Independent artists can now make bread by uploading music to Spotify

Streaming services have been applying pressure to record labels for a while now. With Soundcloud, Audiomack, and others, artists have seen the most leverage in the music industry than ever before. Now, Spotify is taking it to a whole new level.

Just last week, Spotify announced they were unveiling a new beta feature that enables independent artists to upload their music to Spotify.

This is a game changer because now any artist, no matter the cache or following, has the ability to make money off of the music they upload. In a way, this eliminates the need for a label or digital aggregator, changing the landscape of the music industry forever.

The new feature will be featured on Spotify for Artist — an online dashboard that arrived publicly last year — and allows artists to see how well their music is performing on the service. This dashboard also provides an accompanying mobile app that allows artists to track metrics surrounding their streams and their fan base demographics. Spotify said in a statement on their site,

“In the past few months, we’ve been testing an upload tool within Spotify for Artists, because we believe getting new music to your fans should be simple. Starting today we’re inviting more artists to participate in the beta.”

Artists can now upload music, preview how things will appear, then edit the music’s metadata, if need be. They also will be able to choose when those new tracks “go live”, as well.

Most importantly, artists’ royalty payments will be directly deposited into artists’ bank accounts every month.

Senior Product Lead for Spotify’s Creator Marketplace, Kene Anoliefo, confirmed the payout structure saying,

“Artists receive 50% of net revenues from the songs they upload, and Spotify also accounts to publishers and collection societies for additional royalties related to the music composition.”

Artists like Noname, Michael Brun, VIAA, and Hot Shade have already begun to take advantage of this feature, providing feedback in earlier testing ahead of the beta launch. Anoliefo continued,

“We started off by working with artists who are both deeply engaged in our platform – so they use Spotify for Artists often –  and they also release music often.”

https://twitter.com/noname/status/1041768100641660928

Spotify says the feature is only debuting in beta on an invite-only basis in the U.S but plans on going public to the over 200,000 monthly active users of the Spotify for Artists platform. Anoliefo said,

“We used the test with them to shape the tool and make an upload process that we think is really easy, transparent and flexible. It’ll enable artists to use the tool to upload music through Spotify for Artists whenever they like. There are no barriers or constraints. And they can upload as often as they’d like. And as many times as they like.”

It’s lit!