Hi, everyone. Anthony Fantano here, the internet's busiest music nerd. You know who it is. I hope you are doing well.

I hope you're ready for an important conversation, specifically in regards to the preferred digital music distribution platform of many, DistroKid, who disappointingly underwent some union-focused layoffs and discussions around severance packages for those laid-off union employees were actually being conducted today, just after the recorded interview you were about to watch, an interview that is being done with Jase Ihler, one of those laid off DistroKid employees, who in this conversation actually sheds a lot of light on what is going on at DistroKid currently in terms of its business and employee relations.

So is DistroKid paying and compensating employees fairly? Are they involved in acts of union busting? And what is the union hoping to achieve through a contract with the company? I talk about all of that and more with Jase in the following interview. Here we go.

Anthony: As I said, here we have on the horn Mr. Jase Ihler, who is actually going to be going into a meeting today to talk about these union negotiations with DistroKid. Before we go into some of the beginning context that led to this point, what exactly are you guys going in there to do today at this meeting? What are you hoping to see happen? What are your goals? What are your ambitions with this discussion that's going to commence?

Jase: Yeah. So we're going back to the bargaining table today to meet with DistroKid. Right now, today, we are talking about severance. The layoffs have officially happened. It doesn't mean that DistroKid can't change course and offer people their jobs back or say, this is our bad, this was a mistake. But at this present moment, we are trying to get DistroKid to come to an agreement on severance with us. So we've exchanged some articles back and forth, and today we anticipate getting a response from DistroKid, a counter article to our last severance offer.

Anthony: Currently, what is the union/DistroKid relationship as of right now? Because at least in terms of some of the articles and background that I've read around this leading up until this point, it seems like a lot of these layoffs have been centered around unionized DistroKid workers. Is that just something that happened by chance, or was there a focus there in terms of who was scanned?

Jase: Yeah, we definitely don't think that that was by chance. Nobody who is not in the union was laid off. So only union members were laid off. They laid off about half of our union, also about a quarter of the of the staff, the DistroKid staff. But we don't believe that this was random. We believe that this is union-busting. This is DistroKid penalizing us for forming a union and for trying to gain a seat at the table and be able to discuss issues of pay and benefits. DistroKid is saying it's under the guise of saving some money, but the value of money that they'd be saving compared to their worth, what we make every year, how we grow, it's extremely small. As far as I know, it's like half of what we spend on Facebook ads alone, and they're laying off 37 people to save that amount of money. So in the grand scheme of things, the money that they're saving is negligible compared to the value and the expertise that these employees bring to DistroKid. So we think that this may have happened eventually because we're being replaced with outsourced workers. So we think that that was going to happen. That outsourcing happened even before we formed the union, and that was a part of why we formed the union. I think it's a mix of things. I think it's like ostensibly, they're saying it's to save money. Really, I think it has to do with speeding up this outsourcing process. And also, I think they're penalizing us for forming a union and for making the wages that we make in America here.

Anthony: Yeah. I mean, ultimately, it's the bottom line that decides these kinds of things. At least from what I've been able to catch online, DistroKid seemingly is a billion-dollar company. You don't get the sense they're hurting for money right now, and that's the reason that they cut you guys.

Jase: No. Yeah. In fact, they've been very clear with us that they're not hurting for money. They're still a growing company. They're still a profitable company. The reason they've given us is that they're just not growing fast enough, they say. But DistroKid is a very profitable company. They're number one in market share in the independent digital music distribution space. We grow every year. We grow every quarter. So that's why I think money is tied into these types of decisions. But really, I think truly power is actually the bottom line. I think that companies will go to great lengths to squash organization and to prevent unionization. As we saw with the SAG after-strike, there became a point in that strike where those companies were actually losing more by having to shut down their studios than they would have lost by meeting the writer's and the actor's demands. So I think a lot of times companies will actually go into the red during strikes, during negotiation, during organizing processes, because really power is what they're after. They just want to maintain power and they don't want folks to organize. So I think we definitely caught DistroKid off guard when we organized, when we went public with our union efforts. So I think they're just trying to squash that. Little did they know that we still have a lot of support among the remaining 50% of the union. And a contract is still our goal. The union hasn't gone anywhere. Just because folks are most likely going to be laid off, it doesn't mean we don't still have a union. We're still represented by NABE at CWA. And if DistroKid won't hire us back, we can at least get a severance package. But after that, a contract for the remaining employees is the number one priority. We feel like there are going to probably be more layoffs. DistroKid has posted job openings for European employees, which cannot be in the scope of our union just because of the way labor law works. And they have asked some of the software developers that still remain on to do the work of people who were laid off, which is explicitly illegal. That's something DistroKid needs to bargain with employees about. So for the remaining employees, we think a contract is of paramount importance to protect them from what's just happened to us. We're going to keep on fighting for that. We're going to keep on showing up to the negotiating table, and we'll see what comes in the next couple of months.

Jase: Just for further context, the DistroKid business model right now in the present and the immediate future is looking very good. I was just working on a video about how there are effectively, serious, hobbyist, or not, 75 million artists with music uploading either every once in a while or on a regular basis onto these streaming platforms. That number is expected to increase, maybe almost double by the end of the decade. That just means more money in the pockets of DistroKid or competitors who essentially provide the same service. These numbers are not going down. These people are going to want somebody to facilitate that process of getting their music onto these platforms. DistroKid is a service I've used myself. I mean, I found it to be easy. A lot of people are going to be drawn to that convenience. So again, the idea that they're not growing fast enough is just crazy.

Jace: Yeah, it's a self-imposed goal. DistroKid was worth something, then we got a valuation, we got some investment from venture capitalists. And DistroKid, by everybody's approximation, is a wildly successful company. For two and a half years when I was working there, it seemed like we hired a new person every week. Every quarterly meeting was all thumbs up. Everything was in the green. The only people who DistroKid isn't growing fast enough for is these investors, these venture capital investors. As you said, the number of people alone that we could even make that number bigger and probably just say the number of people that play instruments. Do you play an instrument? Do you write songs? That's probably an even bigger number. And because these models have become affordable, we don't rely on labels anymore. Anybody can upload online. I think Spotify gets 100,000 songs a day uploaded or something like that. So you're totally right. Yeah, this is a super profitable business if it's run right. There are so many customers to be tapped. I mean, there's so many international customers to be tapped, too. I think that is probably also a big part of the future of distribution. That already exists, of course, but for a lot of these companies that are American-based, that are really big, I think reaching globally is the next step for them. So, yeah, the whole saving money thing is a farce. It's like it sounds good, it sounds reasonable, it sounds like it makes sense, but okay, this company is valued at, I believe, $1.4 billion. And the amount of money they're talking about saving is chump change compared to the valuation. And again, very profitable. Make money every quarter, we're in the green. Again, for years, we were hiring a new person every week. We just hired a few more folks. I should probably stop saying we since I'm laid off from there now. I'm not officially part of DistroKid. You're out of place for a while.

Anthony: Yeah. With that being said, what does that leave for the remaining unionized employees who are there now? I mean, what exactly are their goals for the immediate future in terms of moving forward and creating some wedge, some bargaining leverage between them and the company?

Jase: Yeah. For the remaining people, I think, again, just getting a contract is great. One of the most fundamental aspects of having a union contract is that you're no longer what's called an at-will employee. Unless you work in the state of Montana, which amazingly has this protection for a government job or a job with a contract, you're an at-will employee. It means the employer can basically fire you for whatever they want. If they don't like some aspect of your identity or personality, you can sue them, but then that's on you to carry that burden. So one of the most fundamental aspects of having a union contract is you're no longer an at-will employee. The employer must have what's called just cause to fire you. They have to work with you if they want to fire you. They have to go through your performance and try and help you out. So I know for the remaining employees, no longer being at-will employees is going to be a huge benefit for them. We still have more media coverage coming out. We, of course, love that you're giving us a chance to share our story on your platform and talk with folks. So we still have more in the work, still more coming out. We also plan on mobilizing, continuing to mobilize, and do public actions. But really, I think just getting a contract as fast as possible is going to be the big thing just because while we're negotiating, we're in limbo. In theory, DistroKid is legally held to this principle called existing conditions. Regulations. It means that they can't change up the terms of your work and then fire you if you don't mean those terms. So technically, DistroKid is legally beholden to that. But as I mentioned earlier, DistroKid is asking some of the remaining employees to do the work of employees that were just laid off, which is explicitly against that law. So being in bargaining, it's in limbo. There are laws that protect you, but the best thing is just to get that contract, and get it to your membership, and get it signed and ratified. I think for the remaining folks, that's the big goal right now.

Anthony: Next, would you be able to give us a little bit of background on how the union started and currently what are the demands of the union or what the union is hoping to achieve through eventually getting a contract?

Jase: Yeah, totally. The story of it starting. In 2019, I was hired at DistroKid. It had been around for a couple of years, but it was still a pretty small company. I worked in the album review department, the customer-facing side of DistroKid that helps customers get their albums into stores. At that time, it was still a pretty small staff, and almost everybody, like myself, was a musician, or they worked in an adjacent company in the music industry, or worked with artists or promoted artists. We all came there as artists and wanted to help out with help on other artists. And it was pretty awesome. The vibes were really great. Everybody got along really well. It was a very diverse company at that point, and everything was working really well. We felt like we knew the product. We felt like we knew what customers were going through, and everything was going pretty swimmingly. So if And to fast forward to 2021, DistroKid had been growing still steadily for years. And as they were expanding departments, my coworker Stephanie and I, we got a chance to be promoted from the artist-facing side of DistroKid to the software development department. And the moment we came into the software development department, we could tell that it was totally different. The energy was totally different. There was a lot of machismo. There were a lot of crass jokes. There were people shouting over each other in meetings. There were a lot of sexually inappropriate comments and jokes being made, and also racist comments and racist words being used. And my coworker Stephanie who was a black woman, was unfortunately at the butt end of some of those. People making lynching jokes, completely, completely inappropriate and racist.

Anthony: That's unhinged.

Jase: Yeah, this was a shock when we went over there. It just felt like a night and day difference when we went from the customer service and the artist-facing side to the more behind-the-seat and software development side. So it was pretty shocking. I remember, in 2021, this was when Black Lives Matter protests were going strong, and we were, as a country, having a conversation about race in America, and how to be antiracist, and how to dismantle these systems of white supremacy. So DistroKid, like a lot of other companies at the time, they wanted to seem very progressive. So they put out a statement supporting Black Lives Matter. They did make a donation to the NAACP. So outwardly, they wanted to seem very progressive, but inwardly, that wasn't the case because Stephanie and I were bringing these issues to HR. We were bringing them to managers, and they got a little bit of... We had their ear, but nothing was really changing. Nothing was changing fast enough. And unfortunately, Stephanie, for her own mental health and for her own well-being, resigned. She resigned from DistroKid out of frustration of all this that was going on. And so she publicly resigned, and she very professionally called out what she was seeing, the racism she was experiencing, the bullying she was experiencing. And it didn't name anybody by name. It was, again, very what I would call professional. And then that message was maybe within 15 minutes deleted from our general Slack channel, how we all communicate remotely. After that was deleted, people had seen that message and started talking and were concerned about what had happened to Stephanie and what was going on. So eventually, shortly thereafter, an email went out from leadership to the whole company, and it was a very vanilla, very milktoast email. The tone of the email was basically like, 'Hey, everybody, we're all friends here. Work should never bum you out or ruin your day. If you see something, just say something. My door is always open.' I think that was how the email ended, which is ironic because we've been going to HR and to leadership, trying to bring up some of these issues, and various people were being shut down by this. So that was extremely frustrating for employees. And at that time, we began talking about what we could do. And as we started talking with a lot of employees in different departments, we started to realize that there were a lot of things that no one was really talking about DistroKid. Little things that seemed concerning but were just brushed off or little altercations or weird conversations with managers. And what we were starting to realize was that on the surface, DistroKid seemed like a really great place to work until you started asking any real questions, or any consequential questions, or trying to make any real change in the company. Then it was just like any other corporation. It was just like any other money-making business. So in frustration at that time, I proposed to my coworkers that we unionize, and that was the beginning of our organizing process.

Anthony: So again, to rewind and go further on this question, what are you guys hoping to achieve through an eventual contract? Now that the union is formed but hasn't put things down legally with the company in terms of an agreement.

Jase: Totally, yeah. The more we were talking, in the wake of those conversations, there were a couple of things that kept on coming up. One was that people were frustrated by wage stagnation. DistroKid had never changed their entry-level salary from $50,000 the entire time I've ever worked there. So people's wages were stagnating. Second, DistroKid had begun outsourcing jobs overseas. So we were concerned with our job stability and just staying at the company. Third, we wanted a more equitable company. Unfortunately, DistroKid, like a lot of companies, is like a reverse pyramid where the levels that make the least amount of money have the least amount of mobility. It's a very diverse company. There's people that are queer, there's people of color, people with very diverse backgrounds. But as you go up on a pay scale, it becomes more white, straight, and male. So we wanted a more equitable company and to have conversations about race at DistroKid. Fourth was that we felt like there was a lack of career development for employees at DistroKid on the artist-facing side and also on the software development-facing side, we felt like our careers were stagnating, and it was up to you to take the bull by the horns to try and make new positions for yourself or find a way up. And then, fifth, and finally, the company is valued at over a billion dollars. And quite frankly, employees were hoping to get, I guess a better term would be like a piece of the pie. We were hoping for either some equity sharing, like what Kickstarter got in their union contract, or a four-day workweek. We're just hoping to be able to live a little more comfortably at a billion-dollar company. Those were some things that kept coming up in our conversations, and those are the main goals we had, among many other things. We've submitted 55 articles to DistroKid, and so those five things are interlaced within those 55 articles.

Anthony: Much of the discussion and coverage around the company's union-busting efforts as far as what's being seen publicly right now, mostly revolves around these layoffs. Have their efforts on this front, in your experience, gone beyond that, or is it just the layoffs?

Jase: The layoff I think, is a culmination of what DistroKid has been doing since day one when we went public. Instantly, the day we went public with the union, DistroKid began its anti-union campaign. They hired an anti-labor law firm called Oliver Bell, which is – they always call them labor consultation companies – but really, they're just union-busting lawyers that come in and train management on how to talk to employees. In fact, we heard from one supervisor that supervisors and managers were given a script that they had to use to talk to employees to pressure them into thinking of the union negatively. And there were a number of supervisors that were uncomfortable with this, and they were told that there would be no option and that there would be consequences if they didn't use this script and if they didn't go to their employees to pressure them, essentially, into voting no for the union, which we were pretty shocked, but maybe we shouldn't have been to hear. So that started day one. They hired this anti-union law firm, and they began these one-on-one conversations. Supervisors were crying in meetings, saying, 'Why are you doing this?' Making it about themselves. The CEO and the President

Anthony: In terms of the unionizing, you're saying supervisors were crying because of the union. So I'm a supervisor, I'm sad, and I feel bad.

Jase: You must hate me...

Anthony: Because, okay, you're unionizing because you hate me?

Jase: Exactly. Yeah. And it's like, okay, you don't control the levers of capitalism. You know what I mean? But it was like people were really intentionally, at least in my opinion, intentionally making it very personal.

Anthony: So there are some supervisors who were feeling weird about the script thing because it feels a little dishonest and inhuman. And then there were other supervisors who were like, this is a personal attack against me, is what you're saying?

Jase: Totally. Yeah, they were definitely different responses to it. Yeah, pretty much none of them good. I would hate to, if there are some supervisors that I'm leaving out, I won't say everybody was like that, but virtually everyone was like that. Virtually all the supervisors were like that because they had to be. The CEO, everybody tells you, You have to do this. You have to talk to your employees this way. They're in anti-union training sessions with Oliver Bell. So it was like they didn't really have a choice. We would have loved to have seen some solidarity, but ultimately the buck goes above them. You know what I mean? It's not their decision to make. So that was going on. Yeah, the President was sending out these emails sporadically, where he would tell us that this was going to change the company forever. And he sent out an email saying it was federally illegal for us to get any promotions or salary increases during negotiations, which is not true. That is not true. And in a later email, they would back up from that and say, well, actually, we can give you promotions and wage increases if we talk with you about it, of course, which would be like the world's shortest negotiations ever. They would say, do you want to raise? We'd say, yes. You know what I mean? So they were intentionally misleading folks with what the law says about how unions work. We had someone in HR bring up that we might potentially get randomly drug tested, which we would never propose that in an article. That would never come up in the contract. We had managers tell employees things like, you're replaceable, just so you know, you're replaceable in all of this. Just a lot of really intense one-on-one intimidation. And in fact, the organizer that we worked with, Bara, he said it was the most personally draining, personally attacking anti-union campaign that he's ever seen in his years of organizing. He was like, yeah, this is probably the most personally charged and the most intense in terms of just the one-on-one conversations, and I won't call it bullying, but just misinformation, supervisors giving misinformation to people. They gave promotions to people that were vocally anti-union or people that never supported the union vocally. So folks that had little slack statuses that said, I'm voting no. Come talk to me. This is terrible. We can't vote for a union. And we know this was coordinated because people told us that this was coordinated. So DistroKid really had this very coordinated anti-union campaign to get us to vote no through misinformation, through recruiting other employees, through these scripts, through the anti-union law firm. But of course, they would have told you they were neutral. At no point did they ever come to us and say, 'Hey, let's have a conversation. What are you hoping to get out of this union?' They didn't voluntarily recognize our union. We went to them and asked for voluntary recognition. They did not do that. So basically, from day one, when we went public, it felt like DistroKid had knives out. They don't want to support the union. They were trying to convince people to vote no. And then since contract negotiation started, they've been really dragging their feet at the bargaining table. So the layoffs feel like just the most extreme version of what has been going on for the last year.

Anthony: I wanted to ask you also, what is the nature of this work that many of these individuals were doing before they were laid off? What is DistroKid leaving themselves open for by essentially laying these people off and allowing the labor that you guys were doing to fall to the wayside? What were the responsibilities of you and your team? What were you bringing to the table that now they're doing a cost-benefit analysis, throwing it out in order to, presumably on some level, kneecap the union?

Jase: Yeah, totally. I bet comments will go crazy if we ask people, 'Have you heard from DistroKid since November first?' Because basically the people that DistroKid laid off were mostly the artist relations folks. They were the people that worked with artists to help them through their issues to help get their albums in the store. And they also laid off QA engineers, which was my position. I was a quality assurance engineer. So what they've done is these people that work with the artist, the artist relations, and the album review team. About two years ago, they started hiring outsourced work from overseas workers in the Philippines. Those employees, to my knowledge, cost DistroKid something like $30,000 a year if my number is correct. And the lowest-paid DistroKid employees were making a little over $50,000 a year. But those workers in the Philippines, to my understanding, only get paid about $3,000 to $5,000 a year out of that $30,000 cost. So they're exploited workers. I mean, the company they're working through is charging $30,000 for them, and then they're only getting paid $3,000 to $5,000. So they're exploited workers, too. We have nothing against them. We totally stand in solidarity with them. We'd love it if they were hired at the same wages that we had before. But yeah, they are the customers. We call them customer service employees. That process began about two years ago, and that was part of why we formed the union was because we saw that the writing was on the walls, that DistroKid was looking to cut costs however they could, including outsourcing some of these positions. And then also myself as a QA engineer, about a year and a half ago, they hired the first contracted QA engineer. And then about a month before we all let go, they hired three QA engineers on a team of nine. So it was like we could really tell that something was going on. So what's happened basically is the customer support team, which was entirely laid off, the US-based customer support team, they were being replaced by these outsourced workers who just don't have the same level of knowledge about the product. Everything that they've been helping artists with before has been, we'll call them the easier questions like, 'Hey, I forgot my password. How do I get back in?' Or like, 'How often do payouts come?' Just simpler questions. So now that the very experienced customer service team is laid off, these folks are being tasked with the more complicated questions. Everything I've read online is that it's been a pretty infuriating customer service experience over the last month just because they laid off like 30 people that were helping customers with those issues. So right now, I'm sure people will mention this below. The response times are slower, and I think it's just going to take people a lot longer to find solutions to their issues. I know that on the QA engineer side, the software development team that I was on, to my understanding, my old supervisor is trying to pass all of our tickets. She personally is trying to make sure all the teams stay on schedule. And there were still a few QA engineers that weren't laid off. I think basically they've been burdened with all the work from the laid-off folks as well. I've heard that it's not going great over there for the employees that are still there. I think customers would say the customer service experience is pretty frustrating right now, unfortunately.

Anthony: So if these layoffs are not happening as a result of, again, a dwindling bottom line or the work not needing to be done, why is it you feel like this is occurring? Is there something else outside of investor pressure happening? Is this part of a larger trend in the music industry, do you feel?

Jase: Yeah, I think there is something going on, unfortunately, for the last 15-plus years. The music industry is, unfortunately, getting absorbed into the tech industry. The way we consume music now is digitally. People still, of course, buy physical media, but that is a fraction of what it was even in the year 2000. And so a lot of the music industry is disappearing. I think that's part of what's going on here a little bit. We had the pleasure of meeting with some Bandcamp United members because Bandcamp formed a union in the last two years. And when we were talking with one of them, she just brought up the concept that these jobs are getting harder and harder to find for people like me who's a musician that doesn't want to work at Google or Microsoft. You want to work in the music industry. It's becoming harder to do this. Radio stations are getting bought up by big companies. So now we have less diversity in radio programming. Record stores and CD stores are going by the wayside. These great-paying distribution jobs that we all had are going away. Right I think the music industry really makes sense for the tech CEOs that own these companies and for major labels. For normal people that just want to work in that industry and be next to it, that's getting harder and harder. And then for independent artists, of course, it's getting harder and harder to get paid and to make a living with your music through plays and through streaming. So unfortunately, I think it's becoming a rarity that, oh, you're someone who plays drums in a band. You don't want to work an office job. You just want to work in the music world. That's getting harder and harder as music just becomes part of the tech industry, unfortunately.

Anthony: I know you have to get into this meeting now. Are there any, again, things coming around the corner or next steps that you want to shed some light on or give people who are watching this any ideas as to how they can support you guys or greater unionization efforts? Because we were just talking about talking to some of the Bandcamp people. How exactly do you think people who are watching this video can take part to get behind you guys and what you're doing?

Jase: Totally. Yeah. Thank you for asking that. We do have a petition that is still open that we are preparing to present to DistroKid. It has over 4,000 signatures now. It's basically asking DistroKid to reverse course and hire us back or not stop dragging their feet at the bargaining table. If folks could sign our petition, that would be super helpful. It is on our Instagram page. And we've been working with UMA, which is a Musicians Union, on that petition. Also, we have a GoFundMe that's going live. It's to help a lot of the laid-off DistroKid employees just get through until we have a severance or until we have some clarity about what's going to happen with our paycheck. So if folks will be down to sign the petition and donate, that would be extremely helpful to us. And in a more general sense, I would say unionize your workplace. I mean, that's the number one thing you can do to help labor and to help everybody. It's really a situation where a lot of these companies – I was mentioning power earlier – a lot of the reason why they don't want to see unionization is because you set an example to the other companies in your industry. So when we organize, it lets people at CDBaby and TuneCore and these other companies, it shows them a path, and it shows them that it is possible. So the more folks that are organizing in their workplace and forming unions, it's that rising tide analogy. The more strong of a labor movement we have, the more it helps everybody. So if people want to get involved just in their day-to-day, I would say unionize your workplace. It's not easy. I would say the one downside to unionizing is just that it takes work. It takes involvement. It takes people showing up and actually giving a damn about their workplace and what goes on there. And it's a long process, but we were able to do it at DistroKid. We unionized a billion-dollar music tech company. We totally caught them off guard when we went public. Unfortunately, there have been some layoffs, but we are still going to get a contract with DistroKid, we believe. So I would highly encourage everybody to look into that, look into how unionizing works. I believe in unionizing, so I think fundamentally, any company deserves a union, but especially if you work somewhere where you feel like you're not being heard or your wages are stagnating, which was a huge thing for us, wage stagnation. I would say reach out to an organizer and look into how to unionize your workplace.

Anthony: All right, Jase, thank you for taking the time and good luck on the meeting today.

Jasce: Thank you. I appreciate it, Anthony.

There you have it, my conversation with Jase. I thank him once again for taking the time to talk with me about this. And thank you guys for watching and getting informed on this issue. Let me know your thoughts on all of this down below. I'm sure you will.

Anthony Fantano. DistroKid. Unions. Forever.