Spotify reveals their independent artist centered test program allowing hopeful superstars to upload music directly to their streaming platform comes to an end after less than a year.
The process for uploading music to Spotify is once again solely gaining access through a pre-approved distributor. Although the upload feature currently remains active, the independent upload officially ends July 30, 2019. Going forward, partnering with a distribution company is the only way for unsigned artists to upload their music and hopefully, gain fans and turn a profit.
Announced via blog post, Spotify claims to provide the hundreds of artists who made use of the feature with support to continue uploading including discount codes for preferred distributors and personalized assistance through a customer support team.
The blog post shares that feedback lead to the decision to shut down the beta program.
“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.”
Artists who directly uploaded their work to Spotify have until July 30 to transition to a distributor.
