How The Orchard automates music distribution, DSP delivery, and royalty accounting for independent labels
The Orchard is a global music and film distribution company that gets independent label catalogs onto every streaming platform, into every store, and then back to the artist as a clean royalty statement. Behind every release sits a workflow stack that turns a finished master into a paid stream.
A modern music distributor sits between the artist and a hundred storefronts. Audio masters, artwork, metadata, ISRCs, splits, release windows, takedowns, and royalties all have to move in lockstep across DSPs that each have their own ingestion spec and reporting cadence. The Orchard automates that pipeline so labels can run catalogs of any size without becoming an operations team.
The four pain points The Orchard's automation has to solve
Every DSP has a different ingestion spec. Spotify wants one bundle, Apple wants another, YouTube wants something else, regional platforms have their own quirks. Building each delivery by hand multiplies error rates.
Metadata mistakes block payouts. Wrong ISRC, mis-spelled featured artist, missing publisher info — and the streams play, but the money stops. The label finds out months later when the statement is short.
Release windows and takedowns are time-sensitive. A coordinated worldwide drop at midnight only works if every DSP receives the assets in time. A delayed takedown after a content claim is a legal and financial problem.
Royalty reporting is multi-source and messy. Streams come in from many DSPs in many formats, on different cadences, in different currencies. Without normalisation, the label cannot tell the artist what they earned this quarter.
Four automation patterns that keep The Orchard moving
Standardised release intake
Labels submit a release once with audio, art, metadata, splits, and release window. The platform validates the package against every DSP's rules before delivery — errors are caught early, not after rejection.
Per-DSP delivery on rails
Each platform receives the package in its expected format on its expected schedule, including regional storefronts. Coordinated worldwide releases drop at the planned moment instead of trickling in.
Takedown + rights orchestration
Takedowns, splits changes, and rights updates propagate to every DSP from one action. Compliance windows are met without per-platform manual work.
Unified royalty statements
Streams from every DSP are normalised into one currency, one split structure, and one statement per artist. Labels know what to pay; artists know what they earned.
The four-stage pipeline
Every release on The Orchard runs through the same four-stage shape — ingest the release, distribute to every DSP, account for the streams, and report to the artist. The same pipeline serves a single-artist label and a multi-region catalog of tens of thousands of tracks.
Case study: The Orchard
The Orchard
Challenge
Deliver independent music and film catalogs to every relevant DSP and storefront worldwide, keep metadata clean enough that royalties actually flow, hit coordinated release windows globally, and turn multi-source stream data into one understandable statement per artist.
Solution
The Orchard built a release pipeline where intake is standardised, per-DSP delivery is fully automated, takedowns and rights updates fan out from one action, and royalties from every DSP are normalised into one statement. Labels stop fighting plumbing and start picking what to release next.
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How does The Orchard handle different DSP requirements?
Labels submit a release once with audio, art, metadata, splits, and a release window. The platform validates the package against every DSP's spec, then delivers in each DSP's expected format — errors are caught before delivery rather than after rejection.
How does The Orchard coordinate global release windows?
Each DSP receives the release on its expected schedule for its region. A worldwide midnight drop hits every storefront at the right moment instead of trickling in piecemeal.
How does The Orchard report royalties?
Streams from every DSP flow into a single ledger, get normalised into one currency, applied against the configured splits, and rolled up into one statement per artist. Labels see what to pay; artists see what they earned.
Run your distribution on the same shape
Byteflow gives you the workflow shape — ingest, distribute, account, report — so your label can scale releases without scaling the back office.
Start automating →Easy automation. For everyone.