Spotify Shuts Down Ability for Independent Artists to Upload Music Directly

[Nebraska]

Quote

After less than a year, Spotify has decided shut down a test program that let independent artists 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.

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.

https://artists.spotify.com/blog/we're-closing-the-upload-beta-program

[dr lopez]

it was probably too much of a headache

[ignatius]

bummer. now those artists will miss out on the tens of dollars a fiscal quarter they would've made. 

[Gyroscopic]

How am I going to hear all of my shitty rappers with names like "Lil Poop Rat" now?

[Zephyr_Nova]

35 minutes ago, ignatius said:

bummer. now those artists will miss out on the tens of dollars a fiscal quarter they would've made. 

I know this guy who gets these checks for between $5000 - $10,000 every year for digital plays of his music, and he has no idea where it's coming from.  Definitely isn't Spotify.  It's collected via Soundscan, for anyone wondering.  That kind of money would require millions of plays ordinarily, so it's pretty baffling. He's not on any labels and doesn't tour that far outside his home town, which is super small.

[dr lopez]

it's been probably chucked on some commercial store playlist that everyone uses

[Zephyr_Nova]

Well that's the other weird thing - his music's not very commercial.  It's kind of synth pop, but without a lot of the pop aspect.  But yeah, there's got to be some reason like that.  I'm sure he could find out, but he's not particularly interested in knowing.

[Rubin Farr]

Check Hot Topic.  Mystery solved.