Today, Spotify took another bold step, by announcing that indie artists can directly upload their music to its service.
Well, record labels were already frustrated with rumors about Spotify cutting direct deals with artists. Now, with this new announcement, they are definitely going to be uncomfortable.
This new feature is currently an invite-only and on beta mode, with artists from the US being ushered in. To this Spotify has added by saying that, it will ‘bring uploads to even more artists, labels, and teams.’
Artists will now have access to the upload function via the Spotify for artist’s platform. Through this new tool, artists will be able to upload their tracks for free, with just a few clicks. The Spotify for artist’s platform has more than 200,000 verified accounts amongst its monthly user base as seen at the end of June.
This move has been anticipated from Spotify for quite some time now. In July Daniel Ek, reiterated to investors during the Q2 earnings call that he wants to build a ‘two-sided marketplace’ serving both, the consumers and musicians. The most important piece of the pie is that this upload feature can be used by the artist’s, completely free. No matter the number of uploads, Spotify will not be taking any added commission or royalties.
When Daniel Ek spoke about the two-sided marketplace in July, he said “We’re really building a two-sided marketplace that provides tools and services for labels and artists. Our goal is to get as much music onto the Spotify platform as we possibly can.”
Yes, this model makes us ask the question, how long will this model last? The firm’s CFO Barry McCarthy had predicted that building a successful two-sided marketplace would help improve Spotify’s gross margins which would, in turn, mean more revenue for Spotify.
Today’s news is definitely a great one for artist’s but is definitely going to rattle the third parties like major record companies, other aggregators and Sound Cloud. Sound Cloud also offers a free option for uploads to artist’s, however, this is limited to three hours of tracks.
The new Spotify feature now allows indie artists to upload their tracks and catch the attention of playlist editors which was earlier hard to come by. This feature also means that Spotify is a major competitor to Apple Music as well. Another great thing that Spotify did, was allowed a few independent artists to use this feature and gain early feedback before the beta launch. Some of them were Noname, Michael Brun, VIAA and Hot Shade. One other great thing for artists is that they can also pre-upload their music and keep ready prior to the main release date.
With this launch, Spotify has not moved into a space of Sound cloud and Ditto but moved into a space that the Warner music group already occupies. Earlier this year Warner’s own TuneCore rival, Level Music had quietly launched an online offering for independent artists to upload music for free across multiple platforms. However, at that time the platform reserved the right to charge a commission on royalties. We wonder how the Spotify launch might change their stance, as well as for other music aggregators in the market. What do you think about this announcement? Tell us below!
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