AWAL Reviews 56

“ I've used AWAL for my music label, i never had any problem with them
I read a lot of artist that get their catalog removed.
Many artist stole songs, use platforms to distribute unauthorized song, cover, etc... When you distribute though platform like AWAL, you need to own 100% of the rights
AWAL will never ban you if you respect that, if you are banned, it's because you used the platform to distribute stolen song.”

lol Toni Perret you’ve been in the industry less than 5 minutes attempting to dismiss the experiences of thousands of artists who have been exploited by this Sh!tty company. You definitely work for them.

AWAL tricks you into thinking that they would be a better distributor than others because they are selective about whose music they distribute, but they are worse than distrokid or ditto or anything other online distributors. You may not pay with money but you pay with stress and mistakes instead.

Multiple deadlines missed because of system glitches due to relentless and pointless updates, sometimes you can't even get into your account, sometimes you check boxes and they uncheck when you go to the next page, and then they blame you for not doing it right. They are massively unhelpful when you need their assistance and actually make managing your online music harder than it ever has to be.

They do not care about the small artists and they are a diseased spot on the music industry. I have an issue everytime I need to deal with them. They cant fulfil simple requests, and refuse to compensate you when things go wrong. For example, I tried to release a single in June, because of a system glitch my submission never went through, when i complained (cause a had a gig to celebrate the single launch which ended up being ruined), they were just like 'prove it' and obviously I didn't have proof because what psycho would take screenshots of every step when asking a company to complete the ONLY SERVICE THEY PROVIDE.

It will not benefit you in any way to be on AWAL. Avoid it at all cost, pay to do it through distrokid or something more reliable cause these guys SUCK.

They didn't proceed with issuing my royalties – they made like 100 GBP on my earnings by not paying me and the support doesn't give concrete reply and afterwards ignores completely. SO sad to see once a good distributor fall so short.

Hello, I recently used to be a loyal customer of AWAL, I felt super happy with the customer service and the speed of the entire system, it was very efficient, but one day, they only sent us the following email:

"Good Afternoon, Having reviewed your account, we have decided to end the agreement with have in place. As a result, we need to issue takedown notices to the streaming platforms and other services where we've delivered your catalog imminently, and we will disable the uploader in the AWAL Workstation. This email constitutes our written notice to terminate the agreement between us. For clarity, the agreement will end within 30 days of this message being sent. You will have access to the platform to review outstanding statements. Please let me know. Thanks again for working with us and good luck with your future projects."

No other explanation provided. Support won't respond any mail

The thing is, we never did anything wrong, we were always very careful to follow the regulations, within the label we were very strict about following all the rules. The day after I received that email, 80% of our catalog had been removed from all platforms.

Worse yet, that happened just before we reached the minimum payout threshold ($50). That ain't no coincidence.

So if your looking to get on AWAL, be careful to fall on this kinds of scams, they robbed 5 months of hard work for us.

Absolutely horrible. Released my EP with them and then tried to make content and promote it on TikTok in which I then got flagged and shadow banned for using "copyrighted" material which is my OWN music which I 100% own the rights to. I then got shadow banned from my TikTok which I worked hard to grow and had to start a new one from scratch and lose my fans. Contacted them to reach out to TikTok on the backend to fix the issue and remove the shadow ban from my old account, in which they never responded or did anything. They ruined my entire release strategy. Secondly they owe me money and have yet to pay me out despite me telling them. They don't do anything for smaller artists - all they care about is already established huge clout. STAY AWAY I'm removing my catalogue - they are part of the modern music industry b.s under the guise that they are part of the remedy.

To make a long story short, they simply do not care for their smaller artists whatsoever. I released a song using them on Friday, however they fail to tell anyone they upload your song to SoundCloud on a completely different account without you knowing. I received 2 copyright strikes from them on my main SoundCloud account, even though the track is MINE, resulting in not being able to upload the song without getting my account permanently banned. I tried to reach out to both AWAL and SoundCloud in hopes to delete the track and resolve it within the next day, and heard absolutely nothing. No email response, no notification. It took them 3 days to respond using bot template emails, and after filling out multiple forms and replying to multiple emails they still haven't removed the track from SoundCloud, even though they said they would. As of writing this review it's now been over a week and this issue has still not been resolved.

I have never seen a distribution company with this lack of support in over 5 years of doing music production. Please avoid AWAL if you are a small artist like myself.

Currently attempting to withhold my royalties under the guise of “artificial activity” - refusing to provide any further information or any proof to their claim. Have been in the music industry for 6 years - becoming more and more successful, disgusting behaviour from a subpar company.

Removed ALL my music. About a decade of work and streams, that were in the tens of thousands, gone. Not even the dignity of telling me what the "supicious activity" was for me to at least argue my case - I have never done anything suspicious with my tunes knowingly. I truly have no idea what the issue was. 2 albums, countless singles and EP's gone, with nothing but silence from the "customer service". Disgusting way to treat artists.

I've used AWAL for my music label, i never had any problem with them
I read a lot of artist that get their catalog removed.
Many artist stole songs, use platforms to distribute unauthorized song, cover, etc... When you distribute though platform like AWAL, you need to own 100% of the rights
AWAL will never ban you if you respect that, if you are banned, it's because you used the platform to distribute stolen song.

About royalties
Never had any problem on this side, i've received the first payment 45 days after the release of songs (3 month) with amazing royalty statement.
When you config correctly your account, and after a wait of 3 month, you'll always receive the first payment

I know many big label that use AWAL/The Orchard, if Sony was "scamming" like some say, labels and big artist would never use it.

Negative comment are generally artist that :
Use the platform to distribute stolen song
Have not configured correctly their accouting informations
Did not wait 3 month

The support is nice, i think it could be better / faster

The only con / downside is the "add artist" menu when releasing a song
If the artist has a special character in his name, or if the artist has a really common name, it will be super hard / impossible to find the artist though the research tab

I don't understand why we can't simply put the spotify, Apple, Youtube URL/URl of the artist instead of a research tab

AWAL Suspended my account with (2000 GBP) showing fake reasons. Please, Never trust on Awal Music, buy scam with me. so, be careful. Diito Music can Suspend or Ban your account any time, so be carefull

Terminated my contract after not paying me for 2 years. When I finally figured out setting up payoneer (super buggy) I got a notice saying that they'd be taking all my music down. They didn't do anything in terms of helping me with my releases, certainly wasn't worth their royalty cut or the hassle of moving my catalog.

Awal is a scam I request for my entire catalog to be take down from them weeks ago and they have yet to respond they are scamming artist out of their royalty money and will use your music without paying you to all artist out there stay away for this company you have been warned. Their are far better way to make money with your music directly to the consumer no one will be using these dsp in the future they will steal your money to pay their small staff as there is no way for them to make money any long so don’t be the next victim

Let me list a few grievances and why you should not go with AWAL.

1.) They do not listen to takedown requests. They say they receive my request and to wait 14 days, but I’ve had to remind them multiple times to do this. In several cases it’s taken me 3 months to get a release down.

2.) Even when a release is taken down from their system, they will copyright strike other distributors. This has happened multiple times and has delayed release campaigns and gotten strikes on my account from other distributors. AWAL acts like they own your work for life.

3.) They are not friendly with SoundCloud. In regards to #2 and having a release out of their system for several months, AWAL continued to copyright strike SoundCloud. I had to get a personal contact with the head of the company because after several months their staff did not resolve the issue.

4.) They are shoddy in regards to playlist pitching. I’ve moved to Symphonic since, and they will tell you when they have received your pitch and who they have pitched it to. They are quite diligent and adamant about the process. AWAL is questionable in these regards and since their acquisition by The Orchard, do not seem responsible with helping smaller artists now.

5.) Don’t allow you to automatically split royalties and pay others. It’s 2024, get that together.

6.) Take 15%. Most platforms who do the same or more only charge about $20 a year now. Would I rather pay $20 a year or get 15% taken off $12,000+ a year? Seems like an easy answer.

7.) With The Orchard acquisition they deleted all their prior data. Wanna access your statements before 2023? Sorry can’t do that now. I have little trust in this kind of behavior. They continue to change parts of their system which make for a less accessible UI.

I’ve been with AWAL since 2015 and it’s been a slow descent into the dirt. Please opt for a different distributor like Symphonic instead.

Probably the worst distributor available, for 3 years I never received a single dollar, after payoneer they started to pay me but after one payment they deleted my entire catalogue and that’s it.

Don’t waste your time here

This company allows scammers to distribute stolen content on streaming platforms. Recently an unauthorized third party using their platform has published copyrighted protected material without the permission or knowledge of the original authors. How is this possible? Do they have any mechanism to verify that this content is actually owned by them? How can they issue fake UPC for those songs as in most cases they are already available on streaming websites published by other providers? Their support on the subject is really bad. They must reevaluate their policy and prevent scammers to exploit their system.

Great service, don’t forget to OPT OUT of Content ID if your music is not 100% original. Very fast, and reliable. I have been banned by two distributors when I made a lot of money, this is my opportunity!

Won't pay royalties and whenever you send them an email they give the same fence sitting reply knowing response takes days on end. Guess Sony has to steal independent artists hard earned money. Will update if problem is solved but by the looks of things, that's not going to happen.

After five years of being with AWAL, I think it is time to leave. The company takes 15% of your royalty earnings for doing nothing more than what basic distributors do, especially when you are at the bottom of the pile.

I joined AWAL with the hope that they would be able to champion our music, and for us to work together to deliver our music to DSPs and achieve playlist results.

To give you background information on my work, my work has entered the Official UK Charts for several weeks on several charts, even peaking at #5 in Album Downloads across all genres. Our music has appeared on major press and radio, and we sell out shows without a record label, management, or booking agent at 300-800 capacity venues across Europe.

You'd think with this kind of momentum, AWAL would want to help us achieve further results. However, this would end up to be further from the truth.

AWAL never wanted to help us whilst we have been on upward trajectory - they have not wanted to work with us on a bigger scale. Instead, they are happy to take more than £1,000 in royalties from me every year, for doing nothing but distribute our music (25% of the time with the wrong release information).

If there is no added benefit of being with AWAL, you are better off using a distributor such as Distrokid, or Ditto Music, where you can retain 100% of royalties for an annual fee. This company pretty much scams artists that are showing trajectory but are not willing to help them in any capacity, yet are happy to take 15%.

The support has never been fantastic, but ever since they have been acquired by Sony Music/The Orchard, the first line of support have been atrocious. They mess up very basic instructions. For example, we submitted a release containing two tracks - the first one being the remix of a our song, where we wanted the remixer to be the main artist, and the original song as the second track. Even though we did not submit the remixer to be added as the main artist on the second track, AWAL added them anyway. There was no apology from their side, and they asked me to resubmit the entire release again.

I am currently in the process of reuploading our entire catalog with another distributor and will be requesting a takedown of all our music with AWAL.

Awal has refused to send my owed royalty payments. After many months of sending me bogus letters promising to pay, they continue to make up excuses to avoid payment. ATTN: MUSICIANS AVOID AWAL! You have been warned. They will scam you. These people have no integrity. Any musician wanting to see screenshots of Awal's many months of email lies, feel free to contact me on FB - ANTDG

AWAL stopped royalty payments, after the termination of the contract it was promised to make the last payment to my details within six months and this has not been honored. After my appeals to customer support, the support employee replies "We can't access your account due to lack of data", when I provided a copy of the contract and all the necessary information. This is simply a fraudulent organization that will cheat you out of your money, hiding behind an incompetent first line of support.