In 2018, streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music are where people go to listen to music: The two platforms combined have over 150 million subscribers globally. Streaming is the way to reach listeners, but for a smaller artist that isn’t on a record label, actually getting your music onto these services can be a challenge. There are third-party tools for getting your music on Spotify, but having actually used one of them myself, I know how tedious and unintuitive that endeavor can be. Thankfully, Spotify is making that process easier: The company announced today that it will start letting artists upload their music to Spotify by themselves.
In a blog post heralding the feature, Spotify writes, “Since we launched Spotify for Artists, one of the top requested features has been the ability to upload music directly onto Spotify. You’ve told us time and time again that sharing your work with the world should be easier. […] You’ll be able to deliver music straight to Spotify and plan for the perfect release day. You’ll see a preview of exactly how things will appear to listeners before you hit submit. And even after your music goes live, you’ll be in full control of your metadata with simple and quick edits.”
The post goes on to say that getting paid for streams will be straightforward as well: Artists will get paid monthly, at which time they’ll also get a report of how much money their streams are earning. Perhaps the most important note from the post: “Uploading is free to all artists, and Spotify doesn’t charge you any fees or commissions no matter how frequently you release music.”
Currently, the feature is only available “by invitation to a few hundred US-based independent artists,” but Spotify says they’ll expand the availability over the next few months.
