First and foremost, the most important way to solve this is to not use the same artist name as someone else in the world in the first place. Before ever submitting your first album as a new artist, you should search for the Artist name you want to use and see if someone else anywhere in the world is already using that Artist name. If they are, then it's really best practice to choose another artist name because it can get real messy later on.
However, if you don't have that option or you have submitted an album with an Artist name that is already in use by another artist, we can currently help you a little bit, but only as it relates to Apple Music / iTunes and Spotify.
When you submit an album and enter the Primary Artist (or Featured Artist), you can either choose the "Brand New Artist?" button or the "Existing Artist?" button.
If you choose "Brand New Artist", then our system will automatically create you a new Artist Page in Apple Music / iTunes and Spotify where your album will be delivered.
If you choose "Existing Artist", you are then given the option to provide both the Artist Apple ID and the Artist Spotify URI.
The Artist Apple ID and the Artist Spotify URI are the unique identifiers for your Artist page in these stores. If you provide them, then our system will automatically deliver your album to those Artist pages in those stores. If you don't provide them, our content specialists will do their best to match up your Artist name with the right Artist in those stores. But, sometimes this is difficult if there are a lot of the same Artist names in those stores, so we highly recommend providing them. Trust us, it's worth it to take the few minutes of time to find them.
To learn about how you can find your Artist Apple ID click here.
To learn about how you can find your Artist Spotify URI click here.
If we've already delivered your album and it's mapped to the wrong artist page in Apple Music / iTunes or Spotify, contact Catapult Support and provide us with your Artist Apple ID, Artist Spotify URI, and what albums and artists you want these applied to, and we will update the albums with the new identifiers and notify those stores. Please note however, that we cannot update any of your albums that have been delivered by another distributor.
Apple Music / iTunes and Spotify are the only stores that currently allow us to deliver unique Artist identifiers to make sure albums go to the right artist pages.
Amazon does not even allow for differentiating between two artists with the same name. ANY artists with the same name in their platform, all go on the same artist page.
For the other stores, none of them offer the ability to provide any unique artist identifiers and so unfortunately, there is nothing we can do if your album ends up being mixed with another artist with the same name on any of their stores.
If and when these stores offer this ability, we will definitely add the ability to our service. We dislike this issue just as much as you do!