SPOTIFY have opted to bring the curtain down on its direct-upload program.
First unveiled in September of 2018, the Swedish streaming giant briefly empowered artists to make their music available to consumers without the aid of third party distributors such as Tunecore, Distrokid or Scottish company Emubands.
A move that is likely to have an adverse effect on fledgling artists, an announcement from the company has stated their reasoning as a way to ensure the betterment of the product and its users overall:
“The best way for us to serve artists and labels is to focus our resources on developing tools in areas where Spotify can uniquely benefit them—like Spotify for Artists(which more than 300,000 creators use to gain new insight into their audience) and our playlist submission tool (which more than 36,000 artists have used to get playlisted for the very first time since it launched a year ago). We have a lot more planned here in the coming months.” On top of that, they doubled down on the rewards that’ll be reaped by stating that “We’re working with our distribution partners to help make this transition as simple as possible for the artists who uploaded music through the beta.”
For those that might be affected, here’s a rundown of the potential ramifications and what steps you’ll need to take in order to solidify you or your artist’s music on Spotify:
“All music released through the beta will come down on July 30 and the final royalties will be paid in August.
*You’ll need to redeliver your content through another distributor before July 30 to prevent any gaps when your music is not available to fans and to ensure your Spotify play count and playlist placements will not be affected.
*Be sure to log into Spotify for Artists to download your ISRC codes and any royalty information that you’ll need for your records.
*If you were testing out the Canvas looping visual product, you do not need to re-upload it. As long as you deliver the product with the same audio and ISRC our system will track-link it to the old product, retaining play counts, playlisting, and Canvas.
*As a formality, please be advised that this email constitutes our 30 day notice to you that we are terminating the Spotify Content License Agreement.”