Complaint Review: OneRPM

I run a record label which has been using OneRPM for about 5 years. Pretty much all of the other reviews I'm reading on here, I would agree with those. This was a reputable company which has steadily gotten worse and worse, to the point I think you can safely label it a "scam." And of course, it's possible they always were a scam to begin with. 

Those who are complaining about these bizarre "fraud" emails are exactly on the money. I've attached a screenshot of the email we received from them alleging this. You can request an explanation, or some actual detail about the purported infractions, but all they'll do is send you a copy of their user agreement - and then stop responding to emails. As I mentioned in my response to this, asking for specifics, there's no way any of their other more reputable competitors would behave in this manner. Your account is banned and you forfeit all your money, but they can't provide a single concrete example? 

And yes, conveniently enough for them, this means they are now able to go from taking 15% of your money to now getting 100% of it.  And are able to just leave the albums up on iTunes, Spotify, et cetera, meaning they continue to collect even if you upload your music somewhere else. Since you cannot log-in, this means you can't even access reports to see how much they took, how your songs performed, or, if you are a record label, how much they ripped off the artists you are representing. 

But let's back up a second and discuss the service, before any of this even happened. For various reasons, we use six different distributors, depending upon a number of factors. They'd already fallen from being our #2 and maybe even #1 choice, down to an undisputed #6.  

As someone else was stating, the new user interface on their website is an absolute nightmare to navigate. The first thing you see upon logging in is a screen full of error messages, showing you every single problem you've ever had, from artwork not passing inspection to track names being formatted incorrectly et cetera. These never go away. So whether or not you cleaned up the problem, and the album was released without a hitch, or it's still in limbo, you have no way of telling. Therefore, this is a useless feature and a complete waste of your time. 

Moving on to your releases, if you have a number of them, you'll notice they are just scattered at random all over the screen. There is a feature which will let you move the icons around and sort them, at least for the current session, but don't expect to see that pattern the next time you log-in. 

So, okay, these are somewhat minor annoyances you learn to ignore over time, and figure maybe the new website (which is a year old at this point) still has some bugs they're working on. But the email correspondence has always been atrocious, and is a major reason we began using them less and less over the years. Many have noted on here that they always have a condescending tone, ranging up to downright rude, and this is true. They will never apologize for anything, even when you have ample proof that what they're saying right now contradicts what you were previously told by them. 

Here are some concrete examples we have encountered: 

1. Occasionally they will add new stores where your album could theoretically be sent, but you have to discover this yourself and then click the box to have it submitted, on their website. Often, this will cause them to email you and state that the album is not being submitted anywhere, based on such-and-such error - even though this isn't a new release, you're just trying to add the one store, such as, let's say, Tidal or something. So here's the email sequence from about a month ago, for one album we have, which was released in 2004 and OneRPM themselves distributed back in 2013: 

      a) OneRPM emails to say they cannot distribute this album because the art is blurry, and that I need to upload something better 

      b) I respond that, no, no, you already did distribute the album, years ago, we just checkmarked the box to add this new store is all. And we just tried to figure out a way to upload new art, per your email, but it wouldn't let us. 

      c) OneRPM fires back a response that, well, you are not permitted to change the artwork on an existing album. That would require a full takedown of the album.  

      d) I respond that hey, if you look at this email chain, which I keep referencing, this wasn't our idea. You emailed us to tell us we needed to change the art! It's not our fault that YOUR PROCESS for adding a single new store appears to be the same as adding a new album entirely. 

       e) They respond asking if I want to keep the existing cover or submit a new one, they will handle it manually 

       f) I respond that we'd prefer to leave the same cover we've had on there since 2004, if possible, although we wouldn't want it be rejected from this new store or any others if it's an issue - because you were telling us it's too blurry for anyone to use 

       g) Condescending response from them basically saying, "Oh, so you want to keep the same cover? We don’t even need to do anything? Awesome! Glad we got to the bottom of this!" 

2. Occasional other bizarre emails where they announce they're taking down an existing album for "editorial" reasons, but never explain why. And then it's about 50/50, when you check in months later, as to whether this release was ever even taken down. 

3. Other scenarios somewhere in the middle of both where you attempt to add a new store for an existing release, and they shoot you back an email saying this album had never been approved for distribution anywhere, for "editorial" reasons, so therefore they can't add this new store, either. Often however I'm able to take a screenshot showing we've pulled in royalties for this album, on their site, so clearly it has been distributed somewhere. They don't respond to these emails. But no, the new stores are not added. 

4. As anyone who's serious about tracking royalties knows, you want to keep the same ISRC for the same song even if it shows up on multiple releases. Good luck with that here. If you have a single you want to throw on an album later on, they will kick out an error message telling you that you already used this ISRC and therefore have to come up with a new one. Emailing about this is a waste of time as well. 

5. Occasional emails for existing releases telling you that you never filled in the songwriting info - which wasn't required before on here - and must do so before they are able to distribute it. They will tell you to correct it on their site. As with the artwork, however, this isn't something you can change on an album that's already been distributed. So considerable email fun will follow with this situation as well. 

These are just off the top of my head. In summary, at BEST I think you would be able to say they're extremely disorganized and refuse to take responsibility for their problems...and at the other extreme, maybe you can label them a scam. We are now leaning towards labeling them an outright scam.  

The reason I am leaning toward the scam scenario has to do with their complete inability to provide a single example of this "fraud" allegation, which conveniently lets them keep all of our money now.  The timing is also highly suspect. I left the real dramatic bombshell for last, which is this - we just so happened to receive our first account suspension notice on the exact same day that our largest ever royalty report showed up on their site. Yes. The exact same day, in five years of dealing with OneRPM. I mentioned this to them, but of course this was also never referenced in their response. 

So if I had to guess, here's what I think is basically happening: they're mostly humming along, trying in some half-baked manner to run a mostly reputable company. It looks like an OK platform if you are just starting out in this business, or your releases aren't doing much volume, etc. Every once in a while they hit the jackpot with an account that blows up (we had our 2 biggest releases to date this year), and at that point they determine it's worth their time to shut you down and clean you out. They know they're not long for this world, and are doing what they can to milk this operation for all it's worth. 

But even if you don't buy this hypothesis, I would say steer clear of them. Why risk it? There are plenty of other reputable companies out there, charging a fair rate - you definitely don't need this hassle for the couple of things this company might do reasonably well, even if they never screw you over.