Here's a kind reminder: if you don't take any action, your songs will still be live on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, and everywhere else on September 1. They are not being deleted or taken down by default. That's not what's happening — but the notices Songtradr sent out understandably left a lot of artists unsure exactly what "closing" means, so here's the plain version. (One real exception, worth knowing before you act: canceling your subscription is different from just letting the migration happen — more on that below.)
Worth saying plainly, since it's easy to assume otherwise: Songtradr the company isn't going anywhere. This is a restructuring of one specific product, not a company shutting down. Songtradr still owns and operates MassiveMusic, Bandcamp, and several other music-tech brands — what's closing is the self-serve Marketplace dashboard specifically, not Songtradr itself.
Three separate things, only one of them closes your access
The pipes delivering your music to streaming platforms don't shut off. You don't need to brace for your songs vanishing from listeners' playlists or search results on September 1. This part keeps working.
The legacy Songtradr Marketplace site itself is shutting down. After September 1, you lose login access to that specific dashboard — not your music, the dashboard you used to manage it.
The open marketplace where clients could browse and license music directly is going away, shifting to a curated, invite-only model instead. If sync licensing was part of why you used Songtradr, this is the part that changes for you.
Two things worth doing before the date, either way
- Copy down your metadata now. Log into your Songtradr account and get your ISRC codes, UPC codes, exact song titles, and artist credits into a spreadsheet or document you control — and download your master audio files too, before you lose dashboard access.
- Cash out. Request payout on any unpaid royalty balance sitting in your Songtradr account before September 1, rather than dealing with recovery after the fact.
Because dashboard access goes away either way, a fair number of artists are choosing to migrate to a standalone distributor — DistroKid, TuneCore, CD Baby, and similar — re-uploading with the identical ISRC codes so they keep direct, day-to-day control over their own catalog going forward, rather than routing through a marketplace at all.
One important distinction: staying through the migration vs. actively canceling
Everything above describes what happens if you don't take any action — your releases carry through the migration and stay live, exactly as described. That is not the same as what happens if you actively cancel your Songtradr subscription. Per Songtradr's own help center, canceling triggers something different: they will initiate a takedown of all releases actively streaming online, close your account, and process any final withdrawal.
This matters directly if you're planning to migrate to a new distributor: that path often involves canceling with your old one at some point, and cancellation is exactly the action that flips the outcome from "stays live" to "comes down." Worth sequencing carefully — get your new distribution genuinely live first, confirm it, and only then cancel the old one, rather than canceling first and assuming the old releases will just sit there untouched in the meantime.
Everything above is accurate as of what Songtradr has communicated right now — but "your songs are staying up" is a statement about today's policy, not a permanent guarantee about tomorrow's. Companies get acquired, distribution deals change, platforms update their terms. Songtradr's own communications aren't fully explicit about what happens years down the line, and that's not unusual — it's genuinely hard for any distributor to promise that far ahead. This isn't cause for alarm, but it is exactly why keeping your own copy of your metadata matters regardless of what happens on any one date: not because this specific transition is dangerous, but because depending on any single company's continued existence for the only record of your own catalog is a risk worth removing once, rather than re-litigating every time a distributor changes hands.
For the deadline mechanics in more detail, see the two clocks that matter — the 90-day backup window and the September 1 date are separate, and the backup window is usually the more urgent one.