How to Fix a Cover Song That Appears on the Wrong Spotify or Apple Music Artist Page

When a cover song lands on the wrong Spotify or Apple Music artist page, the cause is almost always a metadata mismatch or a missing artist identifier, not a licensing or copyright issue. The fix depends on whether your release got attached to the original performer’s profile, a same-named artist, or was split across a duplicate profile of your own — each scenario has a different correction path and a different expected turnaround time.

This is one of the more disorienting problems in cover song distribution because the release itself is usually approved and live. The audio plays fine, royalties can still accrue, but fans searching your name find someone else’s page, or your cover sits buried under the original artist’s discography. Understanding why this happens makes the fix much faster.

Why does a cover song get attached to the wrong artist page?

It happens because streaming platforms match releases to artist pages using artist names and unique identifiers, not by recognizing who actually performed the recording. If your artist name on the release metadata exactly matches — or closely resembles — an existing artist in Spotify’s or Apple Music’s database, the platform’s matching system can route your track to that existing profile instead of creating or updating yours.

With cover songs specifically, this risk is higher for three reasons:

Name collision with the original artist: if your cover’s metadata lists the original performer as the primary artist instead of (or in addition to) you, the system has every reason to file it under their page.
Common or generic stage names: a one-word artist name shared with dozens of other acts increases the odds of a mismatch, especially on first release.
No prior catalog under your name: new artist profiles without an established identifier are more likely to get merged incorrectly than profiles with release history.

How do you tell which kind of mismatch you’re dealing with?

Check three things before contacting anyone: the artist name field on your distributor dashboard, the artist name as it displays on the live Spotify or Apple Music listing, and whether a Spotify for Artists or Apple Music for Artists profile has been verified under your name.

If the dashboard shows your name correctly but the live listing shows someone else, this is a platform-side identity matching issue. If the dashboard itself shows the wrong artist name, the error originated at submission and needs to be corrected before redelivery. If two separate profiles exist under slight variations of your own name (e.g., “Jane Doe” vs “Jane Doe Music”), that’s a duplicate-profile problem rather than a wrong-artist problem, and it’s resolved differently.

Step-by-step: fixing a cover attached to the original artist’s page

This is the most common and most urgent version of the problem, since it can make it look like the original artist released a cover of their own song.

Confirm your metadata is correct in your distributor dashboard. The primary artist field must show your name, not the original performer’s. Globex Music’s review team checks this during moderation, but it’s worth verifying yourself before escalating.
Submit an artist profile claim. Both Spotify for Artists and Apple Music for Artists let you claim a profile tied to your verified releases. If no profile exists yet under your name, claiming one through a live release is the fastest way to establish your own identifier.
Request a correction through your distributor rather than the platform directly. Spotify and Apple Music generally only act on metadata correction requests that come from the delivering distributor, since the distributor is the verified source of the release’s rights and metadata.
Ask for delivery under a corrected artist identifier, not just a name edit. A simple spelling fix sometimes isn’t enough if the release was already matched to another artist’s unique ID in the backend — in these cases a clean redelivery with the correct identifier resolves it faster than a manual edit request.

How long does it take to get a cover song reassigned to the right artist page?

Typical correction timelines run from a few days to about three weeks, depending on the platform and whether a new artist profile claim is involved. Spotify metadata corrections processed through a distributor often show up within 5–10 business days. Apple Music corrections can take slightly longer, particularly if a new artist page needs to be created and verified rather than an existing one updated. Profile claims (Spotify for Artists, Apple Music for Artists) are usually faster once a live release exists to verify against, often resolving within a week.

These timeframes are separate from initial release moderation. With Globex Music, cover songs typically clear moderation in under 48 hours because licensing is handled automatically at submission — the artist-page correction process is a distinct, later step that only applies if a mismatch actually occurs after the release goes live.

What if your cover appears on a duplicate profile of your own?

This happens when slightly different artist name formatting across releases causes the platform to treat you as two separate artists. The fix here is a merge request, not a correction request. Both Spotify and Apple Music support merging duplicate artist profiles once you can demonstrate ownership of both — typically through your distributor confirming that all releases in question share the same rights holder.

The practical lesson: once you pick an artist name format, use it identically on every single release, including capitalization and spacing. Inconsistent formatting is the single most common cause of duplicate-profile issues for artists releasing multiple covers over time.

Does this affect your royalties while it’s being fixed?

Royalty accrual is generally tied to the ISRC and rights metadata of the release, not to which artist page it visually displays under, so a wrong-page listing does not usually stop you from earning on the release while the correction is processed. That said, it does suppress discoverability — fans can’t find the track through your profile, and it won’t contribute to your artist page’s monthly listener count or algorithmic presentation during the time it’s misattributed. For an artist actively building a catalog of covers, that visibility gap is often the more costly part of the problem, since a mislabeled release does nothing to grow your page while it sits elsewhere.

Why cover artists hit this issue more often than artists releasing originals

Original songs have no pre-existing recording to collide with in the metadata system. Covers do — the song title and sometimes the writer credit already exist in the platform’s database tied to the original artist, which raises the chance of an incorrect match if any field in your submission isn’t precisely filled out. This is also why distributors that specialize in cover song delivery put extra scrutiny on artist name fields during moderation, rather than only checking the licensing and songwriter credit fields.

Globex Music distributes to 200+ platforms starting at $1 per release, with automatic mechanical licensing included for covers and moderation that typically completes in under 48 hours. Royalty payouts start from $10, and there’s no annual fee holding your catalog hostage — a meaningful difference from distributors that charge $44.99/year (DistroKid) or $24.99/year plus per-cover licensing fees and a 20% cut of social platform earnings (TuneCore). CD Baby’s model adds a 9% royalty commission on top of a $9.95 per-single fee, charged for as long as the release stays live. None of these pricing structures change how fast a wrong-artist-page issue gets resolved, but a distributor with dedicated cover song review is more likely to catch the metadata problem before it ever reaches Spotify or Apple Music in the first place.