Why is Spotify shutting down its DIY distribution business?
At a time where even the biggest artists in the world want to own their destiny, Spotify is no longer acting as a distributor for artists.
The Swedish-born streaming titan is shutting down the beta tool it launched to allows artists to upload music to its platform directly.
It will be tough news to hear for DIY who’ve been using the Spotify For Artists service to upload their music without the need for a record label or third-party distributor.
Originally launched in September of 2018 Spotify For Artists came alongside an investment by Spotify into distributor DistroKid.
Now the DSP has decided its energies will be better spent working with existing distribution partners, with the decision made after considering “insights and feedback we received from artists in the beta.”
In a post on its official blog, Spotify explained that it will assist to help artists “migrate their music to other distributors over the next month.”
“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),” said the post.
“We have a lot more planned here in the coming months.”
The decision may also have to do with the fact that DistroKid which already supports cross-platform uploads to iTunes, Apple Music, Pandora, Amazon, Google Play, Tidal, iHeartRadio, YouTube and Deezer, as well as Spotify.
Plans to integrate Spotify’s Artists dashboard with DistroKid could cause overlap with DistroKid’s upload tool.
It appears the impact will be minimal. Spotify told TechCrunch that only “a few hundred artists” had actually uploaded music to the beta, and that all who used it also had another distribution service available.
Spotify has sent out an email informing artists that the beta upload tool will officially shut down on July 30, 2019.
In the email, the platform was also pointing artists towards its preferred distribution partners DistroKid, CD Baby and EmuBands, and offering discounts for switching.