At the beginning of March the platform Spotify announced several new initiatives at the second annual Stream On eventwhere innovations such as a personal DJ that would work with Artificial Intelligence were unveiled.
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But one of the ads that caught the most attention was the Discovery Mode, an extended service for musicians and stamps discographicswhich according to the company would increase the exposure of the artists in exchange for more money.
Despite the fact that for several years the claims of the music sector towards the platform have been constantso that it makes a more distribution equitable of the profits, the company assured that this new tool could lead them to acquire even more money.
In theory, the “Discovery Mode” will help artists choose to increase a song’s algorithmic placement, in exchange for lower royalty rates.
Thus, when an artist has a song that they want to highlight, they can opt for this new mode.
However, Spotify makes no guarantee that the appearance of the song will be improved and, if so, will pay a reduced fee for those transmissions.
“While record labels can still access Discovery Mode through our team, I’m excited that Discovery Mode is now available directly on Spotify for Artists today,” said Joe Hadley, Spotify’s global head of artist and audience partnerships.
Now thousands of independently distributed artists and record labels have access to Discovery Mode
constant criticism
Spotify’s business model has long been criticized for being insufficient for artists, writers and publishers. In 2020, American groups The United Musicians and Allied Workers Union (UMAW) they launched the campaign “Justice At Spotify” to call for artist payments to be increased, and in 2021, the UK government said the streaming economy needs a “total reset” in a damning report.
However, a new report published in November 2022 found that it is unlikely that the services of streaming music companies make enough “excess profit” to improve artist pay.
The study also detailed that, in relation to a greater competition to reach listenersan artist could expect to earn around £12,000 from 12 million streams in the UK in 2021, although less than 1 per cent of artists achieve that level of streams.
More than 500 million customers
Spotify said that in addition to its new features, it will also implement a call “podcast previews” on his audio streaming platform, after the platform surpassed 500 million monthly active listeners.
The Swedish company also shared an update to its annual music royalty report, noting that the number of artists earning more than $1 million, as well as those generating more than 10 thousand dollarshave more than doubled in the last five years.
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In early 2023, Spotify said it would adjust spending and work to become efficient given the difficult macroeconomic context and projected that the number of listeners would reach 500 million in the current quarter.
* With information from Reuters.
