- Spotify announced a new service yesterday
- It will allow artists and labels to promote tracks in recommendations
- Artists can promote tracks of any recency
Spotify is to add a new service to its platform. Yesterday, the company announced a new feature for artists. Briefly, it explains how their music is discovered on the Spotify platform. At launch, it will allow artists and labels to identify music that’s a priority to them.
Spotify will then add a signal to help the music get surfaced by its personalized algorithms. The artist, labels, and right holders will agree to be paid a “promotional recording royalty rate”. Streams that come from other places in the app wouldn’t be impacted.
The Announcement
“We wanted to make the tools accessible and available to artists of any size, phase in their career. We were looking for a model that was acceptable, democratic, and fair”, says Lamb. That’s why the company won’t require an upfront payment from artists and labels.
The model will allow small artists to access promotions of the biggest labels. If the tracks do well the right holders would see an overall positive ROI. Artists can turn off the promotions at any time if it turns out to be a failure. Spotify isn’t detailing the royalty rate change for promotions.
The company will take listener interest and enjoyment into consideration with this change. Spotify says if the music performs well it will continue to promote it. If it doesn’t it will be taken down. “We won’t guarantee placements to labels or artists. We only recommend music we think listeners will want to hear”, says Spotify.
“If any kind of recommendation was causing a listener to respond negatively, then we would adjust recommending”. The user feedback can quickly impact the track which is promoted. The recommendations pools for listeners are updated every 24 hours.
What does the feature focus upon?
The largest focus for this tool would be on catalog music. Spotify has been inching its way into the pay for play market for years. In 2019 it introduced a new feature for artists. It allowed them to buy full-screen recommendations to promote their albums.
The feature was targeted towards users who would like to welcome such a notification. Spotify had been criticized for allowing payola to infiltrate its playlists earlier. This new service aims at some past promotions. It would push the tracks to already receptive users.
Spotify tested the technology with a small number of partners. It will now begin to roll out the test and promotion rate in the U.S. During this period it will work with lawful labels. It includes Indies and majors both. This will bring a variety of feedback.
In the future the feature will expand globally, says Spotify
