In most cases, music writing doesn’t happen overnight—especially in popular music. Today’s biggest artists oftentimes have rooms full of writers, producers, and engineers all playing an important role in the creation of a song or sound. The work of these collaborators is usually recognized in the album’s liner notes—the credits section of a record that details each person’s involvement in the album’s creation. However, in an era where streaming services dominate, including liner notes on a digital album is difficult. But Spotify‘s new tool Songwriter Pages is looking to change that. The streaming service is rolling out the program to help listeners get a better idea of the work that goes into their music, and for the creators to get more recognition.
Spotify tapped hit writers like Meghan Trainor, Fraser T Smith (Adele, Sam Smith), Missy Elliott, Teddy Geiger (One Direction, Shawn Mendes, 5 Seconds of Summer), Ben Billions (The Weeknd, Beyonce), and Justin Tranter (Selena Gomez, Camila Cabello, Imagine Dragons) to make the new feature available for viewing on their page. While the is program mostly still in testing mode, Spotify reports there has been a 60% increase in the addition of songwriter credits by labels and distributors since it began displaying the information in 2018. The tool Songwriter Pages, however, makes these credits more interactive and searchable without needing to leave the platform.
Hitmaker Teddy Geiger said the addition of Songwriter Pages is an important direction in the music industry. “Growing up, I looked at the back of my favorite albums to see who was involved in making them — from writers and producers to the engineers and instrumentalists,” Geiger said in a statement, according to Rolling Stone. “Those credits inspired me to explore making music and it’s great to see Spotify supporting the work that we all do behind the scenes.”
Head of publishing and songwriter relations Jules Parker said the company is excited to see how listeners interact with the new feature. “Spotify is always working to create new and better ways to promote music discovery — for artists, for songs and, increasingly, for songwriters,” said Parker. “The launch of publicly visible songwriter credits on Spotify in 2018 was merely a first step. Together with the publishing industry, we’ve continued to evolve our data sharing and analytics efforts, and are proud to unveil this next iteration… We’re excited to see how the world interacts with these new features, and look forward to enabling them for more and more songwriters.”
