Terms of service.

Distroline is a music distribution service operated by Chiado Music Group EOOD, a company registered in Bulgaria. "You" means the person or company that opens a Distroline account. We open new accounts from Portugal, Brazil, the Portuguese-speaking countries and Spain; an account once opened can be used from anywhere. These terms govern the use of distroline.com and the platform.

Distroline lets you upload your music and deliver it to stores and streaming services ("Stores") such as Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Deezer, Tidal and Amazon Music, through our distribution partner. We collect the master recording royalties those Stores report for your releases and pay them to you. You can also import a catalogue you already have on Spotify and create pre-save pages on dline.fm.

What we do not do. We do not collect songwriting or publishing royalties from collecting societies; that stays between you and your society. We do not give legal, tax or licensing advice.

Age

you must be at least 18, or have the consent of a legal guardian, to open an account and receive payouts.

Accurate details

give us accurate information and keep it up to date. We may ask for verification documents to prevent fraud and meet our legal obligations.

Your credentials

you are responsible for everything that happens in your account, including access you share with collaborators.

One per entity

one account per person or entity, unless agreed otherwise in writing.

Distroline has three plans. Prices include VAT, and paid plans are sold by the year only. The price that applies is always the one the app shows you before you pay, and it can depend on the country registered on your account: accounts in Brazil pay in reais and some countries have a regional price. The VAT included is that of your billing country (23% in Portugal, 20% in France) and is itemised on the document for each purchase.

Free

€0. Distroline retains 10% of the net royalties we receive for your releases and you keep 90%. This is also the share that applies when a paid plan ends and you go back to Free.

Coliseu

€14.99 a year. Distroline retains no commission: you keep 100% of the net royalties. Includes YouTube Content ID without spending tokens.

Stage

€49.99 a year. Distroline retains no commission: you keep 100% of the net royalties. Includes YouTube Content ID without spending tokens, and every pre-save page is premium.

Renewing

you pay by card, SEPA Direct Debit, Apple Pay, Google Pay or Link, in a subscription managed by Stripe that renews every year at the plan’s price.

14 days free

if your account has never had a paid plan, the first renewing subscription starts with 14 days free. You pay nothing when you subscribe; at the end of the 14 days the first year is charged, unless you stop the renewal before then.

One payment

you can also pay for twelve months in one go: by MB WAY, in euros; by Pix, in reais, for accounts in Brazil; or from your royalty wallet balance, converted at the European Central Bank’s latest reference rate. This payment does not renew: at the end of the twelve months you go back to the Free plan, unless you pay for another year.

Stopping renewal

you can stop the renewal whenever you like. It takes effect at the end of the period already paid: until then you keep the plan, and after that you move to Free. Your releases stay live.

Changing plan

on a renewing plan, moving to a dearer plan happens at once: we charge the price difference for the rest of the current year straight away, to the subscription’s payment method. During the 14 free days nothing is charged, and the new plan is what is charged when they end. Moving to a cheaper plan, or changing plan during a year paid in one go, is only possible when that year ends.

Invoices

every purchase has a document you can view and download in Settings, Plan and payments. At checkout you can add a company’s VAT number, which appears on the document. If you need an invoice with other details, ask support.

Price changes

we give at least 30 days’ notice before any increase to a recurring price; it takes effect at your next renewal.

Tokens pay for optional features in Distroline and are bought in packs. Plans do not include tokens.

Packs

a one-off payment in euros, VAT included, through Stripe: 5 tokens for €5, 12 tokens for €10 or 30 tokens for €22. The tokens reach your account when the payment is confirmed.

What they are for

for example, making a pre-save page premium or giving it room for more fans. The token cost is always shown before you confirm.

They do not expire

tokens have no expiry date and stay on your account even if you change plan or go back to Free.

They are not money

tokens cannot be exchanged for money or moved to another account. If Distroline removes a pre-save page, the tokens spent on it go back to your balance.

You keep full ownership of everything you upload: your recordings, artwork and metadata. To provide the service, you give Distroline a limited, non-exclusive, worldwide licence to:

Store and deliver

store, encode, reformat and transmit your content to the Stores you choose.

Show it to you

show your content in your dashboard and in your royalty statements.

Present it

use your artist name, title and artwork to present and pitch your release to the Stores, and on your pre-save pages.

This licence exists only to distribute your releases and lasts only as long as that requires. It ends when the content is removed, except for the short period a Store may need to take it down.

By uploading a release, you confirm that:

You hold the rights

you own or control every right needed to distribute it, including the composition where that concerns you.

Everything is cleared

every sample, feature and guest is cleared, and you have permission from everyone who appears in the credits.

Covers are licensed

cover versions are properly licensed. Unlicensed covers may only go to Stores that cover them under their own blanket licence, and we may limit where a cover is distributed.

It is lawful

the content does not infringe anyone’s rights, is not unlawful and does not impersonate anyone.

Rights

do not upload anything you have no right to, including AI-generated audio that imitates another artist’s voice without permission.

Real streams

do not inflate streams artificially (bots, fraud or placements that break a Store’s rules). Royalties from streams proven to be fraudulent are withheld and may be recovered from earlier payouts.

Identity

do not impersonate another artist, label or rights holder.

Security

do not probe, scrape or try to get around any technical or security control of the platform.

Law and policies

do not use the service unlawfully or in breach of any Store’s content policy.

Checks

we review every release before delivering it. Part of the review is automatic: we compare a fingerprint of the audio against a reference catalogue, through ACRCloud. A match can send the release to manual review or lead to it being refused.

Store rules

each Store has its own terms. Whether a release is accepted, in which territories, and whether it stays up are, in the end, the Store’s decisions. We pass on every reason code we receive.

Timing

we give you an estimate, but delivery time is not guaranteed and depends partly on the Stores.

Removal

we may refuse or remove content that breaks these terms or a Store’s policy.

Taking a release down

to take a release that is already live off the Stores, open a support request in the dashboard. The team handles the takedown.

Migrations

when you import a catalogue from Spotify, you first confirm that you hold the rights. We bring over the metadata, the credits, the ISRC and UPC codes and, when it is available, the audio; a track whose audio cannot be imported needs you to upload the master. Imported releases go through the same checks before delivery. Keeping the same codes helps the Stores match them to what already exists, but that decision is each Store’s.

For an approved release, you can publish a pre-save page on dline.fm, where fans leave their email to be told on release day.

When

a page can exist if the release date is at least 7 days after approval, and it takes sign-ups until release day.

Fans per page

each page holds up to 250 confirmed fans on Free, 1,000 on Coliseu and 2,500 on Stage. In any 12 months, your pages together hold up to 500 confirmed fans on Free, 1,500 on Coliseu and 4,000 on Stage. Room you buy with tokens is added on top of these limits.

Premium

on Stage every page is premium. On Free and Coliseu, a page becomes premium with tokens.

The emails

Distroline sends the confirmation email and the release-day email on your behalf. It sends no other emails to the page’s fans.

Fans who ask for news

on a premium page you can download the fans who asked to hear about your next releases. From then on you are responsible for that data under the GDPR, and you may only use it to tell them about your releases.

Removal

we may remove a page that breaks these terms. That page’s fans no longer get the release-day email, and the tokens spent on it go back to your balance.

How they arrive

the Stores report your releases’ earnings to our distribution partner, which passes them to us in reports. Once we have reviewed each report, we credit your share to your Distroline wallet, in US dollars and net of your plan’s commission, and let you know.

Store delays

Stores report at their own pace. The first money for a release normally arrives two to three months after release, and after that at the Stores’ pace.

Splits

if a release has a royalty split accepted by its participants, each of them receives their share in their own wallet, with their own plan’s commission.

Withdrawing

you request a payout in the wallet, for any amount up to your available balance; there is no minimum. We pay in euros, by SEPA bank transfer or by PayPal. The euro amount is estimated at the European Central Bank’s latest reference rate when you make the request, and the amount paid is recorded in the wallet. Before your first request you must verify your email and fill in your payout and tax details.

Review

the finance team reviews your payout and tax details, including a tax identification number, and each request before paying it.

Royalty invoices

each payout needs an invoice from you to Distroline. If you accept the self-billing agreement, Distroline issues that invoice on your behalf; if not, you upload your own invoice as a PDF or XML.

Adjustments

chargebacks, Store recoveries and streams flagged as fraud may be deducted from current or future payouts.

Taxes

you are responsible for the taxes due on what you earn. Depending on your tax situation, the royalty invoice may include VAT or have tax withheld at source; you see the invoice amount and the amount payable after withholding on each payout’s document.

The Distroline name, logo, software, dashboard and design are ours. You may not use them in a way that suggests endorsement, partnership or affiliation without our prior written agreement.

The Store names mentioned on the site (Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Deezer, Tidal, Amazon Music and others) are trademarks of their respective owners. Distroline is not affiliated with them.

Your choice

you can ask for your account to be closed whenever you like, in Settings → Account. Before we close it, we sort out with you the releases that are live, the wallet balance and the records the law requires us to keep.

Our right

we may suspend or end your account if you breach these terms, if we have good grounds to suspect fraud, or if continuing would put us in breach of the law or of an agreement with a Store. We tell you why and let you respond, unless the law prevents it.

Suspended accounts

to protect the platform we record, at each sign-up and sign-in, the IP address, a device identifier and a browser fingerprint, as the Privacy policy describes. When we suspend an account for fraud or abuse, we may refuse sign-ups and sign-ins from those devices and addresses, and a new account opened to get around the suspension is suspended too.

Serious breach

either party may terminate for a serious breach that is not remedied within 30 days of written notice.

We provide the service with reasonable care and skill. Beyond that, and to the fullest extent the law allows, the service is provided "as is" and we give no other warranties. We do not guarantee that a Store will accept any particular release, or that your streaming income will reach any amount.

Our total liability under these terms is limited to the greater of (a) the fees you paid us in the previous 12 months, or (b) €100. We are not liable for indirect loss or loss of profits. Nothing in these terms limits liability for wilful misconduct, or any liability the law does not allow to be limited, including your mandatory consumer rights in the EU.

If you buy as a consumer, you have 14 days from the purchase to withdraw from a plan or a token pack without giving any reason. To do so, write to apoio@distroline.com or open a support request in the dashboard saying that you want to withdraw from the purchase.

If you withdraw within that period, we refund what you paid, to the same payment method, within 14 days at the latest. The plan goes back to Free and the tokens from that purchase leave your balance. If you started with the 14-day free period, the 14 days run from the start of that period and do not open again with the first charge.

Outside this period, payments are not refundable unless the law requires it or the service fails through our fault. Stopping the renewal does not refund the year already paid: the plan stays active until the end of that year.

We may update these terms when the product, our partners or our obligations change. We announce material changes at least 14 days in advance, by email and in the app. If you keep using the service after the effective date, you accept the updated terms; if not, you can close your account before that date.

These terms are governed by Bulgarian law and the applicable law of the European Union. If you are a consumer, this choice does not deprive you of the mandatory protections you have under the law of the country where you habitually live. Your right to go to the competent courts under the applicable law is preserved.

For contractual or legal matters, write to legal@distroline.com. For help with your account, apoio@distroline.com.

Chiado Music Group EOOD
17A Vrabcha St, fl. 1, ap. 3, 1000 Sofia, Bulgaria
Registered in the Bulgarian Commercial Register, UIC 208642770
VAT BG208642770