Music Gateway

There was a company trying to secure a License for my song to use in their T.V. Show. I contacted Music Gateway, (received an email from Sam Loughlin) I signed up for an account and he told me they would take it from there. Months later I received an email asking me to confirm the Credits and telling me the air date would be April 2, 2022. I sent and email on March 26 asking about the payment for the License because the date was approaching and had no updated information on if the Company had already paid for the license and if so when would i receive my payment. 2 weeks later i received an email from Sophie that she had been recovering from surgery and didnt have anymore information. No response on payment. I responded to her email within 30 minutes asking about payment and she never responded. I had to email the Producer of the T.V. show to ask him had he already paid for the license. He told me he had already paid Music Gateway for the license but still had not received a receipt for his payment. 2 1/2 weeks later i sent an email to Sam Loughlin (who is the original person i spoke with) and his response was "Sophie has been recovering from surgery which may be the reason for any delayed communication. I will make it known that you are awaiting an update". Here I am 2 months later and still no response about my payment from Sam Loughlin or Sophie Small. The producer of the show emailed me and said he secured the License for $400 and i haven't received one penny from them. I also released the song through their Music Gateway site. I have no updates on streams, downloads, NOTHING! I closed my account with them and i will be re-releasing my song through another company. I'm just beginning to write reviews. I really hope someone sees this that can help me out. I would like my license and I would like my money.

MUSIC GATEWAY IS A SCAM.
RIP OFF
I´VE BEEN ABOUT 16 MONTHS SUBSCRIBED AND PAYING FOR THE PRO ACCOUNT, GOT NOTHING BACK BUT WASTING MY TIME.

I'm really upset. I keep paying money, after MG's website change I couldn't even get in to my account with ordinary credentials where my songs are. WHAT am I paying for?
I do not recommend it at all. Support hasn't even understood what's going on until now. Very very bad.

SCAMMERS! Fraudulent GDPR and law breaking establishment who pretend they care about artists well-being when all they care about is money. They sign you up to their cheapest plan (£10 per year) and then use your bank and personal details they have on file to up the plan to £150 with 0 consent or communication. DO NOT USE THEM - they will not refund you and their phone lines are all out of use! Companies like this are an embarrassment to the music industry, scum of the earth!

They took 150£ out of my card without my consent, and without the automatic renewal option was on. That's a serious infringement of the GDPR. I have now got back my money thanks to Santander. So, since I can't give 0 starts, that 1 star is for Santander.

Music Gateway- This guys are corporate RIP OFFS! They took £150 out of my card! without my consent, When I clearly chose the free plan. Warning to prospective clients- be weary of adding your bank card, you can't delete it afterwards and then, your money gets withdrawn without your consent, and you loose control.
To make matters worse their customer service is very poor. I completed a refund claim form close to 2 weeks ago and still no response till date. despite chasing. No star

It was November 2021 so the review was recent. I have been with Music Gateway the third year when they sent me an invoice for the this year. The invoice was incorrect, so I contacted customer support by mail. Did not get any reaction, so I did it again and then again. I was totally ignored. So I called them and was immediately sent to voice messaging. I left a message and again was ignored. I called several times and it always was voice messaging. So I decided to cancel automatic renewal and, guess what, it was impossible to do it on my account. The only option available was to close the account, which meant loosing the money. So I tried to play a new customer, scheduled a phone call with them and no one ever called me. To me it looks like the company is dying trying to steal a few bucks before sink entirely. My advice is: avoid them.

CORRECTION - December 2021
This is my comment after my review of Music Gateway I posted on Nov 19 when I was extremely disappointed by the way MG approached my problem.
However, once the review reached MG their Director of Artistic Services contacted me directly to discuss the situation. I explained every detail and angle of the problem and after a few days I saw the results. There was and still is the internal investigation about what exactly led to such a situation, but everything what impacted me directly was corrected in a professional manner. What is important here is the ability of the organization to identify the errors/mistakes, correct them in timely and effective manner both towards the customer and internally.
So, obviously Music Gateway is not "dying" and I have decided to continue the cooperation with them.

I signed up with Music Gateway for five months with their most expensive monthly package (£25 pcm) and was not impressed.

The first thing I did was to take a lot of time to submit albums to the Retail Distribution Service but the tracks were never processed. Support advised "Unfortunately, our retail distribution service is currently on hold. However, we're looking to get it up and running ASAP."

Sync requests were thin on the ground too. With other companies I'll often see 4-10 requests for music each week. In the five months I was with Music Gateway I've counted 12 emails with sync opportunities, and many were so specific in their requirements they were of no use.

Real recent sync examples include: Brazilian Pop, Electronic Remix of Classical tracks, Multiple Traditional Laos Songs in Lao Language, Bollywood/Bhangra, Fun Pop/Hip Hop/Electronic tracks mentioning "Cash", K-Pop, High Energy Dance/Pop for Korean Girl Group, Miami or Florida Based Hip Hop Artists, Family-Friendly Mid-Tempo Latin Pop Tracks In Spanish, Cinematic Covers of "What A Wonderful World".

I was only able to submit music to two requests, and for one of those I was told that 8 of my EDM and pop tracks were really strong and would be pitched to ITV - I never heard anything back about this.

In September multiple services were offered on sale, this included lifetime membership for £499 and promotion on Spotify for £199. I thought these were reasonable value and signed up for both but received no VAT receipt or confirmation of my account upgrade. I asked support to confirm that my monthly subscription had been cancelled and was told that it had been and that I now had lifetime membership. A few days later I was billed £25 as normal.

The Spotify promotional text mentioned "We will create a package specifically tailored for your needs, be it growing your audience, promoting your music or leveraging our powerful network of influencers and tastemakers. Your streaming presence is one of the most important things in terms of earning money and getting heard."

Having paid for this service I was contacted by an A&R Consultant asking for details of the one track that I wanted to promote and it's release date. I advised that the advert hadn't mentioned anything about only promoting one new track and it had instead appeared to be general promotion on Spotify. The same A&R Consultant got back to me, clearly hadn't read anything in my email, and again asked for the one track that I wanted to promote. As a result of this I cancelled the Spotify promotion and requested a refund, and thus began a prolonged and unhelpful lack of support from Music Gateway.

I must have sent going on 20 emails over around three weeks requesting a refund for the incorrectly billed monthly subscription and the Spotify promotion. I either didn't receive a response, or if I did the person didn't action my request so I had to keep emailing to ask the same questions over and over again. I then discovered that Music Gateway had wrongly refunded my lifetime membership of £499 (which I hadn't asked for) and the monthly subscription of £25 (which I had asked for), but the Spotify refund hadn't been processed.

As a result of the protracted, difficult, needlessly time consuming and annoying lack of support, receipts and emails from Music Gateway, I opted to accept both the lifetime membership refund and the monthly subscription refund and pursue the Spotify refund before cancelling my account.

Although I did ultimately receive all the outstanding refunds I simply can't recommend Music Gateway. Sync opportunities are limited and incredibly specific, support are far too difficult to get helpful responses from, I found marketing material for retail distribution and Spotify promotion misleading, and the accounts department seem clueless.