Ditto music is a censorship platform, do not give them business

 

Ditto Music Blocks Anti-Fascist Release: A Statement on Free Speech and Corporate Censorship

This week I received a message from Ditto Music regarding my forthcoming release titled Dulce et Decorum Est. In their words:

“In compliance with music platform guidelines your release contains content that is deemed insensitive or showing political or cultural bias. For this reason we are unable to distribute your content to stores.”

They have not refunded me.

Let’s be clear: what they mean is that my music is politically engaged — and more to the point, it is intolerant of fascism. The track in question deals with the realities of war, nationalism, and settler-colonial violence. In other words, it dares to challenge the status quo. It refuses to be neutral in the face of injustice. It honours Wilfred Owen’s legacy not by sanitising it, but by updating it for the brutalities of our time.

If Ditto Music finds such content objectionable, then the inference is hard to avoid: they are protecting fascism from critique. They are shielding empire from reckoning. In censoring this track, Ditto Music is not “avoiding bias” — they are enforcing one: the bias of colonial silence, of commercialised apoliticism, of complicity.

Let’s also not forget: Ditto Music is based in the United Kingdom — a country whose own historical and contemporary entanglements with settler-colonial regimes are far from neutral. That context makes their refusal to distribute this track especially telling.

To summarise: I am being penalised for making music that confronts fascism, that mourns war, and that refuses to dress it up as honour. Ditto Music has not explained which lines or lyrics were problematic. They have not refunded me. They have not engaged in good faith. But they have made one thing very clear: truth makes them uncomfortable.

That discomfort is their problem, not mine.

— John Ostrowick

Ditto Music, Ditto Music Ltd, Ditto Music Limited, Ditto Plus, Ditto Publishing, Ditto Management, music distribution, release unlimited music, sell your music, keep 100% of your royalties, global music distribution, music publishing, music promotion, sync licensing, music mastering, YouTube Content ID, smart links, split royalties, Ditto App, free pre-save links, submit for playlists, music video distribution, start a record label, official chart registration, upload lyrics, add credits to Spotify, auto-split royalties, pitch your music for sync, AI online music mastering, pre-save on Spotify, SmartLink, YouTube Ads, Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads, upload to Spotify, Apple Music, TikTok, Amazon Music, Deezer, YouTube, Instagram, Tidal, Vevo, Beatport, SEO for musicians, on-page SEO, off-page SEO, title tag, meta description, header tags, alt text, backlinks, keyword optimization, domain name, Google Knowledge Graph, YouTube SEO tags, YouTube SEO descriptions, YouTube SEO titles, analytics and tracking, call to action, YouTube channel, thumbnail, YouTube tags, YouTube Studio analytics, upload schedule, playlist series, behind-the-scenes clips, YouTube paid advertising, #PoweredByDitto, filters and stickers, social media engagement, earn rewards, music metadata, track title, artist name, producer, writer, genre, duration, ISRC code, explicit label, instrumental label, release type



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