Zimbalam closes and removes all releases from the shops - Can I legally prohibit the removal?

[tom995]

Zimbalam closes and removes the artists' releases from the shops! The offer is made to switch to Tunecore (which is also owned by Believe). However, this results in most rankings and playlist entries of the releases being deleted, because the releases have to be uploaded again.

For me this means a loss of about $44.000 per year! I think Believe could have just left the albums in the shops and continued to collect the royalties with their own company Tunecore, without having to remove all the albums from the shops. Instead, this company is causing many artists to lose a lot of money. In my case, it is a large part of my monthly income.

According to Zimbalam, keeping the rankings should work in most shops. However, this is not true, as has been reported here, for example: https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2015/0 ... musicians/

Does anyone know if I can legally forbid Zimbalam to remove my releases from the shops? It should be possible for another distributor to continue collecting my royalties without having to remove the releases first.

Does anyone have any other advice on what I could do? I think it should be possible to take legal action against these business practices.

I hope for answers. A large part of my livelihood depends on this. This is bad for a family with two children.

[vurt]

probably best to speak to your legal adviser.

[tom995]

I will do that. But it would be good to know beforehand whether, from a purely technical point of view, the releases could remain in the shops and another distributor could take over collecting the royalties. Maybe someone knows details about this.

By the way, the article is from 2015, but the topic is now becoming relevant again, as Zimbalam will soon be closing for all other countries.