Comment on Spotify launching direct uploads for independent artists

What does it mean for Record Union that artists can upload their music directly to Spotify without an aggregator as a middle hand?

In essence, we think it’s a good thing. The more companies that work to democratize the music industry by breaking down the dominance of three major labels the better. But what is important to remember is that music distribution does not equal Spotify, even though many Swedes do equate music streaming with Spotify.

There’s a big number of streaming services that are also important for both artists and labels, and these services have different dominance on different markets – for example, Deezer in France and Apple Music in the US. Record Union has over 100 000 artists from 120 countries and the best way for us to meet our users’ needs is to make deals with both local and global services. For many of those whose goal it is to distribute their music to a large number of different music services, it is not feasible to manage their catalog on each one individually – let alone to collect royalties. Record Union provides a valuable solution for this.

For artists and labels who see royalties from other streaming services as unimportant, direct upload to Spotify is a better solution and we respect that. Although, we would not recommend an independent artist or label to only distribute their music via one streaming service since they are already under represented on the streaming market overall (19.55%, IFPI 2018).

Were you prepared for this or was it a surprise?

We have been aware for some time that this was coming up and have been able to prepare ourselves from a strategic perspective. We have been working on how we can forward our ambition that no one – neither ourselves or any artist or label – should be dependent on Spotify or any other music service.

Why should artists and labels continue to work with Record Union?

When Record Union was founded 10 years ago, we were seen as pioneers within the music industry, and we are well aware that a distribution solution will not let us maintain that position. Our company goal has always been to make the music industry more democratic, accessible and transparent by breaking down different barriers and we will continue doing that. 10 years ago, distribution was seen as a barrier, but today knowledge about what to do after uploading a song to Spotify (and other music services) is a barrier. Over 20 000 songs are uploaded to the platform every day and the space is crowded. Just because the music is out there doesn’t mean that it’s automatically being listened to.

Our vision is to continue to support and enable music creators all over the world to reach their full potential and we are aware that distribution won’t take us all the way. Therefore, it’s important to us that we, regardless of Spotify’s progress, constantly challenge ourselves. We’re working to create better prerequisites for independent artists and labels all over the world, and one important milestone within this work is to shift the power into the hands where it belongs and change the power balance within the music industry.