Audio-streaming service Spotify generally gets mixed reviews. On one side of the fence are satisfied customers (like me), who gladly pay $10 a month to access an effectively limitless supply of music. Many artists are less keen on the idea, citing paltry payouts from streaming services, and a general inability for new and struggling musicians "to even keep their lights on" when relying on these new music distribution models.
Spotify for Artists is the streaming service's answer to those complaints. It's a new tool designed to help artists make sense of the digital morass, letting them leverage the power of Spotify's listener data to figure out in real time what Spotify subscribers are listening to.
Artists will be able to sift through Spotify's data and figure out what gets fans grooving.
Spotify has a lot of data at its disposal. As of March the service boasted 24 million users around the globe, each one a potential fan. Artists and their managers will have access to a dashboard that serves up real-time information on when and where their music is being streamed, the age and gender of their fanbase, and their music's popularity over time. That information could prove vital to any band planning a concert tour—or, my inner cynic remarks, brainstorming their next chart-topping hit.
But this is about far more than data. Spotify's reputation is at stake here, as the service relies on artists being willing to license their music. The Spotify for Artists site works at length to remind artists that it pays 70 percent of all the revenue it receives right back to rights holders in the form of royalty checks based on individual contracts.
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