Spotify shuts down ability for independent artistes to upload music directly

Some 120,000 songs from Indian artists and Hindi film soundtracks are about to disappear from Spotify due to failed negotiations with a major local record label. — dpa

LOS ANGELES: After less than a year, Spotify has decided shut down a test programme that let independent artistes upload their songs directly to the music-streaming giant. 

Instead, musicians – as they have had to do previously – will need to work with pre-approved distributor to get on-boarded to Spotify, if they’re not repped by a label. 

The beta of Spotify’s upload tool will be discontinued July 30, 2019. The original idea with Spotify’s direct-upload test, launched last September, was to provide a simpler way for unsigned artistes to get their music on the service and get paid. But the company seems to have determined the complexity involved in monitoring the rights associated with music distribution made the whole thing more trouble than it was worth – and at the same time, Spotify wants to support its distributor partners. 

Spotify said hundreds of artistes used the direct-upload beta test, but didn’t provide a specific number. A rep said the size of the programme was deliberately kept to a small number during the closed beta period. 

“The most impactful way we can improve the experience of delivering music to Spotify for as many artistes and labels as possible is to lean into the great work our distribution partners are already doing to serve the artist community,” Spotify wrote in a blog post July 1. 

Going forward, indie artists will need to sign up with a Spotify-approved distribution company, which provide direct access to the Spotify for Artists tool and handles licensing and distribution and pays streaming royalties. Its “preferred” distributors are DistroKid (in which Spotify owns a minority investment), CD Baby and EmuBands. 

In the past year, Spotify said, “we’ve vastly improved our work with distribution partners to ensure metadata quality, protect artists from infringement, provide their users with instant access to Spotify for Artists, and more.” 

According to the company, the Spotify for Artists tool is used by more than 300,000 creators to track their music on Spotify. The Spotify playlist submission tool has been used by over 36,000 artists to get playlisted for the very first time on the service since it launched a year ago. 

Spotify said it will be sending artists who have released music through the beta direct-upload programme discount codes from preferred distributors. – Bloomberg