Labels can soon buy their way into Spotify playlists with ‘Sponsored Posts’

With Spotify’s 2016 financials out in the open as of last week and showing increasingly heavy losses, Spotify is no doubt looking at every avenue it can to increase ad revenue, and it seems that the latest of these are ‘Sponsored Songs’.

As Tech Crunch reports, these songs have been appearing for some users of the platform’s unpaid tier, and Spotify has confirmed to the publication that the feature is currently being tested, allowing labels to pay to have their artists’ music featured more prominently.

‘Sponsored Songs’ are showing up in playlists currently, and will theoretically be tailored to users music tastes in much the same way as the rest of the music you hear – so don’t expect to hear Lady Gaga buying her way into a Metallica playlist any time soon.

Users are currently able to opt out of the testing, although we imagine that the feature will be mandatory for all free users if and when it’s introduced, providing another incentive to jump up to a premium subscription.

It’s the next logical step from corporate sponsorships on playlists, too, and not all that distinct from the servicing that already goes on behind the scenes in an effort to get an artist into that prized new music playlist. For now, we wait to see what the feature will look like when it’s inevitably introduced, and what it’ll mean for artists and labels going forward.

This article originally appeared on The Industry Observer, which is now part of The Music Network.