not my job…it’s Imusician’s job.
what makes me feel bad is: if same things happends to money i have no way to check it. TRUST and TRANSPARENCY are the core of this business. not good if i check the only thing i can check and find this difference. really, NOT feeling good about it.
i wait till middle may. that means a little less than one more month… but i want REAL answers…
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Hi there, I’m actually sad to read about your situation because last September I finally realized that some things were strange about the stats too. When I asked about it by email, I got a long answer trying to explain why there was such a difference EVERYTIME I received the royalties stats, that this wasn’t iMusician’s fault but the stores themselves, since they each had their own way of communicating about the stats and other stuff.
In short: the woman who answered me “drowned the fish” (don’t know if that expression exists in English? maybe not, “noyé le poisson” in French) and never clarified anything. I immediately understood that it was pointless to try and get another answer from iMusician about this, so I gave up, even though I’m far from satisfied.
There are months where some ligns say “0 stream” but count a revenue, twice we had revenue counted for tracks that weren’t even released yet (i.e. a track released in July but already appeared on the June revenue report??), things like that.
If you actually get to the bottom of this, I would love to hear it. You would be doing a great service to a lot of artists here!
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ok, so i’m not the only one
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Hello all,
We are continuously investigating this as there should be no (or very very little) discrepancy between Spotify and iMusician stats.
We have found an issue that caused Trends to be incorrect between 31.03 and 01.04 to be incorrect, this will be rectified ASAP.
Please note that this does not impact revenue reports (e.g. sales), but only the Trends report.
We will continue to investigate on our side any further issues.
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After discussing this with the team thoroughly, I believe I can provide an answer to your questions:
@Andi, The below is most probably due to the error I mentioned above (at least we hope so and this should now be rectified.
@eriahummingbird @MattiaBalboni, I’ll try to summarize why there is a difference without “drowning the fish”
Non-Monetized streams
Spotify have “non-monetized streams” where, for whatever reason, the stream is not monetized. We can see these streams in data but we have not included them in the Trends Report (this is probably the filter that @MattiaBalboni mentioned).
Spotify are the only streaming shops that do this and there can be multiple reasons why this happens, which Spotify are not too good at explaining.
Below this line is now my opinion and a bit of a “hunch”
-
I believe that, non-monetized streams come primarily from Free Trial users.
-
I would also imagine that some non-monetized streams are for fraud checks which, once the check is complete could then become a “monetized stream”, thus the stream could be “added later” to the iMusician dashboard.
Correction
iMusician stats do not count plays under 30seconds, plays under 30 seconds do not result in revenue but can be “seen” by the “skip rate” calculation.
End Correction
We took the decision to not include non-monetised streams as we felt that they were potentially “worthless” to musicians (e.g. they aren’t monetised & it’s a"skip" not a play so why do artists care etc.) However, we may review this decision in the future if it is an issue for our Artists.
I also just want to re-iterate that the Trends report has zero impact on the payouts / earnings from Spotify. The two things are very separate, we do not calculate based on a per stream rate, we just simply take the money from Spotify and give it to the correct account on iMusician.
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first:
about the “filter”. i didn’t talk about it, Melani did (your colleague). if you discover now about this filter why did melani know about its existance , even if it’s not spotify filter but, actually, an Imusician filter, and even if she said she had no idea how it operated?
second:
This answer totally contradicts Spotify answers.
Spotify says you are given the same stats that appears in the dashboard. you say it is not so.
i can give you the scrteenshot of those conversations:
There are 4 possibilities:
1-spotify is wrong
2-imusician is wrong
3-spotify is lying
4-Imusician is lying
wich one should I pick?
PS: i quote: We took the decision to not include non-monetised streams as we felt that they were potentially “worthless” to musicians (e.g. they aren’t monetised so why do artists care etc.) However, we may review this decision in the future if it is an issue for our Artists.
wich contradicts the following quote: Trends report has zero impact on the payouts / earnings
if trends are only monetized streams , it’s clear they impact on payout (even if with spotify there is no direct “1stream=xmoney” .
you may think thats just a “technicality” but the point is that I know that i’m not using fake streams, so when i see “there are less streams because probably some are fraud” i get…uncofortable.
seems like the only choice I have is to trust Imusician or go away.
not sure what i’m going to choose, there are still many things that are unclear about Imusician behaviour with this topic.
Trust is a delicate and fragile thing.
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my trend are incorrect also after 01-04.
just to be clear.
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Hey @MattiaBalboni
Thanks for your response, and my apologies if I am not explaining myself well, I definitely did not mean to accuse you of fraud, I was just trying to suggest possible reasons for stats coming later than they do on Spotify.
If I may, I’d like to just start again and ignore everything that went previously. I think we (including myself) have not done a great job in explaining this and I have probably added too much of my own opinion in the previous message.
Let’s just go through the facts on Spotify Trends in the iMusician Trends Report.
- We get the data from Spotify (as stated by Spotify)
- We only show “accountable” streams (e.g. those over 30 seconds). If there is a difference to Spotify then this is usually the problem. We do show the “Skip rate” so you can see if / why some streams may not show up.
2. We have 2x “types” of streams
2a. Monetised streams
2b. Non-monetised streams
3. We show in our trends report only the monetised (2a) streams, which is why the stream count may be lower than Spotify.
If you have any other questions please let me know, and again apologies if you think our behaviour is weird on this, we’re not trying to hide anything - just trying our best to explain how things work, I hope we can keep discussing and find all the answers for you
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i’m checking with spotify. they say, AGAIN, you receive ONE set of stats.
the “monetized / not monetized” thing is about royalties, not stats.
now i’m trying to get the royalties data, wich is hard but not impossible.
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Hello @MattiaBalboni and thanks for helping us on this topic.
It is important to us that we can provide a transparent experience when reporting on trends.
To understand and identify potential issues I would kindly ask you to share an ISRC with me privately and tell me how many streams you observe on spotify for artists for three days separately (you choose the day, within the past 90 days - please not for the 31st of March or 1st of April).
This would be of great help as we can build a case and challenge the data received if we are able to identify an issue.
Thanks a lot!
i think this is the third time i do it, but probably not in pubblic…31-march and 1st april are the worst, i have something like 100 streams less…but i understand: we have to wait to solve that issue.
1-i don’t undertstand: why 1 single day with multiple relevations?
2-i don’t understand : why only one release?
3- spotify does not understand why you talk about monetized and non monetized when talking about stats. But this is what i’m checking with them.