Spotify unveils features and tools to grow their 500+ million monthly active users and build their careers for artists, podcasters and creators.
Spotify’s second Stream On event was held yesterday, and music artists, songwriters, video and content creators, and podcasters from all over the
world joined Spotify for a day of announcements, inspiring stories, and hands-on demos of new tools and resources coming to the global creator platform.
“Stream On is about all the ways we are bringing Spotify to life and letting creators at all stages of their careers know that we are open for business. We are focused on building the best home for them – a place where they can establish a career, thrive and grow and where the world can be inspired by their creativity,” Spotify Founder & CEO Daniel Ek shared during the morning keynote presentation. He continued, “And that’s what we’ve been doing for almost 17 years: building, improving and reimagining this home to better meet creator needs and help them chart new pathways to success. As we look to the future, we are excited to expand that ambition to even more creators across new formats. We’re enabling more creativity, discovery and personalization than ever before by providing the best resources, support, and interactivity..”
Doubling down on helping creators and artists be discovered
Spotify kicked off Stream On by doubling down on discovery, revealing a reimagined interface that leverages new visuals, and a completely new and interactive design — all to drive deeper and long-lasting connections between creator and listeners.
The new Spotify experience will roll out in waves beginning today to its 500+ million monthly active users — below is a snapshot of what to expect in Nigeria:
- With Smart Shuffle, we’re introducing a new way to inject new music that perfectly complements an existing playlist with just the tap of a button.
- Building on the success of podcast previews, creators can choose or have Spotify automatically generate Previews of their music and podcasts for users to sample before they play or save.
- Just like with music, Spotify will now serve Autoplay for Podcasts — when a podcast ends, another episode will automatically start playing that fits the user’s tastes and is relevant.
“Spotify recommendations drive close to half of all users’ streams. And when listeners decide to follow a creator, they listen to, on average, five times more of their music,” said Gustav Söderström, Spotify Co-President and Chief Product & Technology Officer. He continued, “That’s why discoveries on Spotify—unlike many other platforms—give creators so much more than just a fleeting moment of viral fame. Those meaningful, long-term connections are a key part of what makes Spotify a platform for professional and aspiring artists.”
Helping creators build and grow audiences with new and enhanced tools.
Spotify showcased a suite of Spotify for Artists tools that help artists find the fans who’ll love their music most. Spotify also shared more details on the next revenue line to help artists grow: merchandise and live events.
- New Concert and Merch Discovery tools will help make sure concert-goers never miss another show. Listeners will begin to see merch offers and concert listings in far more places across the app. If a show catches a fan’s eye, they can tap a new ‘interested’ button to save the listing to their own calendar in the Live Events Feed. Users can adjust their location and browse concerts worldwide, all personalised to their taste.
- Spotify is also expanding its Fans First program to include more artists, ensuring top listeners receive emails and notifications that give them special access to concert pre-sales and merch exclusives.
Spotify also announced the rollout of additional podcast features. Spotify for Podcasters now brings together the best of Spotify’s podcast creator tools into a one-stop shop to create, manage, grow and monetize podcast content.
Previously, Spotify’s most innovative features were limited to Anchor users exclusively. But the company is building the new Spotify for Podcasters in a way that offers more open access to innovation. As a result, all Spotify for Podcasters users—including those not hosting their content on Spotify—will find access to Q&A and Poll functionality in their dashboards.
Starting today, when all creators sign up or log in to Spotify for Podcasters, they’ll find a dashboard with everything they need to make, manage, and level up their show, including:
- The ability to upload and publish episodes (for users hosting their show with Spotify for Podcasters)
- Interactive features like Q&A and Polls
- Advanced analytics to track a show’s growth, including streaming numbers and audience demographic data
Spotify also announced new and expanded Spotify Originals and Exclusives:
- Spotify and DC Comics will launch a new podcast series The Riddler: Secrets in the Dark which will be led by Phantom 4 and filmmaker, novelist, and comic book writer David S. Goyer. Fans can expect all of the beloved characters from the “Batman Unburied” series.
“Today, there are more than ten million creators on Spotify with over half a billion listeners across 184 countries and markets,” Spotify Founder & CEO Daniel Ek noted. “Think about the massive potential that represents for creators. No matter where you are on your own creative journey within music, podcasts or audiobooks. The potential to reach half a billion people. And that reach is about to become more powerful with what we’ve introduced today.”
Continuing to help artists find success through streaming
Finally, Spotify unveiled its annual music royalties report, Loud & Clear. This year’s update shows that more artists are finding success than ever before: the number of artists generating $1M+, as well as those generating $10,000+, has more than doubled over the past five years. Additionally, Spotify estimates that the 50,000th highest-earning artist on Spotify generated more than $50,000 across all recorded revenue sources.
The site also details how Spotify pays the vast majority of every dollar it generates for music—nearly 70 percent—back to the industry, and all-time Spotify payouts to music rights holders are approaching $40 billion dollars.
Welcoming creators and artists “home” to Spotify
Immediately following the presentation, we opened the doors of our campus in Los Angeles’ Arts District to creators for its “Play On” event to demo new products, held workshops with top industry creators, and shared insider knowledge on how best to use Spotify from the people who helped develop the tools at the company. To close out the activities, we hosted an all-female showcase to celebrate International Women’s Day.
