A song’s distributor is the company that delivered it to Spotify, Apple Music, TikTok and the other stores. It is often not the name in the label field. Here are five ways to find it, from quickest to most thorough.
On Spotify for desktop or web, right-click the track and choose Show credits. Below the writers and producers, Spotify lists the source of the release. For many independent releases this is the distributor, such as DistroKid or CD Baby.
The source is not always there, and for label releases it often shows the label instead of the distributor. Use it as a first check, not the final answer.
Every release carries a ℗ (phonographic copyright) line naming who owns the recording, and a © line for the artwork and packaging. On Spotify they are at the bottom of the album page; on Apple Music they are under the track list.
The ℗ line tells you who controls the recording. It still doesn’t always tell you who distributed it: an independent label can distribute through The Orchard, ADA or a self-serve service.
The ISRC is a 12-character code for the recording, such as USCM51600028. The first two characters are a country code, the next three are the registrant code of whoever issued it, then two digits for the year and five for the recording.
Self-serve distributors usually issue ISRCs for their artists, so their releases share the distributor’s registrant code. Search the code at the IFPI ISRC search to see the registrant. Our ISRC lookup guide explains each part.
The UPC is the release’s barcode. Its first digits are a company prefix registered with GS1. Large distributors and the major groups issue barcodes from their own prefixes: Universal releases, for example, often start with 00602. If you know the prefix, you know who issued the barcode. See the UPC lookup guide.
Each method above gives you one clue. ANTHM Pulse reads all of them from the release data at once: paste a Spotify or TikTok link and it shows the distributor, the label line, the ℗ and © lines, the ISRC, the UPC, the credits and 30 days of streams.
These three releases show why the label field alone is not enough:
Drake, Wizkid, Kyla
Major label. The label line names the imprints and the distributor is the parent group.
PARTYNEXTDOOR
Label services. The label line says OVO Sound; the distributor is The Orchard.
Fixupboy
Self-released. The label line is a name the artist chose, so it says nothing about the distributor.
The label field is free text entered by whoever uploaded the release. Self-released artists put their own name or an invented label there, and signed artists show an imprint. In the third example above, the label field says “Isekai/ broke”, but the release went out through TikTok SoundOn.
Keep reading
Check whether an artist is signed or independent using the distributor, the label field, the ℗ line and “under exclusive license” wording.
GuideHow to find a song’s ISRC, what each part of the code means, and how to use the registrant code to see who issued it.
GuideHow to find the UPC of an album or single, what the company prefix means, and how it points to a label or distributor.