Getting your song onto one of Spotify’s’ 3000+ playlists can propel an artist’s career overnight! Spotify has tools for artists to get their music heard by the right listeners (such as the playlist pitch tool). Spotify did not say when it expects the integrations to go live, only that it would be in the “near future.Many small artists have found that Spotify is a great way to reach an audience and earn a living. The company said that artists would be able to use a beta upload feature to send their tracks directly to Spotify, as well as edit the metadata around those files, and track the songs’ performance.ĭistroKid’s integration will complement this new feature, by offering the ability to upload elsewhere, too. In September 2018, Spotify announced a major new feature for the service as well – music uploads.
Launched out of beta last year, Spotify for Artists is the streaming service’s online dashboard that allows musicians and their management teams a way to easily update their profile information, track their streams, and gain insights about their fan bases. Spotify says it will soon roll out a new tool that will allow musicians to upload to DistroKid through Spotify for Artists. It seems, then, that Spotify – for now, at least – largely wanted to solidify its relationship with DistroKid for the purposes of the work it has planned regarding the upcoming technical integrations, in addition to establishing an expanded business relationship in general.
“We’ll announce full details when we’re ready to open the integration to artists,” we were told. It also said that it has no rights to see the data from other digital service providers and DistroKid will not share confidential information.Īsked if planned to take a cut of sales of DistroKid subscriptions, currently $19.99 per year, Spotify said it doesn’t have that information to offer at this time. Spotify declined to disclose any financial details, when asked by TechCrunch, but a spokesperson clarified that it did not acquire the company, does not have a board seat, and that DistroKid remains independent. It’s unclear for now how Spotify rivals will react to the move. Given DistroKid’s formerly agnostic position in the industry, Spotify’s investment is likely to cause a stir. However, DistroKid’s service currently allows musicians an easy way to get their tunes to Spotify competitors, too, including Apple, Amazon, Google Play, TIDAL, iHeartRadio, YouTube, Pandora, Deezer, and over 150 other music streaming services and stores. Spotify was already a partner with DistroKid ahead of this news. “For the past five years, DistroKid has served as a go-to service for hundreds of thousands independent artists, helping them deliver their tracks to digital music services around the world, and reaching fans however they choose to consume music,” the company announced in a blog post about the deal.
The company didn’t confirm the size of its stake, only saying that it made a “passive minority investment.” As a result of the deal, Spotify will also upgrade its Spotify for Artists service to include an integration with DistroKid that allows artists to simultaneously upload content to other platforms. Spotify has taken a minority stake in music distribution service, DistroKid, a popular tool used by artists for uploading their music across platforms.