We often take Customer Support for granted. It is there when we need it – or is it?
I have been forced to contact the customer support of various music related services several times when things have gone wrong. Generally speaking, things run smoothly; however, when you have a problem, you expect that someone from the company will be able to sort it. The following catalogues some of my experiences with Customer Support.
PRS for Music Problem: Various, but mainly obtaining an exclusion licence: PRS for Music has two sections: PRS which protects copyright and collects royalties, and MCPS which collects mechanical rights. There is an excellent book, “The Guidebook to Self-releasing Your Music” by Matthew Whiteside, which explains things further, and which is very true to its title. I have contacted PRS for Music several times, mainly to sort out my tracks registered by PRS. Although I have experienced the odd glitch in my dealings with PRS, most of my requests were dealt with expediently and to my satisfaction. The same cannot be said about MCPS. According to the aforementioned book, I needed an AP2 exclusion licence to release my CD, which contained twelve tracks composed by me. I presume that they normally deal with big business, because they sent me on a wild goose chase and, no matter what extra information I obtained, it was still not good enough. The members of their licensing group refused to communicate with me directly, and I had to speak with support staff who were unaware of the details of the licence. One gentleman at MCPS tried to be helpful but the licensing group wouldn’t even listen to him. In the end, I emailed Matthew Whiteside who told me to ignore the licence.
SongU Problem: Various, but mainly issues with my debit card. SongU are always attentive and courteous when I ask a question. In all but one case, they have answered to my complete satisfaction; however, when they take my quarterly fee from my debit card, there is always a problem. It seems like their collection system and my bank’s paying system are not in sync. Lots of polite and well-meaning communication failed to solve the problem. I have had to use my credit card instead, although it is not my preferred choice.
Songtradr Problem: Usually something to do with my latest release. I have contacted support on a couple of occasions. For the most part, they have responded quickly and been very helpful. I did have a problem with my last release, when they were much slower in responding and didn’t completely deal with my concerns. It was the same person that I had dealt with before, so I assume that she was just overworked.
Spotify Problem: The wrong track was being shown as my latest release. I was not optimistic with this one as I didn’t think that Spotify would be interested. How wrong I was. Support answered promptly, were extremely courteous and sorted the problem.
SoundCloud Problem: I couldn’t monetize my track. I have had little problem monetizing my tracks on SoundCloud except on one occasion. I produced a remix of one of my tracks, “Aurora Skies”, and was informed by their bot that they couldn’t monetize remixes. I changed the song’s classification as a remix but still included the word “remix” in the song title. Still no joy. I contacted support and they told me that they couldn’t monetize remixes, even if I had written the song myself. I preferred the remixed version, so I took down the original, removed the word “remix” from the title, and it worked fine.
WordPress Problem: None. I have had problems using WordPress for my music website but, so far, have found that their online help has always answered my questions.
Suno Problem: I couldn’t log into my account. I joined Suno using a free account which I then upgraded to a Pro account. Apparently, if you use a country code, you should remove the leading ‘0’ from your phone number. Unfortunately, my autofill was unaware. A few days later, I tried to login without the leading ‘0’. This created a ghost free account with a random handle. At first, I could login to my Pro account if I included the leading ‘0’, but then that stopped and I could only log into the ghost account. I contacted support and billing on Suno, but heard nothing. In the meantime, Suno took my monthly fee despite billing being aware that I couldn’t login. I then cancelled the ghost account, but still couldn’t login to my Pro account. I have tried Suno’s help channel in Discord but they are just as invisible as support and billing. I still cannot login and don’t know if my Pro account is still active. If it is, I cannot cancel it as I cannot login and, presumably, will have to contact my bank to cancel it. I have asked Suno if my account is active but, so far, no response on that or my original query.
If I had to order these in terms of efficiency, Spotify support would be at the top, although WordPress gets a special mention for good online support, while PRS and SongU have generally been excellent. MCPS licensing and Suno would most definitely be vying for bottom, depending on whether you prefer obstinacy or being totally ignored. I would point out that these are just my experiences and, perhaps, I was just lucky or unlucky with my support requests.