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Spotify represents nearly a third of the music streaming market share, making it by far the most popular app for listening to music. With more than 100 million songs on the service, Spotify is convenient for listeners, but competitive for artists. One of the best tools artists and their labels have to expand their reach is Spotify for Artists.
This dedicated platform lets creators modify their artist profiles, add visuals, and find new audiences. And while uploading new music on Spotify isn’t as straightforward as a platform like SoundCloud, Spotify isn’t just for artists signed to a major label — independent and unsigned artists can get their music on Spotify, too. Here’s what creators need to know about using Spotify for Artists, and how to get their music on the service.
How to Get Music on Spotify
Spotify unveiled the Spotify for Artists app in 2017, on the App store and Android, making it easier for artists to take control of their profiles, evaluate stats, and reach new listeners directly from their smartphones. Artists can claim an existing profile or upload their music through a distributor. Spotify uses third-party services that handle licensing, distribution, and royalties.
The company has a preferred list of distributors, which can be found on the app. Examples include DistroKid, CD Baby, and EmuBands. According to Spotify, DistroKid is the “easiest way for musicians to get music into Spotify.” DistroKid doesn’t take a percentage of the royalties — artists keep 100%. However, Spotify takes 30% and sets the rates per stream.
What to Know About Spotify’s Campaign Kit
Spotify’s Campaign Kit is a cost-per-click tool that lets artists run paid campaigns to promote their music to audiences, with a minimum budget of $100. Features like Marquee, a full-screen pop-up, and Showcase, a smaller banner on the home page, help artists find new audiences. Artists can also pitch their music to playlists, one of the most reliable ways for listeners to find new music. Other features include the ability to add visuals to songs and sell merch and concert tickets.
Spotify
These features can be useful for smaller artists, but not all smaller artists. Spotify demonetized content below a threshold, meaning artists with fewer than 1,000 streams in the past 12 months won’t be paid. Spotify states this is to combat artificial streaming, but this can also hurt smaller artists who are still coming up. Additionally, Spotify for Artists no longer displays streams under 1,000 in its statistics tabs, and those artists cannot use Marquee or Showcase until they pass the threshold.
How to Use Spotify Analytics
One of the most crucial features of Spotify for Artists artists is analytics, which helps creators track streams, listeners, and playlist data. Audience segments break down where your listeners are coming from into three categories.
Spotify
Categories include your active audience, or listeners who have sought out your music in the past 28 days, previously active audience, or listeners who were part of your audience but haven’t sought out your music in the past 28 days, and programmed audience, or listeners who streamed your music through playlists and radio. These tools can help artists convert passive listeners into new fans.
Ready to get started? Find out more about Spotify for Artists and access the campaign kit here.